Potency Primer

How to Build Sport Prepotency into your Horses

Our aim as breeders of sport horses is to consistently produce horses that excel at Olympic type sport and can pass it on. Based on the statistically proven successful breeding practices, this is a potency primer to help you create horses that can pass on their sport excellence.

Ken McLean defined prepotency this way: "A prepotent stallion or mare is one which can be matched with a variety of different strains and yet consistently produce quality athletes. Prepotent stallions possess genotypes (genetic constitution) which are transmitted via dominant genes; thus their progeny resemble each other in appearance (phenotype). Simply put, they dominate other strains and their physical features are visible in their progeny."

As in any other worthwhile pursuit, in sport horse breeding, Knowledge is Power. For sport horse breeders understanding your breeding stocks genetics is paramount to your success.

Bowling said: "We use pedigrees to help us understand what genes a horse may have..."

Your horse's pedigree is the chart of its genetics. If you understand your horse's genetics you will be able to build in prepotency to your herd.

How do you get started? Before you do anything else you need to examine your horse's pedigree. To do that you need to have a reliable copy of it. Many horse owners only have what is provided by their registry. Some only have the sire and dam identified, while others may only have a partial pedigree.

To truly understand your horse's genetics you need to see more. Understanding Pedigrees

You can order a five generation pedigree from some registries, for others you may be on your own to research your horse's lineage.

But don't despair! Their are many great resources out there; for instance, you can go to All Breed Database and not only research a pedigree, but actually build one on their site. This is a wonderful service.

Remember to check your information, no matter the source; many pedigrees are inaccurate for various reasons. When your pedigree is inaccurate, then of course, the breeding decisions you base on its information will be less reliable also. Some pedigrees will be incomplete just because the information is not available.

Once you have assembled as much of your pedigree as you can, then I strongly recommend you read the articles on this site before you get started. With your pedigree in hand as you peruse the articles, you will find that you will retain more of the information. Don't worry if you don't understand all of it right away- it is a learning process. The results in your breeding program will be well worth the efforts you put in to understand your breeding stock's genetics.

Get clear with yourself about what exactly you want to breed: your breeding goals. Understanding what you are aiming at will help you when choosing a mate to concentrate on the specific sport lines that carry your goals.

Research the significant ancestors in your horse's background to identify the strengths you already possess- you don't want to waste the good sport lines you might already carry. Look closely at the 3rd to 6th generations, what the experts call the engine room to find good linebreeding targets for your program.

Check to see what sibling relationships you have, and for the sex balancing of duplications. If you already have multiples of a significant ancestor, but in male lines only (this is very common) then you should strive to find the female complement in a mate. This common all male occurence doesn't harm your horse, but it does choke the transmission of the abilities, so what comes through to your horse will be less than you desire. Sex balance those lines to get All the power.

Asher- Sex Balanced Abiza Inbreeding

Don't get overwhelmed by the complexity of the breeding principles. Concentrate first on basics, such as just duplicating important sport transmitters, and sex balancing those duplications. If you do just that, Clive Harper stated that you will improve the resulting foal. The statistics back this up (read the Thoroughbred Breeders Handbook for complete report on the statistically proven successful breeding practices.)

Look for the mates that will improve your horse's genetics. Here is a hypothetical situation: Imagine you are a dressage enthusiast and have a young mare that you bred out of a Thoroughbred mare by a Hanoverian stallion- Weltmeyer line. You would like to see even more great movement in your next generation. Here are two ways to accomplish this. 1. breed the young mare to a stallion who carries a Weltmeyer daughter in the 3rd generation or beyond. 2. Breed that same mare to a stallion who carries a daughter of any of the World Cups (there are five and they are full brothers), this would give you a genetic sister to Weltmeyer. There are other ways to achieve the sex balance, but these two would do the trick.

Don't rush: take time to mull over different mating possibilites. The great Tesio carried around a split pedigree book with him, so he could reflect on different genetic combinations. On the bottom half of this book were the pedigrees of his broodmares, on the top half were pedigrees of stallions he was considering for breeding. The two halves moved independently of each other. So he was able to open the page to one of his mares, then flip through the various stallions he was considering until he found a match he really thought would produce what he wanted. Tesio took his time, and we should too. Horse breeding is too expensive and time consuming to not carefully consider our breeding decisions.

Note: If you prefer someone else print up,compile and give a quick overview of the test matings for you, see our new service The Quickie

Prepotency can be achieved in many different ways and in varying strengths. To get an idea of the range possible in pedigree patterns illustrating pre-potence see Sport Stallion Examples of Potent Pedigree Patterns

Also take a look at An Early American Pre-Potent Sport Sire- Gordon Russell
And a German Pillar of Prepotency- Loretto
An example of prepotency created by inbreeding to a top sire.
An example of prepotency in an outcross mating

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