Declining sire lines

[3nutmeg]

How do you save these rare and declining sire lines when they haven't produced productive offspring? Can you justify breeding a good mare to them for the sake of preservation? Does it count if these blood lines are in the mare?

[ElPrado]

Just don't blame all the woes in the thoroughbred on one stallion. The faults were present in every line.

[Affirmed1]

3nutmeg: The thoroughbred breed traces to three primary foundation sires- the Darley Arabian, the Byerly Turk, and the Godolphin Arabian. The Byerly Turk was once a dominant, perhaps the most dominant bloodline- in the male line it now consists of (I believe I read this) less than 3% of the TB population. However, the Byerly Turk bloodline still appears throughout most TB pedigrees, although further back in the pedigree and not necessarily in the tail male descent.

I think breeding decisions have to be based on the near term pedigrees and performances of the mare/stallion and their produce. It's also true that sometimes a sire's influence does not carry forth in the tail male line- as examples, Secretariat and Affirmed did not produce any sons who became prominent sires. However, both Secretariat and Affirmed were good broodmare sires, and appear in many modern pedigrees through the female line. So yes, the female line definitely does matter. (Girls rule, boys drool ? )

[LB]

How do you save these rare and declining sire lines when they haven't produced productive offspring? Can you justify breeding a good mare to them for the sake of preservation? Does it count if these blood lines are in the mare?

Why would you want to save a declining sire line if it's not producing well? Most likely, that's the reason for its demise.

[louis finochio]

There are many NP sire lines that are available in the present. You can find many of those mares that have produced those superior runners. I only like those NP mares that have bred quality offspring.

I like mares by Quiet American, Thse Fair Play sire line mares like the In Reality branch of FP. Relaunch fits here.

Pleasantly Perfect, Holy Bull mares are a good outcross. Mares by Broad Brush & Include=Domino are quality choices.

[Barcaldine]

American racing focuses on speed. Therefore, breeders shy away from the rugged sire lines which represent old-fashioned stamina, e.g. *Princequillo, *Ribot, Hyperion, etc. Adding to this problem is the prominence of pinhookers in the yearling market. Their one-dimensional search for big, athletic yearlings with "fast" pedigrees has led breeders further astray from traditional stamina lines.

The problem in preserving these great stallions lies in the market. There's just not much demand for late-developing stayers. And that's a pity.

[Tappiano]

You're a bit hypocritical Barcadline given the choices you have made for the mares you are trying to flip. Is it because you are giving the market what it wants as opposed to what you think might help the breed?

[Barcaldine]

I'm a realist. While I dont breed for a 12 furlong horse I do try to reinforce soundness in my matings. Historically in the U.S. it's the wealthy families (Whitneys, Phipps, etc.) who have carried the torch for Cup-type horses, but even they have gone by the wayside. As a non-trust fund baby I can't afford to promote any cause at the expense of eating.

[pedigreeann]

Actually, there were more than 3 original sires - there was a couple dozen, including Alcock's Arabian who has a larger presence percentage-wise in the entire pedigree than the Byerley Turk. (Actually did the research and the calculations for major mid-19th Century conduits for the currently extant male lines.) Only three of the original sires had tail-male descendents around 200 years later, but that doesn't mean the others aren't present in the genome of current TB. One mare, Old Bald Peg, has almost as high a percentage as the Byerley Turk.

Male line and female line comprise only a fraction of the entire pedigree, less and less as one goes back through the generations. They may be handy for identification purposes, but the close-up individuals count for more than some remote ancestor 300 years ago.

The male line of Lexington may be dead and Domino's hanging by a thread, but horses of North American ancestry carry their genes from the multitude of crosses in their pedigrees; even some from other countries descend from these American giants, like Nearco. One may not be able to tease out exactly what their particular contribution is in any individual, but they their quality helped refine and define the breed that came after them.

[louis finochio]

I did a research project of tracing all those BOY, starting with Bloodroot in 1946. I found most all of their progeny didnt carry on their sire lines of NP & Ph.

These BOY are found in are pedigrees in the present. Miss Disco=Fair Play, Striking=Fair Play, Misty Morn=Prince Rose, Somethingroyal=Prince Rose, Quibu=Ph., Relaxing=Ph., Weekend Surprise=Ph.

[ElPrado]

Can I have a translator? Or at least will someone tell him what spell check means? Are is not the same word as our. It looks like he's using a speech to type converter and doesn't have any inclination to check what he's written.

[Joltman]

How do you save these rare and declining sire lines when they haven't produced productive offspring? Can you justify breeding a good mare to them for the sake of preservation? Does it count if these blood lines are in the mare?

Why would you want to save a declining sire line if it's not producing well? Most likely, that's the reason for its demise.

Is it not possible that there is something found only on the Y chromosome, passed down only from male to male that might be of real importance to the whole of the breed?

jm

[parlo]

If there is "something important" on the Y-chromosome, we should know it by now.

Or is that "important" so common in tb-breeding meanwhile that any male horse has it already because the male-line is all the same with 95+ % Eclipse and almost 90+ % Phalaris in present days?

[Pan Zareta]

Is it not possible that there is something found only on the Y chromosome, passed down only from male to male that might be of real importance to the whole of the breed?

No variability within the male-specific, protein-coding region of Y chromosome of the domestic horse has been found. The same is true in the human but enough short tandem repeat (STR) variability was found in the non-coding, male-specific regions of the human Y for it to be useful for phylogenetic analysis. So far variability at a single STR in the equine Y has been documented in only one or two of 531 horses tested in China (Ling et al. 2010) and that STR could not be mapped to the male-specific region with certainty. The most recent study (Rafeie et al. 2011 in the African Journal of Biotechnology) found the equine Y to be similarly monolithic but holds out hope that a more detailed map of the male-specific portion of the equine Y might eventually yield evidence of meaningful diversity there. (I hope so, but am not optimistic.) The portion of the Y that is not male-specific, the tiny pseudo-autosomal region (PAR), does recombine with the PAR on the X, so is not passed only from male to male.