Repeat the Breeding Why should we 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 the first foal will be the best of the bunch, so repeat the breeding, at least once.
If you doubt the variation possible you only have to look at your family, and ask yourself how alike full brothers and sisters are. Of course, people are much looser bred than horses. A sport horse breeder purposely tries to concentrate the good sport genes in order to consistently produce sport ability. Therefore the variation should be much less then what we commonly find in humans. That is why we try to target superior ancestors and increase their genetic input. So, once you have carefully constructed a mating of what you believe will give you that talented pre-potent sport horse- then repeat the breeding. I am going to provide you with several examples of this phenomenon. Before you read the examples, keep in mind that a full sibling of a great horse can, even if they themselves never reach close to "great" status, they can be a resource for your linebreeding exercises. Sometimes the addition of one of these not so important full siblings can make a huge difference in a sire's lasting success. For instance, we mentioned on the
Pedigree Study page.
in War Admiral the presence of Harry of Hereford, the rare full brother to Swynford, was a factor in what made War Admiral a key bloodline. Now take a look at one or more of these examples:
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