Stable 6 Farm Log

[mythirion]

Stable 6
Perfecting the Hunter

Currently

November 24
I've been plugging away slowly but surely at my Hunter project - and starting to see some progress. I have moved away from breeds for the most part, as a result of combining my Irish sport horses, draughts, thoroughbreds and north african barbs. Lots of grades, lots of heavier pony types.

Gen 1 took a while to weed through - pulling horses from old lines and test everything to see where scores would fall. Gen 2 was much quicker as I picked the top 10 scoring horses across Gen 1 - and took a different approach for my testing to make it a bit more efficient.

Bred my first 70 movement stud as well, and have seen a good general upward trend in movement and strength.


Bloodlines

Gen 1 - Powys-line
Combination of old Thoroughbred and Irish lines, as well as my newer grades where I've been slowly building up strength conformation. Named after the houses and members of Powys.

Highest score - 54.86
Highest movement conformation - 66
Highest strength conformation - 47

Average high scores - 52.3
Average movement conformation - 62.7
Average strength conformation - 30.3

Gen 2 - Elton-line
Bred from the top scoring horses from Gen 1, selected from the top scoring offspring. Named after songs by Elton John.

Highest score - 55.4
Highest movement conformation - 70
Highest strength conformation - 39

Average high scores - 53.4
Average movement conformation - 63.7
Average strength conformation - 30.9

Gen 3 - Barenaked-line

Highest score - 55.5
Highest movement conformation - 68
Highest strength conformation - 41

Average high scores - 54.3
Average movement conformation - 63.8
Average strength conformation - 35.4

Gen 4 - Alberta-line

Highest score - 55.3
Highest movement conformation - 70
Highest strength conformation - 45

Average high scores - 54.4
Average movement conformation - 63.3
Average strength conformation - 38.0

Gen 5 - Panton-line

Highest score -
Highest movement conformation - 70
Highest strength conformation - 45

Average high scores - 54.7
Average movement conformation - 64.5
Average strength conformation - 38.7

Notes

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[mythirion]

Gen 1/2

Gen 1 was a conglomeration of previous projects including my Irish sport horses and draughts, old Thoroughbred lines and my newer North African Barb line that brought in my silver genes and new blood. Started testing the youngstock in locals or player comps to see untrained/high strung/poor weight times - which only gave me a cull point to work with, as I found once trained some of the results were wildly different than I had hoped (top scoring in untrained was one of my lowest scoring trained and poorest producers).

Goal with this line was to start to raise strength confo and BR comments. Top 10 scoring trained horses went on to be major producers held for Gen 2.

Gen 2 wasn't super exciting in terms of improvements but did show higher scores in player comps (I did not opt for much local testing this time). Consistently scoring in the 53/54 range with my first 55. I also produced the first 70 movement horse we've seen in a while! Very limited stock as i really wanted to wittle down some stronger genes to carry forward.

S6 Rhyddfedd Frych
Highest scoring Gen 1

S6 Rocket Man
Highest scoring Gen 2 and first 55

S6 Empty Sky
First 70 movement horse

[mythirion]

Gen 3

Gen 3 starts to show greater improvement in genes and scores, which has been fun. A number of horses have been scoring in the 54/55 ranges in locals and player comps, strength is consistently above the 30 mark with movement hitting 60s more and more. Strength made good progress in the breeder's reports as well, but no remarkable comments for the other 3 stats.

S6 Drawing
Highest scoring and highest scoring mare

[mythirion]

Gen 4

Getting into gen 4 and I'm going to have to start getting very picky going through my youngstock! Gen 3 is getting fairly consistent 54/55 scores in both locals and player comps - so we are nearing world record rankings slowly but surely.

Gen 4 is starting to bring more raised strength conformation, many of the foals hitting 40s now. Still getting the odd 58/59 movement but most are 60+ with colts now bringing green comments to the table. I'm also starting to try bringing back old stock and gens to breed in to keep raising those movement and strength stats - not worried about tempo or balance as those seem to naturally fall into place (though I will drop low BR comments continually as we progress).

Many foals being produced are now black or silver dapple - which was a fun project to throw in. So I'm slowly losing agouti and getting homozygous black genes though I will need to continuously bring back silver.

Update Dec 13:
I ended up dropping initial testing on my horses now as I've started to find patterns into what ends up scoring well in locals and player comps - particularly with the stallions. I've noticed that since my confos are generally in close range (movement 60-65 and strength 33-37 with the odd 40), the horses scoring better are those with higher strength BR comments (again, movement comments are fairly consistent). So as I picked away at training, comping and breeding Gen 5, I will be focusing on bring up those comments like I did when I first started my Thoroughbred and Irish Sport Horse lines way back. I also want to bring up my averages for movement again since those are getting lower.

