Posted by Adrian on April 06, 2003 at 16:03:53:
In Reply to: Re: breeding with navicular? posted by Ray Miller on March 29, 2003 at 08:31:28:
: Agree with Rick on his answer. Excellent sound judgement.
: I have seen over the years to many mares that were bred just for the sake of breeding and having a foal running around. Someone wanting a carbon copy of the mare or stud, which never happens that they own.
: A good book for all to start with is Dr. Nancy Lovings' "Performance and Conformation". It is easy to read and understand. The pictures are excellent.
: After reading and keeping this book around, you will then start to understand, what conformation is all about. Then I would read Dr. Marvins Beemans' papers on "Form to Function" and finish up with Dr. H. Clayton and Dr. Back book "Equine Locomotion". After reading this you have laid the foundation to start to learn about conformation of the horse.
: Just my thinking.
: Ray Miller
Also I think it depends on what you are going to do with the foal-- is the future he/she for you to keep forever? Or are you selling? If you are selling, you need to be extremely particular as the horse market is pretty saturated. Have you researched your mare's pedigree/bloodlines as well as the stallion you like? A painstaking process, but really good is to do a picture pedigree of your mare and Mr. Hopefull. It took me two months to find as many photos as I could-- did I see traits that ended up through the lines?
I bred my mare two years ago (before she was having problems) and have a lovely 2 y.o. gelding-- who's conformation is much more like the stallion's. My girl is pretty up-right in the pasterns, the stallion was a hair long in the pasterns, and so is my colt.
Don't think I would breed to a young unproven stallion-- you need to see pictures of his offspring and as a bonus, the mares they came from (tho this can be tough to find). The stallion I bred to "stamped" his foals-- they all were pretty uniform in appearnce, type and movement. That said, my guy did not get the nice neck-set my mare or stallion has. Breeding is always a card-shuffle-- and it might be better to "buy instead of bake"-- stallion owners often have foals on the farm or can hook you up with foals by their boy that are for sale.
Just my $.02 as I am contemplating breeding again, but will x-ray my guy at 2.5 and see what the pictures look like. If I see changes, my girl's out of the breeding shed.