Breeding a RH??

[Soleil]

Like the title says, I'm hoping to find out what it takes to breed a horse that breaks records. I have a lot of questions, so I'll try to make them easier to read down below.

BREEDING QUESTIONS
- How would you go about breeding horses to start your line?
- What should I look for in a horse, and how should I choose a breeding pair. I know that stallions tend to compete better than mares, but both the stallion AND mare need to be excellent right?
- How would one go about establishing your line?
- Finally, should I breed for the confo, the BR, the times, or all three?

TESTING QUESTIONS
- Also, what differentiates a horse that is just 'okay', one that excels, but doesn't break records, and one that does break records?
- How could I test these horses before training, and what are good times for untrained horses? Bad times?

WHAT IS HEART??
- I've heard about 'heart' in a few discussions, but I'm not sure what it is or why this matters. Does it determine a RH from a mediocre horse?

These are a lot of questions, I know, so if you were able to read through that mess thank you! Looking forward to any wisdom ya'll can spare

[EclipticEnd]

-

I'll try to answer some of these with what I know, but I'm not a breeder of competition horses really. I just answered a similar question in the Help section of the forums if you'd like to check that out as well.

Again, as I'm not a competitive breeder I'm not 100% sure that everything here is true. It's as true as I know it to be, though it could be outdated.

I'd assume for starting your line you'd want to either have some horses and decide a discipline based on them or else choose a discipline and pick horses based on it. Frost has a guide with guidelines for what a horse should be built like for which discipline as well as recommended conformation stats.

If I recall correctly, stallions are better competitively but mares tend to pass better genetics. Some horses also simply don't pass genetics as well as others. I'm not entirely sure what all's involved in that. I can say that I've noticed if you breed a lower HGP mare to a higher HGP stallion you're more likely to end up with a higher HGP foal. The opposite is also true; breeding a higher HGP mare to a lower HGP stallion seems to cause the foal to be more likely to have a lower HGP. That's just something I've seen in breeding and I don't know any of the science behind it, but I have read that improving HGP is easier if the stud's 5k HGP higher than the mare.

I'm not too sure how to establish a line other than improving it and testing it every so often by training and comping a horse. If every other generation has a well titled horse with a decent win percentage then that's pretty great in terms of showing what potential your line is holding.

I know that I've read that BR is more important than conformation when you start breeding your lines. You can fix confo later, but BR comments are somewhat harder to improve. BR is like innate talent whereas conformation is physical suitability. You'll want to start with BR/HGP until you're in the high 60k HGP with at least six colored BR comments I think, then you'll want to fine tune conformation, then you'll want to narrow down on the times.

I know that h0rsey found that different disciplines have time ranges for what a horse can achieve. For instance, their worst Barrel Racing score is 1.5 away from their best score, etc. Their post (link) details those ranges. You can use those to see if your horse has the ability to reach that RH time or even surpass it. Other than that, I'm not sure. I wouldn't bank on win percentage because the level 5 Dressage RH is a 63% rate.

I assume that most breeders guess and check when it comes to local show testing until they've got enough data to know what foal time will equal thereabouts what adult time for shows. I'd imagine you'd test a foal, note the best score, train it, test it again, and note that time on a spreadsheet? And repeat that with a variety of foal scores until you have a collection of data to compare to. Experienced breeders likely have the times written down somewhere or memorized.

Heart's a hidden competition gene. I'd compare it to a horse's fighting spirit; a better heart gene can help a horse produce better scores. I'm not entirely sure if that means pushing the horse outside of it's set score limit or just helping the horse reach it's top score more often.

[KYTrainer]

Like the title says, I'm hoping to find out what it takes to breed a horse that breaks records. I have a lot of questions, so I'll try to make them easier to read down below.

BREEDING QUESTIONS
- How would you go about breeding horses to start your line?
- What should I look for in a horse, and how should I choose a breeding pair. I know that stallions tend to compete better than mares, but both the stallion AND mare need to be excellent right?
- How would one go about establishing your line?
- Finally, should I breed for the confo, the BR, the times, or all three?

TESTING QUESTIONS
- Also, what differentiates a horse that is just 'okay', one that excels, but doesn't break records, and one that does break records?
- How could I test these horses before training, and what are good times for untrained horses? Bad times?

WHAT IS HEART??
- I've heard about 'heart' in a few discussions, but I'm not sure what it is or why this matters. Does it determine a RH from a mediocre horse?

These are a lot of questions, I know, so if you were able to read through that mess thank you! Looking forward to any wisdom ya'll can spare

Honestly, the thing that has gotten my lines the most competitive the fastest is throwing all your breeding prospects into a contest and only breeding a set number of them with the best times. This selectively breeds conformation, breeders report, and most importantly, heart. This is how I’ve gotten my Latvian Heavy Drafts very competitive in a relatively low amount of generations. Of course, you get to the end result faster if you start with horses of a “higher quality” aka higher breeders report in the desired areas, conformation scores, etc. However, I know that Frost bred a line of western Obs from the AC to record holders in about 20-30 generations.

[Soleil]

Hah, I only realized a few minutes after posting this that this question had already been answered. But thank you for taking the time to respond in this one as well, I appreciate it! And wow, I can't thank you enough for going into such depth with your answers to my questions, its definitely helpful.

[Soleil]

Thank you for your reply! I've always admired your Racing studs due to all of the hard work poured into developing them, and I was considering aiming to break a Racing record, so seeing your response is great. Also, I can't believe Frost bred a RH from basically scratch in so few gens xD

[KYTrainer]

Thank you for your reply! I've always admired your Racing studs due to all of the hard work poured into developing them, and I was considering aiming to break a Racing record, so seeing your response is great. Also, I can't believe Frost bred a RH from basically scratch in so few gens xD

That’s awesome to hear! If you ever need a stud that’s not up just let me know, all of them are available unless they are from somebody else’s private lines. Also, found a link to the RH project that Frost did and it was only about 16 generations. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18869&p=309451#p309451

[Soleil]

Thank you for your reply! I've always admired your Racing studs due to all of the hard work poured into developing them, and I was considering aiming to break a Racing record, so seeing your response is great. Also, I can't believe Frost bred a RH from basically scratch in so few gens xD

That’s awesome to hear! If you ever need a stud that’s not up just let me know, all of them are available unless they are from somebody else’s private lines. Also, found a link to the RH project that Frost did and it was only about 16 generations. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18869&p=309451#p309451

Thank you so much for your offer! I'll be sure to take you up on it once I collect more broodmares (I only have one at the moment). Also, amazing :0 16 generations is so few!

[KYTrainer]

That’s awesome to hear! If you ever need a stud that’s not up just let me know, all of them are available unless they are from somebody else’s private lines. Also, found a link to the RH project that Frost did and it was only about 16 generations. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18869&p=309451#p309451

Thank you so much for your offer! I'll be sure to take you up on it once I collect more broodmares (I only have one at the moment). Also, amazing :0 16 generations is so few!