The breeding world has gone mad

[henthorn]

Thanks for clearing that up. I was wondering when someone would wander in with the fact that a sperm is a whole cell. I just didn't know much at all about A. I., so I stayed out of the discussion. Your facts sound about right, since in human terms, the numbers are about the same.

[griff]

I have no problem with people who do not wish to use AI, and if AI is ever approved I'd hope these people would not be forced to use AI.

On the other hand I wonder why people that do not like AI, and who would not be forced to use AI, are so concerned that others would be allowed to use AI. If the nay sayers are correct and AI results in either a slow or fast degredation of hoese comong from AI use, the non AI horses would eventually become superior to the AI horses and the anti AI people would have the pleasure of telling us "I told you so"

Adam Smith and the free interprise system really does work when it's given a chance.

Once again, no one would be forced to use AI if it is ever approved.

griff

[ahorseofcourse]

Actually, the reason why AI was never approved in TBs was to prevent so few sires with so many babies overflowing the market. With AI, stallions can produce hundreds, maybe thousands of foals per season. With live cover only, a sire can breed about 100 mares per season(in the case of FuPeg, they are seriously pushing his limits), so owners with good mares must look elsewhere. Since TB racing is so dependent on money, money, money, fast, fast, fast, there would be very few stallions that are making lots of foals(and money), and there would be severe inbreeding(at least, more so than today), since so many horses would be descended from a few stallions.

[siegy]

ya know griff i will be honest here ....if i should be so lucky to have a stallion that could get say 50k-100k per season yes greed would take over, but sooner or later you cook the golden goose....300 covers a year is just plain greedy & sick.

[img]hi reencj,

not only that, but as anne peters told last month it was addmittedthat theimportant transfer goes through the mares geneticc compesition,
so i, hope we here more on tyhat subject and you or anybody would post, i,'am intersted since i,only bring numbers forward through the transfer-mares, dated from 1695 through 1809 72 mares in all,and will keep them from now on, as a principal source.
please asked again on your ?, if not received,

regard's Siegy
p.s. still trying to navigate, this forum........ ouch...[/img]

[summerhorse]

I seriously doubt the Ai techniques in 1920 are comparble to the AI techniques used today! I suspect they've improved a bit. The reason AI was banned was to keep stallion books low and stud fees high (at the top of course, the bottom feeders are left to fend for themselves). Now obviously that is NO LONGER working... Stud fees are still out of sight but the books are too. As far as nervous energy? What exactly does he mean by that? Of the stallion? I think working a couple times a week and getting 200 mares in foal would be far less taxing on the stallion than jumping mares 3 or 4 times a day and night for months on end. JMO though...

[summerhorse]

I don't know of any breed (or any way they could enforce it) that REQUIRES AI be used. It is used by most everyone because it is a better technique.

[louis finochio]

AI is not allowed in the TB industry. That doesnt mean that the cheaters will abide by the rules.

[TrueColours]

Actually Shannon - you are incorrect in your stats:

That's 1.6 mares/day.

THOSE stats would be correct if all it took was one cover for each mare which I hardly think is likely when breeding 346 mares ...

What do you figure??? Maybe 30% require 2 covers? Another 10% require 3 covers?? And another 10% 4 covers or more???

Im no mathmatician, but what does that give us instead? Something like 520 covers per season which equates to what - about 2.5 mares per day instead.

Busy busy boy ...

[monicabee]

I think by focusing on the stallion side of AI this discussion might be missing something significant.

I met a quarterhorse breeder at the Saratoga Sales who was thinking about getting into thoroughbreds. He was breeding performance horses, but said that the market had dropped substantially with AI and transplants. Previously, the bottleneck in producing topnotch horses was the availability of top mares, not the stallions to cover them. With embryo transplants, however, you could dramatically increase the genetic impact of a top producing mare by farming out her embryos to surrogate mares.

In the short term the benefits of this are obvious. As a small scale breeder, though, he said meant that people could order an embryo, have it fed-exed, have their vet plant it in their ordinary mare, and have a topnotch baby. So the bottom had gone out of the market for breeders like him.

One of the ways the top breeders have maintained a grip on the best bloodlines is through their mares. Imagine if you could just go through the back of Bloodhorse and buy a Toussaud embryo.

