Being a breeder

Getting foals born is simple to operate: two or three clicks. What makes a good breeder is therefore not mastery of the screens, it is understanding what happens behind them. This page describes no screen, it explains the substance of the trade.

The principle, in one sentence

A foal's genetics are a mixture of its parents'. For each component taken separately — speed, resistance, suppleness, obedience, and constitution on Chorus — the foal will be either close to its mother or close to its father.

Component by component, and not as a block: a foal can get its speed from the father and its resistance from the mother. That is what makes breeding interesting, and it is also what makes it uncertain.

What has no influence at all

Let us say it plainly, because a good many beliefs are going about and they cost time to those who follow them.

• The biorhythm is not passed on. The best-rhythmed parents do not give a better-rhythmed foal.
• The racing career has no influence. A stallion covered in wins does not pass on better than a stallion that has never run, at equal genetics.
• Training methods have no influence. What a parent gained through work is passed on no more than the rest.
• Neither the moment, nor the moon, nor anything else. There is no favourable date, no magic combination.

Only the genetic characteristics of the parents count. All the rest is noise.

A matter of statistics

Since each component is played out between two possibilities, a single mating proves nothing. Breeding is work done in series: you cross, you note, and it is the accumulation that reveals the good breeding stock.

There are only tendencies. No horse will pass on a given characteristic to all its progeny; you are looking for those that pass it on often.

If you are after speed, do not settle for a fast stallion: look for a fast stallion that passes its speed on well. That is not the same quality, and the second one is written on no card — it is deduced from its progeny.

The breeding stock that improves

This is the heart of the trade, and the reason good breeders are worth a lot.

Some horses do not merely pass on a characteristic: they pass it on while improving it strongly. Others pass it on while degrading it. The first are the breeding stock everybody fights over — and they are much harder to spot, because their results are less stable than those of mediocre transmitters.

The practical consequence is counter-intuitive: a stallion whose produce all look alike is not necessarily a good stallion, it may simply be a consistent one. And a stallion whose produce are uneven may be hiding the best ones. You therefore have to judge on many foals before concluding, and look at the top of the series as much as at its average.

A neglected market: the early developers

Everything above pushes you to look for the maximum, and that is indeed what experienced breeders do: only a late developer — a horse with a high maximum, which starts low and calls for a long preparation — wins the big events, which bring fully made horses together.

But there is another demand, and almost nobody serves it. A horse that starts high — an early developer — is usable from its first months, even if its ceiling is modest. And for the breeder, it has three advantages:

• it is easier to obtain, because it is a less demanding aim than a high maximum;
• the result is known at birth: no need to wait months of training to know whether the mating gave anything;
• it sells to a clientele nobody is aiming at: players who are starting out, those rebuilding a stable, those who want to race now.

It is therefore a way into breeding far more accessible than hunting for a champion, and a genuinely neglected commercial niche. See The horses.

How to measure, in practice

A foal that has already run and worked teaches you nothing more about its heredity: its genetics have moved. What you have to compare is its birth genetics — each horse's card displays them next to its current genetics — with those of its two parents.

The My foals screen is made for that: it keeps a trace of every horse that came out of your breeding, including those you have sold. It is your register, and it does not get erased.

Note your matings down somewhere, with the birth genetics obtained. After twenty foals, you will know things about your breeding stock that nobody else knows.

What breeding brings in

As a breeder, you get 2% of the race earnings of every horse that came out of your breeding, for life and even after selling them. It is the owner who pays it to you, deducted from the race prize.

Your status as breeder is fixed at conception: the breeder is whoever owned the mare at that moment. Selling the mare in foal therefore does not pass that right on — the foal will be born at the buyer's place, but the 2% will stay with you.

A patient breeding operation ends up producing an income that asks for nothing more: it is your former foals racing for you.

The material rules

For the record, and the detail is in My mares:

• you only cross horses of the same speciality;
• a mare's first foal cannot be born before she is 4; the mating itself can be taken much earlier, the date of birth being calculated accordingly;
• foals are born on the 1st of the month, after 20 days of gestation;
• a stallion must have at least one mating quota point.

And a horse's genetics are read on its card: see A horse's card.