Smaller stallions and/or smaller foals?

[Heidilady]

First of all, I wanted to have an idea of which currently standing stallions are on the smaller side. It's hard to just search via height on the Stallion Register, esp. since not every farm lists the info. Even then I'm not convinced they don't fudge it the way a vain guy says he's 6' and he's really 5'10 1/2" or 5'11." Some people seem to often think a big stallion is better, but tell that to Northern Dancer. Anywho, about why I asked...

After hearing Zenyatta was in foal to War Front, it reminded me to see what was up with Rachel's recovery and whether there was any new info. I was reading a piece written around Preakness time (RA was apparently running around like she was in training for the Belmont they said, trying to bite Barbara instead of being sweet like she was during recovery). Anyway, they are at some point going to give her a reproductive exam to see how things are down there, and even then it doesn't guarantee she'll be rebred because it makes Barbara nervous to worry about Rachel.

Basically, if they try to breed RA, I assume Stonestreet will research stallions thoroughly to try to get her foal size down unless it's just something her body's going to do regardless. Not every stallion has height listed in the Stallion Register and even if they're average, sometimes they're known for not throwing the world's biggest offspring. Are there options at the quality of stallion they'd want to use that would get a smaller foal? Is RA just going to have big babies?

[Joltman]

I think if a horse is 15 and change he'll be 'rounded up to 16hh' - or maybe measure with very thick shoes... I think anything less than 16hh is like a kiss of death to a good number of buyers, and ND shows how stupid that thinking is. I think that 17hh and above is definitely a downer for many as people worry about their mares and the foal size. It would be interesting if the data mined in the soundness studies was correlated to size.

just one opinion.

jm

[Tappiano]

I don't see how the full grown height of a stallion of the same breed is going to impact the size of a developing fetus. There are so many environmental factors that it would probably be next to impossible to say whether breeding Rachel to a smaller sized stallion like War Front (who I think is 15.2 and a half) would make any difference. I do think it's interesting that both of her foals were on the low end 320-360 gestational range and were big.

[CherryDavis]

My experience is that the size of the stud def plays a huge role in the size of the resulting foal. I've had several 15.0 - 15.2h mares, all maidens, that have had the largest foals on the property when bred to 16.3 or larger stallions. On the flip side I have now had 2 16.3 hand mares bred to 16.0 - 16.1 stallions have the smallest foals on the property. I owned all of them from conception - foaling, had them on my property, cared for by me, eating the same food, same hay, and same fields. Only difference was size of stallion. The largest one this year is a filly that at 3 months is just shy of 13h.

[diomed]

I know cattle are different animals but in the Dairy Industry, they have the "calving ease" monitored for every bull. You can lose a cow during calving if the calf is too big, especially with 1st calf heifers. Do they even monitor a studs foal size in any breed of horse? Just curious is all.

[Tappiano]

My experience is that the size of the stud def plays a huge role in the size of the resulting foal. I've had several 15.0 - 15.2h mares, all maidens, that have had the largest foals on the property when bred to 16.3 or larger stallions. On the flip side I have now had 2 16.3 hand mares bred to 16.0 - 16.1 stallions have the smallest foals on the property. I owned all of them from conception - foaling, had them on my property, cared for by me, eating the same food, same hay, and same fields. Only difference was size of stallion. The largest one this year is a filly that at 3 months is just shy of 13h.

Were the first foals by the larger stallion? My mares second foal, by a 16 hand stallion was at least 15 pounds heavier and much more robust and taller than the one sired by a 16.2 one which was her first. My mare is 16.2 and her filly was 135 pounds.

[CherryDavis]

All of them were first foals and all within 6 days of gestation of each other.

It would be interesting to study like diomed said they do in cattle. I interned for a practice years ago that did cattle. We had one client that despite the fact that we told them repeatedly not to breed the bull they had to their herd because the heifers were too small, they continued to do so. My year we lost at least 5 at that farm calving and I know in years prior it was worse than that.

[diomed]

We raised our own heifers and my dad bred them all to bulls that were ranked high in calving ease. The cows were a different story. They were bred to high milk producers. We never lost a 1st calf heifer because of the calving ease rankings from the studies done with the bulls.

It amazes me how behind the times the TB industry is in the breeding game compared to other domestic farm animals. Cattle have genetic tests done where they can determine if they will be good producers or not. It's crazy.

Yet, TBs you cannot AI nor ET(which would be great for a mare like Rachel Alexandra).

Personally, I just don't get it.

[Pan Zareta]

We raised our own heifers and my dad bred them all to bulls that were ranked high in calving ease. The cows were a different story. They were bred to high milk producers. We never lost a 1st calf heifer because of the calving ease rankings from the studies done with the bulls.

It amazes me how behind the times the TB industry is in the breeding game compared to other domestic farm animals. Cattle have genetic tests done where they can determine if they will be good producers or not. It's crazy.

Yet, TBs you cannot AI nor ET(which would be great for a mare like Rachel Alexandra).

Personally, I just don't get it.

Any exceptions to the live cover rule would effectively hand control of the breed over from the registries to the judicial systems, just like it did with the QH.

I wouldn't say that the TB industry is behind the times in regard to genetically identifying potential good producers from the standpoint of track performance. There may not be quite the same level of interest in genetically defining good producers from the standpoint of easy foaling. The TB industry is less economically dependent upon unsupervised foalings than the cattle industry on unsupervised calvings. However, I see no reason why the same technology could not eventually be applied to optimizing TB production from both standpoints.

And speaking from practical experience, even with bulls meticulously optimized for their herds one is still at the mercy of the environment. Years that deviate by a wide margin from the expected avg. temperature, rainfall, forage growth, etc. will affect the rate of loss and/or assistance with calving.