Breeding Pattern - MP female fam

[Joltman]

I was looking at some pedigrees of daughters of Gold Digger and noted both
Lillian Russell and Lillian Gold. From what I see, the breeders did not breed either any of the females to the sire line of Northern Dancer. Given the purported affinities for MP-ND it seems strange to me that only 1 (Katowice - by Danzig, who was unraced by a decent regional sire in Wash.) I could find that had ND sire line. This was an Appleton bloodline so I don't know what that might have had to do with it if the mares were limited to Fla in the 70s and 80s. Even in subsequent generations of daughters, only a few have much ND at all.

So, 2 Qs.

1. Any idea why what was done was done? (to rather awful results I might add)
2. Make any sense breeding to a family with Gold Digger 5 generations back"?

thx

jm

[xfactor fan]

In your research into this family, have you taken a look at conformation of the horses, both the winners and non-winners.

The major thing your are tracing with a female family is the type/strain of mtDNA. And as the research comes in it looks like the mtDNA has great influence on what kind of distance a race horse can get.

Is there any specific conformation that the winners have? In short, what physical type works best with the family mtDNA?

[Joltman]

any ideas where one can get conformational info? Most of the runners (weren't many) are not running now.

jm

[xfactor fan]

You might try the sporthorse database. They are a pretty good TB library. Then of course this db, and the allbreed one.
You might also look at horsed descended from Sequence (dam of Gold digger)

As a start you might want to look at Mr Prospecter and his siblings. There may be some standard conformation photos out there. Figure out where they stood and see if there are any ads from the farms. Lots of research, and you might want to ask for help.

Good luck

[xfactor fan]

http://www.pedigreequery.com/best+hope2
Best Hope

http://www.sporthorse-data.com/d?showpi ... 1203846363
Mr Prospector

Both horses will have the same mtDNA

[Tappiano]

Maybe because the breeding that produced Yukon was not worth repeating?

Speaking of Gold Digger, pedigree query shows "Gold Digger Kanye West" at the top of her page if you pull up her pedigree

[Joltman]

good point re Yukon. But one nominal stud does not a trend make. MP was unraced at 2, hardly a world beater as a runner, save for sheer speed.

This link has a few highlights of Yukon's stud career. His first year was great, led by Candi's Gold, but he didn't get much of a following thereafter I don't think.

http://www.winfieldstud.com/studfarm/st ... itus3.html

I wonder if Yukon might be an interesting wild card in pedigrees on the female side bringing both MP and ND in the same package.

jm

[Tappiano]

That was their marketing angle on him and why he got a shot at stud. I believe he started at Spendthrift who had other ND standout (sarcasm) Nordic Legend (out of arc winner Detroit). Night Shift was probably the best of the ND bunch they had but I think when I visited in 1991 he was already gone because I would have taken a picture of him and I don't have one of him.

[Joltman]

thanks Tap

It's interesting how sometimes horses have a pedigree to die for but just don't produce much. You never know though when things line up and come together maybe a generation or two later with some inbreeding.

jm

[Tappiano]

It's even more amazing how bad some full brothers are. If you put Unbridled next to his brother they could not be more different which could explain why one was successful and the other much less so. One clearly received the build from Le Fabuleux while the other did not.

[Joltman]

Clearly part of the genetic heritage is the 'build' related to conformation and other dynamic qualities. Those who have the eye trained can see it.

Sometimes there maybe be other factors that differentiate that are less readily visible like airflow capacity and heart size. Attitude as well.

Yet as mentioned above mitochondrial dna is passed on to all (good and bad) from the dam. So to the degree that is a determining factor you would think that even lesser siblings could still pass on something to a pedigree of value.

Just for yucks it would be interesting to see if horses inbred to the 'failures' if the good stuff might yet be passed on. Can something from Le Fabuleux still show up in subsequent generations even though they were not manifest in the build of Cahill Road? Would inbreeding to certain horses raise the possibility of this? On the other hand a quick review of Cahill Road's get shows that his best son was an outcross. Cahill Road was a pretty promising racehorse before his injury.

jm

[Tappiano]

Cahill Road looked like a draft horse when I saw him at Gainesway, his paddock was next to Unbridled's. They were both entering stud at the same time. CR's legs could never have supported his body, he was, by far the biggest TB I'd ever seen. If I can get access to scan here at work I'll scan his pics and the one's I have of Unbridled side by side so you can see the difference.

If one could presume that from a discussion in another thread that either the mare throws bone or does not and you get leg the first year so you try it again and don't the second time then does that mean that "trait" is removed from the equation or suppressed?

Your question is an interesting one, perhaps there are some relevant examples in looking at breedings that results in 3/4 siblings, maybe a Storm Cat x mare foal versus a Giant's Causeway x mare foal since CR went west.

[xfactor fan]

While all the foals of any given dam share the same mtDNA, only the females pass it on to their offspring. So you'd have to look at well know females of any given family--Zennyata's sisters and brothers from racing ability, just the sisters to figure out what the mtDNA was providing.

Unless of course you only looked at a stallions foals that were from the same mtDNA family. And this gets tricky because there are errors in the Lowe family numbers. So you couldn't just looks at Family 3 (for example)

A better way to look at the problem might be to select a female several generations back, and only look at matings that also have on the bottom side.

Interesting problem and well worth looking into.

[Tappiano]

What about three generations of females bred to the same sire, ie grandmother, mother and daughter or grandmother and two daughters? I have one example of those but not what they look like, just how they did on the track.

[xfactor fan]

Yes, those would have the same mtDNA.

Are you talking about really tight inbreeding, or someone that has lots of the same family in the broodmare band, and sent everyone to the same stallion?

Also would you be willing to share the name of the family, I'm looking into something else and this might be useful.

Thanks