What use is NED if

M

magic104

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www.jc-countryside.co.uk
The POI is only offering the barest information? ie
Date of Birth
Gender Gelding
Colour Unknown
Height
Sire Name Not Supplied By PIO
Dam Name Not Supplied By PIO
Breed Horse
Submitted by American Quarter Horse Association UK
Studbook/Section Not Supplied By PIO
Birth Country United Kingdom

Before this horse was cut he covered a number of mares & therefore has a few offspring about. If you wanted to do a check on him that is all you would get, yet he is fully registered so you would expect his sire & dam to be listed at least along with a DOB. I appreciate we are still only being charged £1 for this info, but how long before we are getting accurate info?

One more point I have not found Welsh bred horse yet, does this mean that WPC have not submitted there info yet? This mare has had at least 2 reg offspring yet the report shows nothing? I did send off queries last week but have not heard back. Has anyone else had a reply from similar queries?
 
I think you will find that not all PIO's have supplied comprehensive information. I don't know all the reasons but can imagine that for small societies with a one part-time person, supplying this information is somewhat onerous.

I have a native pony and when I rang the breed society one day discovered the poor part-time sec had 85 in coming emails on her computer!!
 
I'm afraid to say, in spite of all the drum rolls that this would be a brilliant tool, in parts, it's falling flat on its face and it's been going long enough now to have been sorted.
DEFRA did nobody any favours when it didn't INSIST that the least the PIOs could get away with when uploading details was name, sire, dam, height or estimation of height, DOB, colour, who issued passport and breeder (if known). Anything less for what has verified parentage, as it is now, is utterly useless IMO and isn't worth the cost of the internet.
When - if - you can actually marry up with your horses, you have an option to add more details, including a picture but as this is not available for anyone else to see, just what is the point?

As to WPCS. Well, I sold a TB mare, she was covered by a champion Section D, progeny is named and down as a Welsh Part-Bred; that's fine, but he's also down as a SECTION A. What a load of bollo' wotsit!

For what it has cost, there are far too many elementary mistakes and insufficient data supplied by the PIOs and you can't get away from that no matter how much they try to say differently.
 
Perhaps I could clarify a few facts..

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I'm afraid to say, in spite of all the drum rolls that this would be a brilliant tool, in parts, it's falling flat on its face and it's been going long enough now to have been sorted.

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NED is a brilliant tool. It holds records of all UK passported horses. As has been explained previously, NED receives the 'mandatory' elements of data from every UK PIO. The 'voluntary' elements which includes pedigree, progeny and performance data are purely at the descretion of the Studbook. If data is not being provided by your studbook I would strongly suggest you raise it with your studbook.

I'm not sure what you feel needs 'sorting'? NED cannot insist of voluntary data being supplied from studbooks so what actions do you feel NED should be doing that it's not?

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DEFRA did nobody any favours when it didn't INSIST that the least the PIOs could get away with when uploading details was name, sire, dam, height or estimation of height, DOB, colour, who issued passport and breeder (if known). Anything less for what has verified parentage, as it is now, is utterly useless IMO and isn't worth the cost of the internet.

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Defra has to operate within European laws and cannot insist on such data being provided without a significant reason for doing so, which primarily relates to human welfare (Passports after all were introduced as a way for the UK to meet European requirements for tracking animals which may end up in the human food chain).

The vast majority of studbooks ARE providing sire and dam information, but because UELNs or internal reference numbers for these animals haven't been recorded it can be impossible for NED to match with certainty as Name is a very poor way of matching (multiple instances of the same name, name spelt differently etc.)

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When - if - you can actually marry up with your horses, you have an option to add more details, including a picture but as this is not available for anyone else to see, just what is the point?

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This is incorrect. Everyone can see your photo and your details, but only you can amend them.

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As to WPCS. Well, I sold a TB mare, she was covered by a champion Section D, progeny is named and down as a Welsh Part-Bred; that's fine, but he's also down as a SECTION A. What a load of bollo' wotsit!

