How important is the mare?

[Cruiseonamiro]

What i've been thinking is, that the foal inherits half it's genes from mum and half from dad, so surely to breed a top class youngster the mare needs to have just as good bloodlines or record as the dad? Yet it seems that people put very very top level stallions to nice mares? And how much does a mare stamp her foal? My grey horse is by Amiro M out of a cruising mare, and yet we only see cruising in him, that's what got me thinking. Numpty needs an explanation, sorry!

 

[KenRehill]

and then you have dominant genes.

Breeding should start with the mare, you should always look to breed from the best mare you can find/afford. With a recogonised motherline, that is proven (not just in the opinion of the owner, but actual officially given information) to produce performers.

 

[the watcher]

How long have you got?

There are many reasons why the stallion will have a higher profile than the mares.

Until relatively recently if you wanted to breed for a really good mare you would have to take her out of work and competition for a year or so, and many people wouldn't want to do that. Stallions of course can cover and work in the same season, and with AI can be everywhere.

All responsible mare owners will be looking to improve on their mare, or at least complement it - so would hopefully seek out the best stallion they can afford that will do this.

There are many variables but in general the stallion can be considered to contribute about 25% to the outcome - although some are very prepotent and will add far more - this is where researching their previous crop of foals is important.

None of the above takes into account the PMU trade (it is still going on) where fairly average mares are used, but AI'd by better known stallions to add value to the by product - which is foals.

 

[Cruiseonamiro]

Ah; that explains it. It just made me wonder a bit, I help on a stud and see so much of the above!

 

[TURBOBERT]

Incidentally Crusing stamps his stock very clearly. We have one - the image of his dad - and the several we have seen (even those that are not grey!) have similar conformation. But that is another topic again...

 

[seabiscuit]

I know in theory that of course the mare is very very important; but there seems to be a lot of horses about that are the EXACT replica's of their sire's, if not an even better version of their fathers, and then you look at the mother and they are plain awful; in those cases you could safely say that the stallion has exerted by far the most influence over the offspring! But breeding is all a game of chance isnt it? I guess there are times when the offspring will look more like the mother than the dad. My mare's dam had 4 foals I think, my mare was the 1st foal and was the exact replica/same stamp/same colour/same markings as her father, then the next 3 foals by the same sire, were all spitting images of the mother and looked nothing like their sire or their eldest full sister.

 

[teabiscuit]

the old desert arabs used to value the dams line far more than the stallions line for their arab breeding and pass the information on through generations using word of mouth

also the mitochondria (involved with performance) is only passed on through the dams line - i need to look this up again as not 100% sure of the if's and but of this, so if anyone knows better please jump in

-i have a research paper on this somewhere but read it so long ago i can't remember it properly :s

they say the dam has 60% influence to the sire's 40%?

so i've always thought that the mares contribution was very important

 

[Cruiseonamiro]

Thanks guys - Turbobert, everyone who seems to know anything about horses immediately asks about my horse, "Is he by cruising?" and I say, no, but he's out of a cruising mare. Funny how strong the image is! When I met William Fox Pitt even he wanted to know if he was by cruising. Mitochondria - is that not to do with the respiratory system? Or is that human biology?

 

[teabiscuit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion
[ QUOTE ]

mitochondria-described as "cellular power plants" because they generate most of the cell's supply of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), used as a source of chemical energy


[/ QUOTE ]

so not sure what you're thinking of?

 

[Ciss]

[ QUOTE ]
and then you have dominant genes.

Breeding should start with the mare, you should always look to breed from the best mare you can find/afford. With a recogonised motherline, that is proven (not just in the opinion of the owner, but actual officially given information) to produce performers.

[/ QUOTE ]

And of course it is not just the genes, its the actual temperament of the mare. Her attitude to humans and other horses (which could well be acquired rather than inherited) is particularly important as is her position in the herd because alpha mares often have a stronger *positive* influence on their foals well-being and development becuase they have the right to the best grass, best sheltered/warmest spot in the field and field shelter and are unlikely to be involved in any inhurous kicking matches becuase no-one threatens them or their foal.

Someone once said to me that the best way of assessing the amount of influence a mare has on her foal's upbringing and therefore attitude to life (especially in the artificial conditions in which we now raise them) is to view the foal as the child of a single parent family with the father having no access / visiting rights. Of course an ET foal does not even have this sort of interaction with its natural (as distinct from host) dam which makes one wonder just how much of the temperament of the top class mare that makes her a winner is actually passed on to her ET foal. This is where the relevance of having three equally good parents involved in the production of an ET foal actually kicks in.

