Stallion nicks-thumbs up or down?

[pokeyman]

I have always paid little attention to Nicks based on the sire and broodmare sire. I figure these nicks do not take into account linebreeding or tail female lines.

I looked on one nick site and they write: "37% of all stakes winners rate as A nicks". It sounded good until I sat back and thought,...well, doesn't that mean that 63% of the stakes winners are not A nicks??

I tend to use:

Sire/Production Records

Female families

Linebreeding

Phenotype (conformation and race records)

The last thing I might look at would be a nick rating. I am trying to be open minded but I just can't seem to get my head around the nick rating value.

Your thoughts......

[Roger]

In my opinion, some stallions work really well with some mares and I feel that they work so well together because of they compliment each other and because they are homozygous (sp) for traits. You can stretch it to sire lines crossing well, but it is a stretch. Just look at full brothers being bred to mares with the same broodmare sire.

[griff]

just one of the many tools in the tool box.

griff

[brogers]

I have always paid little attention to Nicks based on the sire and broodmare sire. I figure these nicks do not take into account linebreeding or tail female lines.

I looked on one nick site and they write: "37% of all stakes winners rate as A nicks". It sounded good until I sat back and thought,...well, doesn't that mean that 63% of the stakes winners are not A nicks??

I tend to use:

Sire/Production Records

Female families

Linebreeding

Phenotype (conformation and race records)

The last thing I might look at would be a nick rating. I am trying to be open minded but I just can't seem to get my head around the nick rating value.

Your thoughts......

Pokeyman,

As griff said, Nick ratings are one thing to consider in a number of other factors. Paper doesn't run very fast, but the pedigree does play a part in racetrack success. The only other thing to consider is that when we developed TrueNicks we tested it against 100,000 horses. As far as I am aware no other theory (inbreeding to superior females, importance of the tail female line) has undertaken such scrutiny. It may make you feel good to use these other theories but I havent seen any data to support them to say that they outperform the norm.

[pokeyman]

Brogers, I agree that it is just one more tool. However, too many people seem to use one breeding theory-exclusively- which I just don't understand.

I still don't put a lot of stock in nicks but that's just me. Nevertheless, even Tesio did believe in certain "nicks".

I wonder if nicks worked better back then because they had a limited pool of horses and nicks were more conformation based. So, they could say that this particular line sired horses with this one fault but this other line corrected it? I guess we will never know....

[aardvark]

Here is the thing about nicks that is clear to me. They are popular like it or not. As a breeder your hope is to get your progeny in the best hands to train and race that horse. If having an "A nick" equates to a higher price, being purchased by better barns, then it seems that higher rated nicks would outperform the norm because they are in the best places to succeed.

I am more interested in "A nick" value in terms of sales price than number of stakes winners. It would be great to see average sales price broken down by nick rating.

[Roger]

Does anyone know which current nick has produced the most grade one winners say in the last five years?

[JCBloodstock]

Does anyone know which current nick has produced the most grade one winners say in the last five years?

Roger off the top of my head I don't know this one but I would have to say to get the answer you would want to look at the leading sires of the last 5 years to get the answer.Storm Cat,A.P.Indy as well as Giant's Causeway is starting to get some patterns going as well as Tiznow on Storm Cat and Hennessey daughters.

As far as just basing a breeding on a nick I've always analyzed beyond it.It's a starting point only,other factors need to be and should be considered.The reality to a nick is it was never a nick until it was tried and produced a Stakes Winner,if it had not produced a Stakes Winner it would not be a nick but the sad part is there are many so called nicks out there that have been based on only one foal.

That's why you should always dig deeper.

I had a client a few years back that wanted a stallion analysis done on his horse.This horse was just a regional sire but he had 5 crops on the ground and some patterns could be established.He had 40 some winners on the ground at the time but only 1 Stakes winner,seems like he had 4 or 5 stakes placed at the time.His 2 leading money earners were out of mares by sons of Nijinsky II but he also had some honest allowance horses by mares that were sired by sons of Northern Dancer,Seattle Slew and Damascus.

Now the logical choice at first impression would be Nijinsky II and Northern Dancer line mares but I go beyond that.

His one SW was from a mare from Tail Female Family 18b (he has now sired 3 stakes winners from this female family(Broodmare sires were Sevatopol,Rare Brick and Show Dancer);The biggest thing that jumped out at me was mares from tail female families 9f and 14f(14 of 19 $50,000 plus earners were from these 2 female families - everyone by different sires and of 15 foals only one had earned less than $50,000 but was also a winner);

Needless to say,I've bought him mares based on 3 female families for very modest prices that are producing honest,bill paying racehorses for him and keeping him above water in a regional program.

I could have just made my analysis simple and said well it's obvious,you want Nijinsky II,Northern Dancer line mares because that is the nick but then again he may not still be a client based on only that information.

Sincerely - Jeff

[brogers]

As far as just basing a breeding on a nick I've always analyzed beyond it.It's a starting point only,other factors need to be and should be considered.The reality to a nick is it was never a nick until it was tried and produced a Stakes Winner,if it had not produced a Stakes Winner it would not be a nick but the sad part is there are many so called nicks out there that have been based on only one foal.

One of the key rules that we created when establishing TrueNicks was that for any rating to be calculated, there had to be two stakes winners and they had to be out of unique mares. So you will never see a rating created, published or promoted where the rating generated came from just one mare or one stakes winner bred on the cross. I know Werk produces ratings based on one mare producing two stakes winners bred by the same sire and also based on only one stakes winner bred on the cross but we think that is an intellectually bankrupt process and not a true reflection of what is happening.