How do you breed an Eventer?

only_me

only_me

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Was wondering how people bred for eventing?

Do you breed from specific eventing stallions/mares? Or do you breed dressage & showjumping horses together to hope for one that events?

I always think that breeding for showjumping or dressage is a lot more simple, but breeding for eventing is more difficult!
 
I am hoping i've bred myself an eventer!!

My mare evented up to novice successfully, huge jump but not the attitude for dressage at any higher level. I used Brief Encounter who is a proven eventer at intermediate level but also has good paces and a nice temperament. So in theory my filly has come from two eventers and so she should be able to event, I am hoping up to at least intermediate level!! I think with eventing though you never know if they will be good or not until you are able to get out and do it with them as they have to have so much going for them to be successful at a decent level! Fingers crossed I will be reporting good things in 4yrs time!! :D
 
What's most interesting about the BE lists is how different they are! Hard to say how much of that is statistics and how much is the nature of the game, though.

I think it is trickier to breed for eventing because to some extent you're breeding for contradictory abilities so you're not looking for an extreme in any area, more a balance of traits. Also, I'd argue production plays a higher part in the end result, if only because it's much harder to predict the final product from the sorts of skills you can observe objectively in young horses.

There is also the problem that it's self perpetuating if a horse has early success - horses perceived as being successful sires are more likely to get top mares and their offspring are more likely to go to top producers.

All that said, I think people ARE getting more scientific about it. Vs dressage and jumping breeders, from my experience they have a way to go realising the importance of top mares/mare lines though and are more likely to use an "unknown" mare with moderate success and hope to upgrade with a classy stallion. Good mares are a very, very important piece of the puzzle - arguably more so in a sport where temperament and hardiness play such an important part.

Upbringing has a lot to do with it, too. We had a discussion not long ago on here on the importance of raising competition horses in "natural" environments - a situation, again, I might argue is even more important for eventers!
 
It would be great if the above lists had a dam and damsire ranking included. It would be interesting to see how highly ranked the top sires were as damsires, for example, creating a bigger picture of the most successful bloodlines.
 
I fully understand the upbringing part; especially as varied terain as possible (which could be an argument why Irish horses from more rural areas of the country can make better eventers eg. the Balladeer horses which are based in Cork)
But for instance, we are hoping for a foal which will be tbxconnie - and hope that makes an eventer.

But how do you breed for the similar traits? Would it be a case of the mare being even MORE important than the stallion?
So by having an advanced mare (rare, I know) you would have a higher chance of breeding an eventer (provided have good upbringing) if you bred it to a stallion to improve its weaknesses - speed/jump/paces etc. which would mean the foal would likely to be much better at one section of eventing than others?
Or would you breed it to an eventing stallion hoping to create the same talent but forgo the better paces etc.?

Just curious, and sorry if not able to understand the above!
In a nutshell probably would be that if you bred to improve an area of the event mare, would you end up with a horse more suited to another disicpline because would have the "talent balance" weighted more in one direction?
 
you breed a horse. choose the best bloodlines and capabilities/conformation of sire and dam. and if you are lucky you will have a nice horse confo and temperament, let it live as a horse and start proper training at 3 to 4 yrs old when reasonably mature. and hope the horse has the talent and attitude to be a competitive competition horse. and a very large bank balance helps. as from conception to foal will be around 5k, and from foal to 4 will be another 5k, and producing said foal/horse will be another couple of k. good luck. unfortunately mother nature has a huge hand in the offspring and the expenses.
 
I'm not stupid, I know how to breed a horse & what to do & how to pick a stallion!! And the fact that it would be cheaper to buy a foal than breed one atm.I won't be breeding personally (apart from the fact I own a gelding) but was curious as to how "event" horses are bred.

What I am asking is if you are aiming to specifically breed an eventer, how do you do it? Would you use an eventing stallion or other stallions?
 
i think you need to pick a stallion which strenthens the mares weaknesses and vice versus, and hope for the best!!!!! sadly there is no guarenteed formula you just have to strenthen the good things and try to eliminate the worst things and hope!!! and the cheapest option is to buy a nice bred, good confo/temp at 3 to 4 years and train it well with an exceptional jockey.
 
In our case the stallion's dam completed Badminton and Burghley, his sire has produced Advanced mares and numerous event horses and the mares we use are all from proven bloodlines for both eventing and Show jumping.
The stallion evented successfully to Novice aged 19 but his age precluded us from risking him any further, height has never been an issue to him so we felt confident he could have gone a lot higher had he been younger. (he broke his pelvis aged 5 and didn't compete until aged 17)
Our mares have taken 25 years to get to what we now breed from, a ruthless policy of selling anything with problems of any sort either temperamentally or physical.
The result are horses who have an inherant toughness, wonderful paces and a bold jump. Yes they will event but I would hope as many are proving they will also SJ/dressage and be good all rounders too!
I think the secret of any successful breeding is to be sure you have sound horses to start with who are going to find a useful life whether it be hunting/hacking etc, too many people have a broken down -horrible-to-ride mare and think they should breed from it.
Like any breeding it's luck as well, but get the basics right and you have a good chance of breeding a useful horse.
 
I do think hh has hit on some important points, perhaps most notably that breeding programs are PROGRAMS and take years to develop, in hand with relentless objective assessment and culling.

Breeding ONE top eventer is really a fluke, breeding a group of horses which are likely to succeed at some level and which is more likely to throw up a good one is a different matter. Although often when people get what they think is a fluke, it's not really because all they've really done is taken advantage of someone else's breeding program, whether they know it or not.

I presume you have a mare in mind? So you start with her and choose a stallion that has a record of improving the traits you want. (Which is not necessarily the same as having them himself, especially if you don't know his family history.)

For example, if the mare is an ordinary mover and you want to improve on that area . . .I do think you're seeing more "dressage" breeding coming into eventing now, given that it's almost impossible to win without a good test, but there are plusses and minusses to that approach. Some dressage lines jump well, some don't. Many jump in a way that I, personally, don't like for eventers and may also struggle to gallop efficiently. So if improving movement were a priority I'd be careful to choose a horse that jumped decently too, and not assume a good jumping mare would somehow cancel it out. I would also be careful about that path if increasing stride length is a priority. It also depends WHY the mare is an average mover - does she need more length of neck? A better shoulder? Is it really more the way she's been produced?

I think Connemara x TB crosses are great, in part because the Connemara's have had such a closed book and highly defined attributes. (Although I can't say now, as it's been a few years since I had much to do with them.) So they already are the product of a successful program and breed pretty true. Then it's just a case of getting a good TB sire with the traits you want. And then crossing your fingers . . . :D
 
These are my mares from which I hope to produce eventers
Master Imp x Skyboy
Robin des Champs x Presenting xGood Thyne
Summer at Saratoga x Ballinvella x Golden Cliff
Any suggestions for stallion
 
No dount trying to breed advanced eventers is tricky, to get the balance of enough blood for the Xc section, the boldness, and the quick thinking, plus add to that a careful enough horse for the SJ and the trainability to do a good test(I dont think you need flashy paces for the dressage section, but you do need a horse that will let you ride it when its super fit and not blow its top)

I have a cracking advanced mare, who had all the jump and boldness and hated touching a pole. her paces are straight and powerful too but she was always a bit over keen in the dressage. She is a big mare, very like her Holstein grandfather and in fact really really similar to his sire in looks (the grerat Ladykiller), so I am looking for a blood type horse that is not over big, is still a bold athlete and still has lots of scope over a fence. I am not specifically looking for a stallion that has evented as I will use a SJ stallion if I think he has the right brain and type
 
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