[StrawberryFelidos]

*Imagine if you could just go through the back of Bloodhorse and buy a Toussaud embryo.*

THAT would be awesome Grow your own little Empire Maker in old Nellie, heh ha... Oh, God, but then everyone'd have one, like those ugly metallic orange cars (insert barfing emoticon here).
Interesting that females are ultimately playing an important role in this "bottleneck", with the way studs are represented as all-important, you almost forget that the female has significance in this equation

[summerhorse]

I don't really see how this guy's argument holds water. Good horses will always sell better than bad ones. The mare owner would just be making more money (versus the stallion owners making most of the money). mares cannot superovulate so even if you had a great mare that produced oh 6 live embryos those embryos would be REALLY expensive but the foals would be much better quality than he would have gotten had he been using the inferior mares that breeders often use now (because there are only so many mares).

It doesn't really matter if he has 100 mares and sells foals from them (by the same stallion we'll say) to 100 owners. The sport horse world doesn't use up horses the same way racing does. People buy a horse and tend to KEEP it for years for riding or show. They have no need to keep buying a horse EVERY year. (they might if they are small breeders). If they are buying for themselves they might buy a new horse every few years and they also buy a lot of broke horses. The only difference between buying an embryo (I would think that freezing a horse embryo would seriously decrease the chances for a live foal) and a baby would be he'd save a year and a half of feeding the mare and then the m/f. And instead of needing 100 mares he might need only 20-30 GREAT mares. (a lot of "approved" sporthorses have legs I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole)

For TBs it is totally different. Breeders and racers are contantly buying and selling and getting new stock in for replacements or to chase triple crown dreams. ET would only be done with the better mares because it is expensive but it would certainly help remove some of the bad mares from the gene pool as they could become surrogates instead.

[teb]

Summerhorse,
Not sure what "approved" sporthorses your talking about, but with the KWPN you have 7 years of testing before you are a certified stallion. The German books are much the same. Crooked horses don't make it and bad preformers get scrapped as well. I breed to Warmbloods with one of my TB mares and generally know what's coming out won't be crooked as I start with a good mare.

[griff]

Someone made the comment that the QH market had dropped because of AI & transplants. I guess it follows that the TB market has remained strong because we have been protected from the influience of AI & tranplants.

[summerhorse]

I don't know enough about the QH market to make wide spread generalizations about its economics but I don't think it really has dropped that much not from here in QH country. I think there are just too darn many mediocre QHs. They never had huge fees to begin with. The TB market has remained high because it is populated by very very rich people at the top very few of which do much QH breeding I suspect. Or standardbred either!

I'm sure the WB stallions probably have it much tougher but a lot of the mares I've seen frankly would be good surrogates. I went to a friend's house once and she was bursting with pride because her Hanoverian mare had just been approved. She had the worst pigeon toes I've ever seen, I mean text book all the way from the elbows down. I was shocked such a horse would be approved to breed ANYthing. she was pretty otherwise but good grief, why would anyone breed another like her?

[WILLY from NZ]

Someone made the comment that the QH market had dropped because of AI & transplants. I guess it follows that the TB market has remained strong because we have been protected from the influience of AI & tranplants.

I've just been told of this discussion regarding the high usage rates of socalled natural cover and having read this thread can no doubt confirm that most of you are right on the knocker.

They're doing it allright. No doubt.

The big stud conglomerates are on one hand hellbent to maintain this unlawfull ban on AI, which is a restraint of trade, but on the other hand greed has them abusing their stallions while definitely 'skirting' the rules in relation to AI.

GRIFF...I've read your contributions and they are entirely correct.

I live in NZ which is geographically limited as to access to international stallions by the requirement of natural cover and have studied this subject from not only a local impact perspective but also in respect of the unlawfull cartel agreement that each country has signed with the ISBC [INTERNATIONAL STUD BOOK COMMITTEE].

This entire ban is a nonsense. It is most definitely unlawfull regardless of our views on it....most of which are quite frankly unfounded and ill advised.

I've been lobbying here in NZ to bring about a change to our breeding options and know full well that it will be a dirty legal fight once initiated because at first it has to be won in the local HIGH COURT which should be easy.....but then also against the ISBC who are the holders of the cartel agreement.

It is a question of who should dismantle them at that point.

Should it be the Government of the country that has given court approval of AI or should the WTO become involved.

Any which way....the Thoroughbred industry is operating in the dark ages in respect of its breeding. Most of the arguments against it are myths and the only reason for maintaining this archaic situation is because the fat cats want to get fatter which they WILL do under a supply controlled market.

The THOROUGHBRED is the only registered horse breed that does not allow AI. The rest of the advanced agricultural world is 50 years ahead of us.

We are a joke.