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Speak to the studbook who supplied the data

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For what it has cost, there are far too many elementary mistakes and insufficient data supplied by the PIOs and you can't get away from that no matter how much they try to say differently.

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There are some gaps in the data which NED is trying to close with the relevant studbooks, however as previously mentioned they are not required to supply this information, and some studbooks have currently chosen not to.

Also, as we are dealing with historical data, it is extremely difficult to rectify poorly recorded data or recreate none-existant data. Many of the issues regarding the data in NED relate to these problems. Some of them are being addressed, but some require work from the PIOs to rectify and in some cases they either do not have the resources to make the changes, or do not have the data within their systems to supply it to NED.

As use of UELNs becomes more widespread many of the issues faced by the historical data NED is currently having to work with will reduce significantly. However, some stud books are still not recording the UELNs of sires and dams which will continue to cause issues when matching offspring with their sire and dams. I would therefore encourage anyone contacting their Studbook to ask whether they are recording and supplying sire and dam UELNs to NED and if not, why not.

On a positive note -
NED is working to gain more data on UK horses with continental passports and european bred horses now domiciled in the UK, which will add a significant amount of new data to the system.
The fact that NED exists has already caused a number of PIOs to improve their processes and the AES is actually implementing a much more sophisticated computer system to enable more comprehensive recording and reporting of data on their horses.
NED is also working to improve horse welfare through enabling the recording of microchip and brand information, and is liasing to with auction houses and slaughter houses to set up a real time link to ensure all horses passing through their hands are correct as per their microchip and passport, and are not flagged on NED as stolen, missing or on loan.

In summary - please do not throw the baby out with the bath water. NED has wrestled with some incredibly complex technical and data issues to get where it is. Everyone concerned is very well aware of the weaknesses in some of the data areas and where they can be improved, efforts are being made to do so. Moving forwards, data quality will be consisntently increasing and in due course we hope the remaining Studbooks who have not provided breeding data will feel able to do so. As each day passes, the data in NED increases in quality and quantity, and it will be one of the most important tools available to british breeders over the coming years.
 
Julia,

What do NED propose to do about the large numbers of British Natives who have been put into French STud Book as non-pedigree horses, and whose progeny although pedigree are given non-pedigree status?

This is a cause fo great annoyance to Brits who have moved to France and registered their equidae with HN at great cost and in good faith?
 
I can't link my horse from his passport to his BSJA and BD records as he currently is not registered and it won;t accept old membership number, same issue with OH's mare from PP record and BE record - what is the use in that - there could be 100's like that so how can breeding ever be monitored?
 
Yet again there is a lack of working together which is doing no one any favours. For instance the mare in question had a foal by a QH, she herself is 1/2 QH & reg with them, so how can her filly not be linked to her? With neither of her offspring linked, where is the benefit to the mare owner?

Also where exactly do you view any photo's? I dont find it very clear at all. I am sorry if it sounds as if I am moaning but every tax payer has contributed to this site via the government funding given to DEFRA. I dont begrudge the nominal fee of £1, but there are such huge gaps stilll. What is the time frame given to have these issues resolved?
 
Julia, thanks for another long reply but there are still some points that I and many others if the talk on forums is to be believed, that's without those that do not use forums of course, would take issue with.

"Quote:
DEFRA did nobody any favours when it didn't INSIST that the least the PIOs could get away with when uploading details was name, sire, dam, height or estimation of height, DOB, colour, who issued passport and breeder (if known). Anything less for what has verified parentage, as it is now, is utterly useless IMO and isn't worth the cost of the internet.


Defra has to operate within European laws and cannot insist on such data being provided without a significant reason for doing so, which primarily relates to human welfare (Passports after all were introduced as a way for the UK to meet European requirements for tracking animals which may end up in the human food chain).

