Keeping Foals
How do y'all decide which foals to keep I usually just look at the overall horse with an emphasis on confo and breeders report iv seen people test them in local shows time there born but i didn't know if this was accurate
mythirion Offline
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Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2016 1:21 am Posts: 175
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Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2016 1:21 am Posts: 175 Re: Keeping Foals
Depends on what I'm breeding for. When I was breeding solely for HGP, I would only keep colts that got above both parents and fillies above one parent - and as my HGPs increased, I would also set a bottom limit and only keep foals born above that.
When I was breeding towards my own line of Irish Sport Horses, I only looked at getting the recipe horses and evaluations correct. I tended to keep horses on the low side and high side of the breed evaluations (or just shy) to try and get something more in the middle. This takes a considerable amount of time, patience and some luck!
When I'm working towards breeding for silver dapple, I culled any foals with Agouti and kept anything black or chestnut based and slowly added onto my growing line of silver.
Right now I'm working back towards breeding hunters - in my previous line I worked only on improving movement confo and BR, hoping the rest would follow (tempo and balance did). Same as with HGP, culled anything below a certain number and BR comment (I assigned values to the various comments to make it easy) - only kept colts above parents until I hit gold movement and confo around 60 consistently, and fillies above 1 parent.
That gave me a solid start towards good hunters, and I had gold movement, tempo and balance comments with a fairly low HGP which was a bit surprising. But what really lacked in those lines was strength, so now I'm applying the same method to breed for both movement and strength. Verdict is still out if it'll work or not - and focusing on 2 stats is proving to be challenging. Because I know I can improve movement fairly well and my lines usually trend towards movement anyway, I'm focusing more on strength with movement being taken into consideration.
Lots of ways to achieve goals - all depends on what you're after. Easiest way is to pick your goals and stick to your plan - have patience when you need it and don't be scared to get rid of what doesn't work.
When I was breeding towards my own line of Irish Sport Horses, I only looked at getting the recipe horses and evaluations correct. I tended to keep horses on the low side and high side of the breed evaluations (or just shy) to try and get something more in the middle. This takes a considerable amount of time, patience and some luck!
When I'm working towards breeding for silver dapple, I culled any foals with Agouti and kept anything black or chestnut based and slowly added onto my growing line of silver.
Right now I'm working back towards breeding hunters - in my previous line I worked only on improving movement confo and BR, hoping the rest would follow (tempo and balance did). Same as with HGP, culled anything below a certain number and BR comment (I assigned values to the various comments to make it easy) - only kept colts above parents until I hit gold movement and confo around 60 consistently, and fillies above 1 parent.
That gave me a solid start towards good hunters, and I had gold movement, tempo and balance comments with a fairly low HGP which was a bit surprising. But what really lacked in those lines was strength, so now I'm applying the same method to breed for both movement and strength. Verdict is still out if it'll work or not - and focusing on 2 stats is proving to be challenging. Because I know I can improve movement fairly well and my lines usually trend towards movement anyway, I'm focusing more on strength with movement being taken into consideration.
Lots of ways to achieve goals - all depends on what you're after. Easiest way is to pick your goals and stick to your plan - have patience when you need it and don't be scared to get rid of what doesn't work.
vallers Offline
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Joined: Tue Nov 08, 2016 8:42 am Posts: 1529
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Joined: Tue Nov 08, 2016 8:42 am Posts: 1529 Re: Keeping Foals
I test mine against lvl 10 local shows to see if their scores are relatively close to record breakers. if im breeding for competition horses. If I'm breeding for a specific breed or body type i go by evaluation or body comfirmation.