Is there a perfect set of dosage numbers?

[Roger]

This topic may have beaten to death earlier, but I still kind of new here. What do you use dosage number for. I know they are supposed to show a horses possible aptitude, which I take means how far it will run. If you wanted a classic horse should you strive for a 0-0-50-0-0 or a 10-10-10-10-10? Just as an aside:
Secretariat had a 20-14-7-9-0
Seattle Slew had a 7-6-4-5-0
Affirmed had a 8-6-26-0-0
Alydar had a 21-8-9-4-0

[casallc]

This topic may have beaten to death earlier, but I still kind of new here. What do you use dosage number for. I know they are supposed to show a horses possible aptitude, which I take means how far it will run. If you wanted a classic horse should you strive for a 0-0-50-0-0 or a 10-10-10-10-10? Just as an aside:
Secretariat had a 20-14-7-9-0
Seattle Slew had a 7-6-4-5-0
Affirmed had a 8-6-26-0-0
Alydar had a 21-8-9-4-0

The perfect number is $40.00 that is the cost of the book Dosage:Pedigree & Performance otherwise most any old powerball ticket is just as good.

[Rokeby Forever]

The Dosage system is updated every time a horse becomes an exception to the rule. It's worth as much as yesterday's newspaper.

[imnumberjuan]

an interesting thought I ran across somewhere, be it book or internet I can no longer say, but that the quantity of dosage points not neccesarily where they are placed - is a sign of "quality".

[billl]

Dosage system is something was telling the presence of exceptional male influence in horse' pedigree. But it fails to account for the contributions of the female family. It uses a "weight factor" system that does not necessarily makes sense since not every is as prepotent as others.

In theory, you never breed based on dosage. You can look at it at the end if you are undecided but breeding based on this is nonsense.

[Denise]

The mare is the exclusive source of contributing mitochondrial (energy producing cells) DNA to a pedigree, so it's critical to consider when looking at nicks/matings.
I'm a big fan of great female families, i.e., a solid percentage of runners from foals, and winners from starters.

[cj55]

My brother in-law has been a trainer for over 40 years and he always says "winners can come from anywhere". Not much help I suppose. We like the strong female family also and a good conformation match.
I am new to this also and don't understand why some folks are for in-breeding and others are dead set against it? What is too close for inbreeding? Thanks

[imnumberjuan]

cj55,

I was looking at that question and well as a couple of others (i.e. raced and unraced broodmares as ascribed to by Joe Estes and his theory of A.E.I.) and decided to dust off my Statistics 2000 course book from 3rd year university and see what I could find out.

Using the Kentucky Derby as my "control race" I went from 1947 to 2007. I picked 1947 because that is a "recognized" expansion of the thoroughbred population in North America; It is also ideal as a restriced race (the horses are all "3" year olds) run at the same distance on the same course on the same day; records are also fairly well kept as far as racing performance of the dams (though there are a couple of ? on my chart). I also examined all the derby winners to see if they were closely inbred (4 Generations is what I decided to call close). I used the pedigree query form and this is what I came up with.

80% (48 of 60) of all derby winners had dams who had raced and won, 7 of the 12 non-winners had raced, leaving 5 of the 60 to have not raced.

Now, as far as inbreeding - I found that 40 of the 60 Derby winners were not inbred within the first 4 generations, 23 of the 40 not inbred within the first 4 generations are inbred on the fifth with at least one 4th generation ancestor.

As an aside, Real Quiet is "quite" inbred by comparison (Cequillo: X4S X5S, Dr. Fager: X3S X4S, Raise A Native: X3D X4S, Rough'n Tumble: X4S X5S X5D, Nearco: X5S X5D) to the rest of the population.

Now, the question to ask but I am not sure of if it is answerable is would be what percentage of the overall population matched those trends in the thoroghbred population.

This is also flawed in that it cannot factor injuries etc to the three year old population aimed at the race, or exclusion to the race based on earnings.

So... I think the answer is it depends.

[imnumberjuan]

P.S. I am slowly working on the Kenucky Oaks and Epsom Derby and oaks, they all show similiar racing "ability" by the broodmare as the Kentucky Derby winners broodmares. If you want an excel file I have done up pm me and I will email it to you.