Potency Primer

Key Elements for Potency Building

Pedigree- our window into the genetics. 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.

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.

Their are many great resources out there for you to access; for instance, you can go to Sporthorse-Data and not only research stallions standing in your area, but actually build a test mating with your mare 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

Pedigree Structure Indicates Potential. Very few pedigrees are equally good for a filly or a colt. There are general rules about what makes a pedigree good, such as having full or 3/4 siblings is an excellent way to upgrade your horses, being almost a guarantee of outstanding performance. And having sex balanced line-breeding unlocks the full potential of a target ancestor. The extensive research that has been done in the Thoroughbred Industry has turned up some interesting statistics. For it seems, depending on the sex of the ancestor that is duplicated and sex balanced the result will be better for either fillies or colts.

Through studying thousands of pedigrees the researchers were able to identify pedigree patterns that were consistently present in the best performance horses and the best breeding stock. They established that the better fillies and colts have pedigree patterns that differ from each other.

The following is an outline of what they discovered: The statistics show, that good performance fillies or mares have multiple lines of daughters of a superior sire and/or both sons and daughters of an exceptional mare. These are called filly factors.

Better performance colts and stallions have the opposite: multiple lines of sons of a target mare, and/or sons and daughters of a superior sire. These are called colt factors.

Things get more complicated with breeding stock. For producing excellent broodmares a pedigree goal would be to include the filly factors mentioned above along with some colt factors. The colt factors are seldom a problem, usually being there already, often too many of them. It is harder to get multiple lines of a mare because mares produce far fewer offspring than stallions. It is a very unusual mare that has more filly factors than colt factors, but ideally that is what you want to create for a good broodmare. The best mares have a high number of filly factors, plus a slightly lower percent of colt factors.

Good stallions have the colt factors above but also carry a significant and strong filly factor(s). Your breeding stock - male or female, will benefit from the presence of strong filly factors.

No breeding is equally good for both sexes, so plan your matings accordingly.

The key eventing sire Water Serpent is a fine example of filly factors in a stallion- Water Serpent pedigree

Potency equals 'Critical Mass". The Thoroughbred experts have coined a phrase 'critical mass' to describe the state when pre-potency for sport success reaches a level and consistency that winners are produced on a regular basis.

"There can be no doubt that careful balanced inbreeding and linebreeding to superior strains (especially those that reflect the background strength of the pedigree) will maximize the likelihood of producing a superior performer." ('Patterns of Greatness II' by Porter & Peters).

Many of our sport horses, not being pure-bred like Thoroughbreds, make this goal appear as if it is very difficult. If you approach your sport breeding aims with the idea of building up special bloodlines rather than focusing on the 'breed', I believe you will find it an easier task.

Depending on the quality of your starting breeding stock, if you carefully select their mates, it can take anywhere from 1 to 3 generations to reach the "critical mass" point. It is important to take the time, and possibly an extra generation if needed, to build up the genetic power in the far reaches as well as a focal concentration closer up. Even the master Tesio took 2 or 3 generations to develop his winners. The surest way to see what constitutes critical mass or that genetic tipping point where the quanity and quality of superior sport genes start producing winners is to look at the lineage of individuals that demonstrated the ability to deliver many good horses.

Perhaps the ultimate in critical mass is Tesio's own masterpiece Nearco- a bloodline that remade the modern Thoroughbred and is a key source of impulsion, graceful movement and athletic prowess in our modern sport horses. Check out the lineage of any successful sport performer of today, you will find him not only in the eventers and show jumpers, but his ability to deliver lovely fluid movement finds him behind the dressage greats also (Nearco pedigreee).

Nearco's potency was created by a genetic concentration of multiples of St. Simon, his 1/2 sisters Rattlewings and Atalanta and his full sister Angelica. The power from the full siblings plus the complexity of the other lines of St. Simon create a super mass of racing talent. Just as significant is a 4x5 presence of the Carbine/Quiver lines Tesio targeted because they descended from Brown Bess, his favorite source of impulsion. Nearco's damline goes straight back to Lexington (American Running Horse- precursor to American Tb) and holder of the world distance record at 4 miles.

Here is another example- Flugeladjudant is a Hanoverian sire of the past who will also be a good subject for our study. He not only sired many sport winners, but he also sired 2 stallions sons who established lasting pre-potent performance lines. His son Wohler is the head of a dressage dynasty and his son Florestian II started a very good family of jumpers. I think it is fair then to say that Flugeladjudant had reached that tipping point of genetic power. His pedigree should be an illustration of critical mass.

Flugeladjudant's lineage, while possessing many great duplications of good genetic transmitters is clearly dominated by inbreeding 2x3 of the full siblings Alonia/Alkoven. Alonia and Alkoven are themselves 3x4 to full sisters. This powerful configuration is further intensified by the sire Alderman and grandsire Alnok having additional lines with other individuals. You will see a similar concentration in the sire line where the line founder Fling is 2x3 to sisters, the daughters of King.

Let's take a look at another. Landgraf I is a more recent example of a producer of multiple champions. In fact, he is still rated #1 in progeny earnings, and he was the most important sire of jumping horses in the world. Landgraf is interesting also because he is a cross-breed (pedigree). He is by a Thoroughbred sire out of a Holstein dam. This should make breeders take notice, that Landgraf, a contender for the most pre-potent warmblood sire of all time, is in fact a Thoroughbred cross (Hunter-bred). His sire Ladykiller is 3x3 to the 3/4 brothers Fairway and Colorado (Phalaris line). His dam, the Holstein Warthburg, is 3x3 through her dam to the 3/4 brother and sister Oina and Loretto. So Landgraf is out of two inbred parents- we have seen this pattern before in some very good producers. In Landgraf there is a background reinforcement for both of the pairs of 3/4 siblings. And there is also some far back duplications that cross and connect the pedigree halves (Dark Ronald and Isinglass) -so this is not a total outcross. Studying the pedigrees of the most successful horses of the past is the best way for us to determine what really works.

We can see from these historic super sires that full and 3/4 siblings play an important role in potency building. Even in a cross-bred individual we can see that concentrating the bloodlines in the individual seperate breeds, is something that works very well. The reinforced Thoroughbred lines clearly being as important in Landgraf as the Holstein contribution. This should tell us not to be afraid to build up the good Thoroughbred lines in our sport horses (see Thoroughbred).

All three of these examples are 'stacked' genetic decks, able to significantly upgrade their descendants for generations, and an illustration for us of what works in breeding design.

Repeat the Breeding. Once you have constructed what you believe is the best possible genetic combination for your sport horse foal, the experts advise that you repeat the breeding, at least once. Even Tesio did this, and the science of genetics backs this advice up.

Bowling said, "The random assortment of chromosome pairs during gamete formation means we can not predict the exact proportion of genes that any two siblings have in common."

Each of the genes can divide and combine in many variations and your first, or even second mating may not get the most beneficial shuffle of the genetic deck. If you are planning your matings correctly, even the lesser of the foals should be a very good horse, but the variation possible doesn't insure that he first foal will be the best of the bunch, so repeat the breeding, at least once.

Now for an example of the variation possible in full siblings look at Man O' War and his Four Full Siblings.

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