S6 Find You
Highest scoring and highest scoring mare

S6 Leavin'
First 45 strength

S6 Same Road Home
Powerful legs strength comment

[mythirion]

Gen 5

I'm starting to get excited about these horses! I wasn't at first. When I started working through the mares to see what scores we were pulling, things weren't looking spectacular yet. But now as I'm going through the stallions - scores are starting to rise! I currently have 2 or 3 pulling 56s in the locals, so we are nearing the current records!

Starting to see some interesting trends to take not of - for any other hunter breeders out there, as I see a number of you now! I plan on posting some of my spread sheets soon to give an idea of what numbers I'm seeing. One thing to note - my horses with high strength confo paired with higher BR comments are pulling in the scores. If they have high strength confo but low BR comments, they lose out in scores. It doesn't matter if you have top movement confo and comments if you don't have the strength to back it up.

That said, my next gen is not looking super promising in terms of pulling scores, but I am looking forward to seeing what they breed up next.

S6 Fuchsia Rose
70 movement mare

S6 Viva Magenta
Highest scoring - 56.29 locals!!

[mythirion]

Gen 6

Ok, this group really surprised me. I didn't end up training any mares as nothing really popped out to me (and I'm spending way too much time training everything), my boys ended up averaging a score of 56 in locals!

This gen really bumped up the strength confo, and I finally hit the targeted 47. Still slowly trying to bring up the BR comments there but I did get a big jump in the average.

Still keeping the average movement confo high - these stats are becoming fairly established now. Movement comments are a bit all over the place still but I'm seeing lots of greens in both genders. Now I will have to start watching my tempo and balance confos are bit as the numbers have gone down to be slightly below where I'd like to see them (tempo should be around 29, balance around 40 in the formulated hunter).

I would also love to try and bring back the horse type into my gens instead of these squat and robust pony types. Silver dapple is establishing very well though!

S6 Bohemian Rhapsody
Highest scoring at 56.65

S6 Rock n Roll
47 strength

[mythirion]

Gen 7

I am thinking I will not be training up any of this group - based on 2 that I did train with higher expectations. This is a bit of an intermediary crop. Strength confos are where I'm liking them, but all BR comments were leveling out lower than I had hoped for this gen, which will keep scores lower based on previous experience.

That being said, lots of green movement in the mares now and we're at a good starting point for strength. As conformation becomes more set, I can work on driving up those comments through selective breeding.

Tons of silver dapple!

[mythirion]

Gen 8

Gen 8 is another intermediary generation. Starting to bring up comments a bit more now - going back to my previous method of culling anything below a certain cut-off. Brought my comments up fast for my original thoroughbreds and Irish Sport Horses. Mostly reaching green comments for both genders now with the odd neutral that scores well in other areas.

My confos are getting pretty close to where I want them based on my previous confo study on what maximums should look like. I have a number of horses within a few points in all 4 stats so I'm curious how everything will breed up. For good measure, I also made sure to keep some 49 strength horses to keep that stat up in my lines. Now I need tempo and balance to work in there while improving comments.

Here are my nearly perfect hunters - in terms of body conformation:










And this mare is looking a bit less pony, hoping to head this direction:

[mythirion]

Gen 9

So we're definitely stabilizing movement above 65 and strength above 40 - with BR comments still all over the place, but aiming to work them higher. This is costing me my tempo and balance points. Tempo has been holding around the 27 mark, which is very close to the desired 29 but balance has also been settling much lower than desired (continuing to sit around 35/40).

I kept back a ton of mares that may not quite hit the mark i was hoping for but Gen 8 was keen on throwing me colts! I have a number of colts and the odd mare or 2 I will probably train up here to see where I need to keep things moving, but I'm not expecting anything spectacular with this generation again.

Update: I have also noticed that my horses are generally trending to a less squat looking pony in this generation. This was something I hoped to aim towards eventually but it's funny how sometimes focusing on your conformation goal lends itself to where it needs to go.

[mythirion]

Gen 10

Gen 10 is starting to shape up nicely. Once again, I do not think I will be seeing any remarkable competitors in this generation - BUT I do see that my ideal conformation type is showing up more frequently than not. I've decided to focus on overall conformation for those I keep back. My current targets for conformation are:

Movement: 71 (67-71)
Strength: 47 (43-51)
Tempo: 29 (25-33)
Balance: 40 (36-44)

I'm still trying to increase the BR comments but I expect this to be slower work, especially trying to bump up my strength. This gen is showing improvement in tempo and balance comments like I had hoped, movement is also pushing upwards slowly with most colts reaching green or gold and fillies reaching green comments but strength is a bit stubborn and much slower to budge upwards.