The vast majority of studbooks ARE providing sire and dam information, but because UELNs or internal reference numbers for these animals haven't been recorded it can be impossible for NED to match with certainty as Name is a very poor way of matching (multiple instances of the same name, name spelt differently etc.)"


TBH, any filing clerk should be able to give you the correct horse by breeding AND AGE alone, it's not difficult as it's very rare for a mare to have live twins which is why it is so important that the PIOs give you these details. Ring up any breed society/PIO with those details and they'll be able to tell you as long as it's been registered with them. For NED to have all UK PIOs under their umbrella, it should be a simple matter but it's not proving to be for a great many people.
For instance, my mare, before I bought her, is graded with SPSS, that's not on her reports. She's had two foals by the same stallion but only one is in her progeny list, yet when that other foal was born and passported, its full breeding and DOB would have been recorded so why isn't he on her progeny list?

The only thing on my list of requirements that is different to what is actually used on NED, is wanting the name of the breeder (which is public knowledge as soon as a passport is printed and the horse is sold on surely?) so if that is the case and those other details are meant to be supplied to NED by PIO's, then I'm sorry, but I fail to see why in many cases, they aren't, in spite of the horse having verified breeding when the passport was first issued. DEFRA should have insisted on those others as at least, the absolute minimum, possibly with the result that those not complying should be fined or struck off the PIO register. That would be the Arab Horse Society for a start!


I do apologise for this accusation! -

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When - if - you can actually marry up with your horses, you have an option to add more details, including a picture but as this is not available for anyone else to see, just what is the point?


This is incorrect. Everyone can see your photo and your details, but only you can amend them.

Yes, I went back into NED and it is correct as long as the owner has 'married up' and entered those details in the first place and you also need to know where to find it as with being a very light grey area at the top of the box, it is very easy to think that option is unavailable like other computer programs so therefore not worth clicking on! It was only because you corrected me that I found it at all! Is there any chance that bar could be coloured differently or something to make it stand out better?
The trouble is that the majority of horses I looked at, not just of my own breeding, do not have these entered at all and some of them were successful horses in various disciplines, so it is questionable how useful/interesting this facility actually is.


You also say contact your breed society/PIO if your details haven't been updated, but I already have and they both say they update regularly. (SPSS & CHAPS) One has been in my ownership since last August and the other since end of January but they still don't come up in my name even if I give the full passport details.


Most of us do want NED to be a success and be useful but it is being a very long drawn out process and it's no wonder some of us are getting impatient at the seemingly lack of progress even if NED is paddling like mad under the surface!
 
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Yet again there is a lack of working together which is doing no one any favours. For instance the mare in question had a foal by a QH, she herself is 1/2 QH & reg with them, so how can her filly not be linked to her? With neither of her offspring linked, where is the benefit to the mare owner?

Also where exactly do you view any photo's? I dont find it very clear at all. I am sorry if it sounds as if I am moaning but every tax payer has contributed to this site via the government funding given to DEFRA. I dont begrudge the nominal fee of £1, but there are such huge gaps stilll. What is the time frame given to have these issues resolved?

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Agree with you completely!

After being corrected by Julia about the photo,(see post above) if you call up any horse, there are two columns above the box of horse details, one's named Passport, the other which will be greyed out usually has No User Entered Details so you won't be able to see anything else about it but if the user has entered details like a picture it will say User Entered. If you go to Maesfen Harrier, although there's no picture yet and Commaover, you'll see the difference.
 
One of the biggest problems I've found with NED is that the performance records of horses from British Dressage do not record the level the horse is competing at. It records the minimum level the horse can compete in based on the number of points they have won. And they've even got this wrong!!!

For example my horse is competing at Advanced. NED has her down as an Elementary horse!!! How depressing and wrong. The number of points a horse has bears little relation to the competitive level they are doing. Many top horses only go out a handful of times a year and have very few points despite being superb horses. How can breeders get an idea of which bloodlines are successful when there are such errors being recorded in there? And why is there no way for these details to be altered by the person who owns the horse? Sigh.
 