 

[TarrSteps]

People tend to know stallions better, too, so see the traits they recognise. Since stallions have so many more offspring (potentially anyway) and tend to receive the lion's share of the promotion it stands to reason they tend to be the "part" of a horse people are most likely to know and possibly recognise.

Great mares are often well known within their breeds, though. Some of the really important mares are spoken of with something approaching reverence by people "in the know" and most studbooks offer very prestigious broodmare awards. Some mares just seem to produce class over and over (I knew one mare that produced a winning "black type" racehorse, a top hunter, two approved stallions, and a Young Horse winner - all by different sires!) even if it's their entire sons that seem to get most of the publicity! It really interesting how often that sort of thing happens, especially taking into account the number of offspring a mare can produce relative to a stallion.

Some of it is social bias, I suspect. My experience has been that Trakehner people - where horses are name for the mare line - tend to know a lot more about mare lines than people generally associated with breeds that name for the stallion. I'm not saying they place more importance = perhaps it's just easier to know with the reminder of the name.

 

[_jetset_]

My yearling looks a bit like his Mum, but his movement and temperment is nothing like her... He may change as he matures, but other than looking like her facially and having her nice sturdy legs etc. he seems to have been stamped quite powerfully by his sire.

 

[Cruiseonamiro]

Getting mitochondria confused with ribosomes!

 

[TURBOBERT]

Good Lord! And maybe 'luck' has its bit to play!

 

[burtie]

Well of all my boys ancestors, he most looks like his great grand sire on the sire side! Other than the ears he looks nothing like his mum and is nothing like her in character or ride either!

 

[dannydunne]

i thought that mitochondria contain genetic infomation and that this infomation is passed from the mare to the foal, not from the stallion.

also the female x chromosone is the biggest horse chromosone and carries alot more infomation than the male y chromosone so it passes on more infomation.

when looking at the pedigrees of warmbloods you do notice that certain mares produce more good foals than others. the mare deka produced caletto I, II and III, the mare tabelle gave calypso I to IV, wisma gave cassini I and II, grannuska gave us couleur rubin and his full brother couleur rouge along with conterno grande. you also have ratina who has had several good offspring and comes from one of the best lines 8145. however the mother of nimmerdor only had 1 foal, some foal it was!

will we ever have mare lines for jumping like they do abroad? not ones taken from abroad but derived from our own mares. surely if it was done over 100 years ago in holstein we can do it here but we would have to be very strict on what mares we use.

 

[LindaW]

To me now, aside from repeating a lot of the above, breeding starts with the mare. She is at least as important as the stallion, to be honest, more so.

I do get fed up with people looking for the very best possible stallion (though on the plus side at least they are now looking for the best stallion) and forgetting that their mare is very average and maybe shouldn't be bred.

Think about it people, would you take a top class mare, fab bloodlines, moves like a dream, jumps the moon, temperament to die for and lovely conformation and breed her to a nondescript stallion just out of racing, or a loved but very ordinary mixed breed who'd won a couple of RC events?

 

[htobago]

Linda that is a very good point!

Even as the owner of a very prepotent stallion, who seems to produce replicas of himself whatever mare you breed him to, I would agree that mares are extremely important. And that their importance is often underestimated.

It seems to me that the WB-breeders' practice of only listing sires' names when giving the breeding of a horse - completely ignoring the dam and giving her sire's name instead - helps to reinforce the notion that stallions are more important than mares.

Other breeds don't do this, and certainly many Arab breeders are obsessed with damlines and tail-female lines. The original Bedouin breeders regarded the tail-female line as by far the most important line in a horse's pedigree. And they created the most influential breed in the world, without which most modern breeds, including all sport horses, would not exist!

 

[KenRehill]

On this side of the water, especially in France, once we've seen the three stallion line up, the next question we ask is "what's the motherline?". So WB breeders do care about it, it's just not evident in the UK yet, it'll come though.

 

[htobago]

I'm very glad to hear that Ken! I would imagine that the more experienced/expert WB breeders in the UK are also very interested in motherlines. The ones I know certainly are, but perhaps they are not a representative sample.

But still, the printed information on sales advertisements, stud ads, sales lists and other published documents is almost invariably limited to the 3 stallions. If one wants to find out the dam/motherline, one has to go to some trouble to unearth this information. Do you not think that motherlines (and mothers) would get more recognition if dams were included in the basic published information, as they are for most other breeds?

(I know there is nothing you can do to change the system - just interested in your views.)

 

[Cruiseonamiro]

I definitely agree. It seems to me that we have established above that the mare is at least of equal importance, even with a stallion that really stamps his foals. I know very little about bloodlines, I just know that my horses are pretty good, but nothing more than that. Just couldn't work out why, if the mare has so much influence, as I see in my boy, that people were putting very classy stallions to what seemed to me to be pretty average mares.