New True Nicks "Key Ancestor" report

[vineyridge]

At least they are now considering mares important, which is positive.

But I've read the report on Danedream and question some of their methodology. They consider all German stallions in her pedigree as Negative except for one whose name I forget, and the negatives include Acatenango, Surumu and Monsun. Negative seems to be defined as horses who have produced "non-elite" racers and non-elite is defined as horses who do not race in graded/group stakes.

Just how many graded stakes are there in Germany, anyway? If the horses race locally/nationally and there aren't that many group/graded stakes, "elite" opportunity would naturally be very limited. Seems to me that unless there is some hidden way to compensate for limited opportunity, the new report won't be very accurate as far as the quality of their ancestors is concerned.

It almost looks to me as though all German race breeding has been thrown under the bus in the "Key Ancestor Report."

Comments?

[Barcaldine]

More bogus products from the Nicksters.

[Pan Zareta]

At least they are now considering mares important, which is positive.

But I've read the report on Danedream and question some of their methodology. They consider all German stallions in her pedigree as Negative except for one whose name I forget, and the negatives include Acatenango, Surumu and Monsun. Negative seems to be defined as horses who have produced "non-elite" racers and non-elite is defined as horses who do not race in graded/group stakes.

Just how many graded stakes are there in Germany, anyway? If the horses race locally/nationally and there aren't that many group/graded stakes, "elite" opportunity would naturally be very limited. Seems to me that unless there is some hidden way to compensate for limited opportunity, the new report won't be very accurate as far as the quality of their ancestors is concerned.

It almost looks to me as though all German race breeding has been thrown under the bus in the "Key Ancestor Report."

Comments?

If I understand what I've read about the Key Ancestors report correctly, names that might be 'negative' for one mare might be 'positive' for another, relatively unrelated, mare.

[brogers]

TrueNicks Launches Key Ancestors Report
By Blood-Horse Staff

Updated: Saturday, January 12, 2013 10:35 AM
Posted: Friday, January 11, 2013 3:17 PM

TrueNicks has announced the launch of the new Key Ancestors Report for broodmare owners.

According to a release, the breakthrough product considers a mare's entire pedigree—all male and female ancestors within five generations—and identifies the key ancestors to seek out or avoid in the pedigrees of stallions in prospective matings.

Accessing the international pedigree and race results database of The Jockey Club Information Systems, the Key Ancestors Report finds related mares that are bred similarly to your mare and evaluates their produce history, according to TrueNicks.

The release explained that for any group of related mares, there are ancestors that contribute to success just as there are ancestors that are deleterious to success. The Key Ancestors Report identifies these positive and negative ancestors so breeders can plan matings accordingly.

"I believe that the TrueNicks Key Ancestors Report is the most complex and comprehensive report of its kind ever made available to breeders," Alan Porter, co-founder of TrueNicks and creator of the TrueNicks rating, said in a statement. "The report uses the proven TrueNicks methodology, which utilizes the entire database of The Jockey Club Information Systems to evaluate success relative to opportunity, but extends that methodology to consider the full pedigree of the mare."

For more information and to see how the report works, visit www.TrueNicks.com/KeyAncestors.

[brogers]

More bogus products from the Nicksters.

Wow Michael. Have you taken a proper look at this? After all, you were in a small part the inspiration for this product. Your criticism of TrueNicks has been that

1) We don't consider the whole pedigree
2) We don't have a big enough sample size\

This product considers the whole pedigree of your mare and requires at least 500 starters to generate the key ancestors.

[brogers]

If I understand what I've read about the Key Ancestors report correctly, names that might be 'negative' for one mare might be 'positive' for another, relatively unrelated, mare.

That is correct. The key ancestors generate for the mare are unique to that mare. They are the ancestors that you want to see (or don't want to see) in the sires that you are looking to breed to. The ancestors generated are not a general accounting of what ancestors are positive or negative in the breed as a whole. The goal of the report is to find out what ancestors, male or female, that are important for your mare, not someone else's.

[brogers]

At least they are now considering mares important, which is positive.

That was the goal of the report, or more appropriately to consider all ancestors, no matter what the sex. It is interesting to see a few of the reports that are being generated. They are suggesting inbreeding to mares almost as frequently as stallions which is good to see. In the Broodmare Analysis Report it also carries the coefficient of relatedness so you can actually see how inbred a potential mating is going to be, if that is something of concern.

But I've read the report on Danedream and question some of their methodology. They consider all German stallions in her pedigree as Negative except for one whose name I forget, and the negatives include Acatenango, Surumu and Monsun. Negative seems to be defined as horses who have produced "non-elite" racers and non-elite is defined as horses who do not race in graded/group stakes.

Just how many graded stakes are there in Germany, anyway? If the horses race locally/nationally and there aren't that many group/graded stakes, "elite" opportunity would naturally be very limited. Seems to me that unless there is some hidden way to compensate for limited opportunity, the new report won't be very accurate as far as the quality of their ancestors is concerned.

It almost looks to me as though all German race breeding has been thrown under the bus in the "Key Ancestor Report."

Comments?

Actually the opposite is what is occuring. We tested a lot of mares from Germany, Japan and other regions where there has been highly developed 'local' strains and in fact those with a relatively narrower genetic base seem to have affinites that are more clearly defined than other regions. In the case of Danedream, just because there are 4 German bred Ancestors that appear in the negative column and only one (Konigsstuhl) appear in the positive, doesn't mean some conspiracy against German breeding, it just represents what is occuring.

In order for their to be a problem it would require for there to be a significant difference between the percentage of stakes races to runners in the German racing program and also for the population of likebred mares to be solely bred to similar German based stallions and that is just not the case as you can see names like Gone West, The Minstrel, Sir Ivor and Nureyev also turing up as negative ancestors for Danedream and the % of stakes races in Germany is currently on par with other countries.

[Barcaldine]

I suppose there are still enough neophytes around who actually believe in these voodoo science commercial products to make it worth the Nicksters' time to create more of them.

[griff]

I am one of the neophytes that believe thee is value in the nicking reports even though they don't always agree.

I have a mare that is a "C" with the sire of her 2013 foal which I ignored because I liked the stallion and the total out cross.

I have another mare that will be an "AAA" with the sire of her 2014 foal and is also an "AAA" with the sire line of the dam of her foals sire.

It gives me a warm and fuzzy when the nicking people agree with what I'm going to do anyway.

griff