I think we all get a little upset as we would like the details of all our horses to be correct and fully documented.

Sometimes it just seems too stupid to be true though.
Having recently completed the change of ownership for one horse I am amazed to see the date of birth has changed to the year 7007.

I dont care if its AES or NED who have put the date down wrong but it iillustrates a lack of accuracy and my horse will not be born for another 4998 years.

Apart from that, the sex, sire and dam have all changed. My future superstar by Exploit de Roulard is now sired by a pony.
Apart from the name of horse,owner and UELN all other details are incorrect.

I have contacted the helpline and received the standard reply. I have written to AES also.

Sorry but this is not good enough.
 
I feel so much better now, there was I thinking I was being a numpty in expecting more from a database started by mine & every working persons money!

Inputting data is NOT rocket science & how exactly was this information passed over to NED? I checked my passports when they came back so I know all the info to be correct. Therefore where are the mistakes being made? And why are the entries not being tied together why for instance is there 3 entries for the same horse?
3 result(s) found

Name............Gender...Born...Colour......Pedigree
Performance Record
BD SPONECK Stallion..1990...Not known
Sponeck....... Male......1990...Dark Bay..Caprimond
...........................................................Scala Milano
SPONECK......Stallion...1990...Bay..........CAPRIMOND
...........................................................SCALA MILANO

So we have Sponeck entered 3 times because no one could marry up the info provided. BD could not be bothered to record his colour or breeding. The TBF entered him as male dk bay & the SHB enter him as a stallion but without his correct birth date & now he is 165cm rather then 164cm per TBF record. Where is the need for 3 entries, why could this horse not be entered once with the other 2 societies recorded? His main entry being with the TBF then his BD performanc would be recorded anyway.

I am not sure why systems are being used & I am well aware that they all have their weaknesses but when entering a horse surely it shoud promt that it is a duplicate & if so why was this not double checked? I dont see the point in cluttering up the data with duplicates when one entry if suffice. Wth all this technology we humans still cant get it right, because we just have to over complicate things.
 
Have very limited experience of the NED but in my brief search I was unable to find what I was looking for i.e. a list of progeny for a specific stallion, I also found on my search that there are duplicates and even triplicates of horses. Though I did manage to find details of duplicate horses from one society and not the other!! So I had already concluded that some contribute more than others.

BUT I would say that this is not always the problem of the smaller registries but the NED software. Any database should be able to import data from a variety of sources. Most society’s will, I would have thought have had their records on an Access database or even an Excel spreadsheet, the NED database should be able to assimilate that information quite easily so all the PIO should do is give the NED a full copy of their records, if they are on computer of course.

The software I use has user set import specifications that are very easy to use and allow the user to import data from a variety of sources in different formats and arrangements. It also has another feature that would clearly be of benefit to the NED in that is allows the user to set a different identifier field from the Label, which in this case would stop all duplication as the number is the unique reference NOT the name, which can be registered with several organisations for one animal or you could have several animals with the same name in different registries.

This particular software displays the label (name) but matches on the identity (passport number). It will also find possible matches for an operator to decide if they are the same and manually merge the records. Actually as Gov’t budgets go this is not massively expensive software and would allow the NED to expand its usefulness very quickly, they could also employ me to do it!!!!!!! But then if they already have a contractor then they should be able to set something up along these lines.

Perhaps the NED could provide smaller registries with a blank template on an excel spreadsheet with standard fields, so that in future full data transfer would be less painful for both parties? It just seems that it would then be of much more benefit to breeders and owners.
 
I have foals that I bred that, if you type their names in show up. But they, are in some cases, not listed as offspring of their dams, even though their dams were full recorded at birth.

One is not shown as Prgeny of his sire, despite me emailing about this some time ago and being assured that, now their attention had been drawn to this - and the stallions duplicate recording - all would be sorted. It has not been.

