Genetic Potential
I saw in Horse For Sales that there are horses which have high Genetic Potential. If I want to have a horse with high GP do I have to breed well-trained horses? If not, so how?
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Joined: Thu Oct 09, 2014 1:30 am Posts: 240
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Joined: Thu Oct 09, 2014 1:30 am Posts: 240 Re: Genetic Potential
Training horses before breeding them will give no results. The best way would be to breed horses with good comments on the breeder's report or keep crossing horses with good GP to get offspring with better GP. 
Re: Genetic Potential
To breed high GP horses, you want to pick horses with high GP and breed them to other horses with high GP, and pick the foal that has a GP higher than either of the parents. Then repeat.
Genetic potential is a measure of how well a horse could do overall in something. I sometimes think of it as being a cup:
A horse with high genetic potential is a big cup. A horse with low genetic potential is a little cup.
Training is like putting little beads in the cup. If you fill a BIG cup 20% full of beads, it's more beads than 20% of a small cup. So the high GP horse would perform better than the low GP horse if they had the same percentage of training.
HOWEVER, perhaps you have a higher percentage of beads in the small cup, such that the AMOUNT is equal to or greater than the amount of beads in the big cup. Then the small-cup horse could beat the big-cup horse in a show.
Then there's a question of discipline:
GP is an overall score. It's an assessment of how "good" all the genes are for all of the different ability areas. Moderate GP can mean a horse is generally good across the board or maybe it's REALLY REALLY good at one thing and not so good at other things, making it look moderate on the whole.
A horse with a lower GP, but better comments for the specific abilities involved in its discipline is more likely to win its competitions than a higher GP horse.
Going back to the beads idea: A high GP horse might have a relatively even mix of beads for all the colors (strength, speed, agility, tempo, balance, movement, and intelligence would each be one color).
A lower GP horse has fewer total beads, but maybe has MORE speed-beads than the high GP horse and less of another type. This lower GP horse might perform better than the high GP horse in racing competitions because of the composition of its beads.
So, to breed "good" horses, with high GP, your best bet would be to start with the comments of the discipline you're looking for followed up by their show scores. Then you can use GP as an evaluation amongst your herd alone which is likely more valuable than among all HWO horses at large because you have a better sense of what genes are making up your cup o' beads.
Genetic potential is a measure of how well a horse could do overall in something. I sometimes think of it as being a cup:
A horse with high genetic potential is a big cup. A horse with low genetic potential is a little cup.
Training is like putting little beads in the cup. If you fill a BIG cup 20% full of beads, it's more beads than 20% of a small cup. So the high GP horse would perform better than the low GP horse if they had the same percentage of training.
HOWEVER, perhaps you have a higher percentage of beads in the small cup, such that the AMOUNT is equal to or greater than the amount of beads in the big cup. Then the small-cup horse could beat the big-cup horse in a show.
Then there's a question of discipline:
GP is an overall score. It's an assessment of how "good" all the genes are for all of the different ability areas. Moderate GP can mean a horse is generally good across the board or maybe it's REALLY REALLY good at one thing and not so good at other things, making it look moderate on the whole.
A horse with a lower GP, but better comments for the specific abilities involved in its discipline is more likely to win its competitions than a higher GP horse.
Going back to the beads idea: A high GP horse might have a relatively even mix of beads for all the colors (strength, speed, agility, tempo, balance, movement, and intelligence would each be one color).
A lower GP horse has fewer total beads, but maybe has MORE speed-beads than the high GP horse and less of another type. This lower GP horse might perform better than the high GP horse in racing competitions because of the composition of its beads.
So, to breed "good" horses, with high GP, your best bet would be to start with the comments of the discipline you're looking for followed up by their show scores. Then you can use GP as an evaluation amongst your herd alone which is likely more valuable than among all HWO horses at large because you have a better sense of what genes are making up your cup o' beads.