Opinions: What Do You Look For in a Stud?

[Alaina]

Thanks for the input everyone! It's kinda sad to see that not a lot of people look for competitive ability (since that's primarily what I breed for) but I think I can get three good categories. Probably studs for breed appearance/quality; studs for competitive ability and studs for breeder's report/confo quality.

[ruby_jane]

Now that I have my own hoard of stallions, I don't tend to use outside boys anymore, because not many people have the stuff I'm looking for (which is annoying because my COI% is ridiculously high).
Generally what I look for in a stallion is their pedigree. Purely because I breed a lot of the arabians in this game, a lot have lines back to my horses. Because I breed outside stallions to bring in new blood, I look back a few generations and if they don't have any of my mares or stallions, then I'll breed to them.
I also look for their stats. At this stage, I only breed to 7 stat horses, mainly only 6 gold 1 green boys, the occasional 5 gold 2 green. Not a lot of other breeders have those sort of stats in their arabian lines yet, and if they do, its the same stables, so I'm breeding to the same lines over and over, which is not what I want to be doing too much of.
I don't tend to look too much on their looks, however I don't tend to breed to greys, just took me too long to breed grey out of my lines to want it to come back in with large numbers. I also won't breed to stallions with spots, purely for the same reason.
I also don't really look at their breed evaluation. Because its partly my fault (somewhere along my lines), I must have had a really tall stallion, so now most of my horses average at about 18hh, most of my stallions are 19-22hh. Once I accomplish my current goal of breeding a 7 gold horse, then I will start focusing on making them shorter. I don't want to sacrifice my good stats just for something like height, which isn't too much of an issue for me, but it is a long term goal.
I also like to train and compete my own stallions (with the help of trainers, I don't like to use days on training because it ages out my breeding horses too quickly) and I love them to have a title or two, purely for the fact I know that that is what some people like in pedigrees (championship titles and what not). But I will use a stallion regardless of its titles, purely because I focus on stats before anything else.
Keeping in mind that I am purely breeding for stats. And I can breed up to about 100 horses a day, I am just very strict and only end up keeping about 10 of those. The foals that don't meet my standards get rehomed as soon as I sort through them. I find that because I breed so much (36 foals per "breeding spree") if I were to use an outside stallion I would be spending a heap of money for a stallion to have the stats I want, whereas I could be breeding to my own stock for free. And I know how each stallion produces and what types of mares they produce well with. So I find it easier to breed within my own lines, purely because I know what lines the horses have, and I know the producing capabilities of each horse, specifically my stallions.

Sorry for such a long answer! Hope this helped you out If you want to talk further, don't hesitate to PM me

[meaghanne]

Thanks for the input everyone! It's kinda sad to see that not a lot of people look for competitive ability (since that's primarily what I breed for) but I think I can get three good categories. Probably studs for breed appearance/quality; studs for competitive ability and studs for breeder's report/confo quality.

What do you mean by competitive quality? Win percentages in chosen shows?

[Alaina]

Thanks for the input everyone! It's kinda sad to see that not a lot of people look for competitive ability (since that's primarily what I breed for) but I think I can get three good categories. Probably studs for breed appearance/quality; studs for competitive ability and studs for breeder's report/confo quality.

What do you mean by competitive quality? Win percentages in chosen shows?

What I mean is the stud having the qualities necessary to achieve high scores in a specific discipline (or disciplines). For example I breed horses for hunter. My studs would have bombproof temperaments; gold movement, strength, tempo and balance; high conformation numbers in movement, strength, tempo and balance; fall within the desired height/size/build range and, finally, be able to pass most or all of these traits down to his offspring fairly consistently when paired with the right mare.

I would back up the claims that he had all the ideal traits through show records, titles and win percentages.

[meaghanne2]

What do you mean by competitive quality? Win percentages in chosen shows?

What I mean is the stud having the qualities necessary to achieve high scores in a specific discipline (or disciplines). For example I breed horses for hunter. My studs would have bombproof temperaments; gold movement, strength, tempo and balance; high conformation numbers in movement, strength, tempo and balance; fall within the desired height/size/build range and, finally, be able to pass most or all of these traits down to his offspring fairly consistently when paired with the right mare.

OH! Got it. I tried doing that at one point, and it gave me some pretty good GP mares but it wacked out their confo. Then again, I'd been line breeding too much as well.

I would back up the claims that he had all the ideal traits through show records, titles and win percentages.