I'm tacking this one email at a time but while I appreciate that minor variations in a name may not throw up anomalies, when the name of the horse, its fully recorded sire and dam, are all there correctly why can't it be correct.
 
The biggest irony of all is that NED which is costing us all money via our taxes is a less reliable and much less informative database than the free www.allbreedpedigree.com or the excellent http://www.sporthorse-data.com/index.htm

Shame on NED that one person with an interest in sports horse pedigrees (the lady behind sporthorse-data) can do an infinitely better job than the salaries people working on NED.

What is even more ironic is that excellent software was already available, it did not need to be written (badly!!) for NED. Grayhound racing has had pedigree tracing software for years. It is ideal to adapt to horse pedigrees. But no, the Government has chosen to waste yet more money on another fiasco, but not spent enough money to get a good programme written or do the job properly and the outcome is a giant mess. I am disappointed but not surprised.

I own 3 horses. According to the irritatingly inflexible software on NED I don't own two of them. So one is entered 3 times. Another is entered 4 times. And there is no way for me to link those entries together. Not that there is much point doing that anyway. The entries are so inaccurate as to be a joke.
 
Magic and Karyn, the duplicate and triplicate entries indicate problems in the way the database is being managed.

I used to run a marketing dept for an American Health Care company. We had an enormous mailing list - people who responded to mailing often wrote their names slight differently e.g. j smith or j p smith sometimes prefixed dr. or sometimes sr.

The computer recognises each one as a different person even if the address is the same. We cleaned our list every month using a post-code sort and deleted duplicate entries.

I don't know what 'quality control' exists for this database. Typos such as Aredis mentions with dob 7007 can be eliminated by asking the clerk to enter TWICE as per pass word.

My two sons could sort this for NED...for a fee!!
 
I can't quite figure out what the NED is matching on. From my limited use it appears to be name and breed.

But if the DB was set up on the back of the few that want to eat horses, then surely the passport unique reference already given to a horse is the unique identifier best used to put them into the DB, then if you just searched on a name say "Trigger" it would bring you back options of Trigger TB, Trigger Welsh Cob etc, but a bit more secure than all breeds! (fed up with changing my TB back to a TB from a W Blood!!).

But then when have IT (apart from the software I use, which is why it’s a world leader in its field) ever listened to the plebe at the end of the mouse!!! But it should not be difficult to sort these problems out especially if NED seeks feedback from users like those expressed here; clearly there are issues for users that need a bit of tweaking to make the system itself better which should have formed part of the initial bid, I would have thought?

So how about it NED a research user group, for those that go beyond looking at their own horse to make the system a better research tool and easier to use?
 
Here's the response from the NED team which will hopefully shed some more light on the situation -

It’s great to see that so many people have taken the trouble to look at NED, but clearly not so great that there continues to be so many data issues for people to contend with.

We really want to work with the whole of the equine industry to make NED as good as it can be so we have set out below some of the reasons for the issues you are experiencing and pose you some further questions at the same time. You can reply direct to NED on any matters by using the big FEEDBACK button at www.nedonline.co.uk on the bottom left of your screen.

NED receives data from nearly 100 organisations of hugely varying size and technical sophistication. Some still only keep paper records -other have little or no computer knowledge, others have systems written many years before NED was conceived. To be quite fair to them, when they were breed societies (before Passport Issuing Organisations, or PIOs, were thought of) and operating in isolation, their processes were absolutely fine, but now we come to combine this data in one big public system the cracks start to appear.

Some of the comments made need to be looked at taking the following into consideration:

1. Every horse could or should have an unique reference number - but they don't. Only horses passported since the Regulation come into force in 2005 have a unique reference (the Unique Equine Life Number or UELN) which applies across different organisations throughout Europe. Until the UELN, names have been the way to identify horses - that is why the competition disciplines required any horse registered with them to have a unique name. The problem is, each of those organisations work(ed) independently too, so a horse can have multiple competition names too! "Dylan 21" in BE might be "Dylan 47" in BSJA and "Alfred the Great" in BD! NED at the moment has a process of not matching passport records with competition records on name alone (because we are cautious about wrong matches, but it does seem increasingly the case that people would like us to do this. It would achieve a greater number of matched BUT some of them, matched on name alone, could end up being incorrect). Is this good enough for you? Let us know.

