Breeding Choices for Your Mares – Things to consider.

Breeders check list – considerations for choosing stallions.

 

Herewith a summary for you all to take on board for the future to enhance your own breeding programmes.

Why are you breeding?                                    What discipline are you breeding for?

Research the internet – there is so much information out there

Ask advice if you are uncertain – Stud masters, The Studbook keeper and mare studbook classifiers – Robin Potter and Angela Smith.

• Compare you mare’s pedigree with other similar ones overseas to see what they are being matched with.
• Look more towards a 6 or 7-year-old stallion that has progeny that can be assessed (rather than the newly approved ones that look really fancy but are not yet proven).
• ALSO – and very importantly – take special note of the weaker points that your mare might have on the score sheet – and look for a stallion that has strong statistics in these areas. The stallion Year Book produced by The Hanoverian Verband, is a great resource for this sort of research.

 

• The important message to come out of the 2018 visit by Volker Ehlers is to keep improving the choice of the stallion to combine with the mare
• Research on the internet – there is much information available – how does YOUR mare’s pedigree relate to a SIMILAR one when matched with your choice of stallion
• The choices of stallions are very large – this makes it a challenge but with good research you can make good choices and hope for good results
• The TB mare base is very good in NZ. Volker Ehlers and Dr Ludwig Christmann were very impressed with the quality, the strong foundations and relatively good frames for riding horse points. The two negatives in some are the lower set neck at the wither and the deeper setting into the chest. The TB mares can have a refining influence over sturdier stallions.
• Remember the scale of marks: –
• 8 = GOOD, 7 and 7.5 = FAIRLY GOOD. We have a lot of mares and foals falling into that area.

Top Studbook Hanoverian Mare Waimarie MHTop Rheinland Studbook Mare , Quarterly