2. If every horse had the unique reference of their Sire/Dam recorded.
Unfortunately, they may either not have a unique reference, and if they have, it has not been recorded by many Breed Societies. Sadly, quite a few Breed Societies don’t have the resource to collect this data going forward, so unless something changes, pedigree matches are not going to get rapidly better. Only you, the customers, can invite Breed Societies to take a different view. The more unique references we have for Sire and Dam, the more correct and complete pedigrees NED can achieve. Would you like to help us with this?

3. For many part-bred horses, all we have is the name of the sire and dam – which we do our best to match, but if the name is not unique or does not match, there is very little NED can do about it - this impacts the pedigree and progeny, a bit like the point above about competition records not matching with pedigree records. Why do we only have the Sire or Dam name? Because that is all that the PIO has or can give us. The situation is further complicated by the fact that some Breed Societies send us data records of horse that were not passported or originally registered by them, but which are overstamps. This creates a huge numbers of duplicates. So why don't they stop? Simply, because many can't tell which records are passports and which are overstamps – they just don’t know. NED does its best to flag such horses as potential duplicates so you are aware of this when using NED for research. The only way this will change is if the PIOs start to tell us which records are overstamps. You can understand how this has happened, when Breed Society runs its own system in isolation, the information they have has been entered by them and is familiar to them, but when it comes to NED and needs to be integrated with data from 100 other organisations, issues occur. This is why, when you ring your Breed Society and query data on NED, they will tell you that it’s all correct on their system and that the fault lies with NED. Having read this, what do you think?

Many of the comments say in effect "but it is obvious that ...". Often true for the individual animal known by its breeder/owner. However, NED is dealing with 1.3 million data records - we cannot examine or know each one individually. NED is also constrained in that it can only show the data given to it by PIOs, thus if a PIO sends us incorrect or invalid data, we have to refer you back to the PIO to get the data corrected. This was a stipulation of many PIOs before they would supply data to NED, they were not happy to have NED amend any of their data records, so this is why you are experiencing some of your current frustrations. Would you prefer it to be different? Let us know and we may have to look at other ways of improving the data in the system.

The NED team is tiny, just 2.5 full time staff - smaller than most PIOs! We run NED at a fraction of the cost of most Government databases, because we are working in partnership with the Government, trying to make NED a database of use to the equine industry and horse owners and not just Government. We use sophisticated algorithms and techniques to match performance data and pedigree data together - with the limitations imposed above. We are well aware of techniques for de-duplication and use them, but the quality of data is such that NED can only achieve so much, particularly with the historical data. We have agreed data interchange formats with PIOs and have provided template spreadsheets.

We constantly use the feedback received to try and improve the techniques we use and we spend considerable time working with PIOs. We deal with several hundred queries a week from the public, most of which we can only refer back to the originating source of the data - the PIOs. Almost all of the errors you see are a reflection of the way the data supplied to us – which effectively means that NED is the messenger, and we all know what happens to messengers!

With regards to the specific visual design of "User Entered Data" - tabs are a common means of representing data, but clearly the feedback is that the "User Entered" tab is not clear enough - we will see if we can modify the design to improve this. Thank you for the feedback.

We have been discussing in detail the threads posted on this site and are thinking of using web conferencing technology to see if we can set up an online conference to work with those of you who have specific issues with what NED shows. Through this process we can perhaps demonstrate some of the issues we have and how we have already overcome many of them, but also it may be that by understanding your specific case(s) in dialogue, we can further improve the way we present the data. Is this something you would value? Please visit www.nedonline.co.uk, hit FEEDBACK, and let us know.
 
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