Help me decide on a stallion to breed my mare to! Update #120

[duckluck]

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Yes, you'd need to check first of the stallion is approved or needs approving by your breed registry first for shipped semen, and also make sure the stallion has been tested the year you ship it, or in other words, has "had his pipes cleaned" for the season. Stallions' semen does not always ship well or arrive in good shape at all points of the season, it can vary. Hotter weather can cause semen quality to deteriorate before the stallion is even collected. You'd also need to know what his history looks like so far for the season, and what the results of it being tested or shipped look like...I had someone try to ship me cooled semen once for breeding that could not survive the mixing with the extenders used in it for shipping; even the control sample held back at their vet's office was dead by the next day. This results in useless semen being shipped at high cost. A good reproductive vet will check motility and viability of semen before charging you for AI on your end. This will help you get back your stud fee if the semen is no good, but you are still out the shipping costs.

Me personally, whatever stallion you pick, I would go and see that stallion in person and meet him before breeding to him. A lot of people, pictures and videos can say or show a lot of things, but all the proof you need will be right in front of you when you see it in person. Airline tickets can be costly but nowhere near as costly compared to breeding something you don't want. A person can doctor a video or picture to appear like a lot of things.

I would also ask if the stallion you pick has been tested for VD, especially if he has ever been used for live cover or has been imported from outside the country. You'd be surprised how many people assume that horses they import have been tested for everything under the sun coming through quarantine. If they don't know, have them test it or pass them up. I've passed on a stallion who was doing live covers AND collections in the same season for this reason.

There are also a few folks out there who say they CAN ship semen but have never actually DONE it. They say this so the customer can pay for their training and testing, and so they can collect money up front. The time to find out a stallion isn't able to be collected is not after you've paid and maybe even had your mare induced into heat or waited for her to get a follicle ready to ovulate. You certainly want to make sure your stallion owner "vets out" as well as the stallion himself, because you don't want to be calling for semen and have them going "Ummmmm..."

 

[schellie69]

I like #1 I think he would be great with your horse. Good luck

 

[duckluck]

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Several breeds, especially the rare ones like this one, use linebreeding to lock in the desirable traits, especially if their stud book is still in the stage of accepting foundation stock into the book.

The breed that I have has faced extinction twice, and so you don't find pedigrees out there where some linebreeding isn't present. So I wouldn't turn down a good stallion for breeding based on that.

 

[duckluck]

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Yes, and you also have to consider them based on what kind of schedule they are willing to keep...are they willing to drop everything, collect the stallion and drive to the airport if needed when your mare is getting ready to ovulate? Or will they keep you waiting or guessing so she doesn't get inseminated until after she has already ovulated and therefore misses the peak timeframe for being inseminated? This can be a BIG consideration...some farms only collect on certain days, and that can mess you up.

 

[duckluck]

Quote:
Those are valid points.

Yes, the foal will be cheaper. Buying a buckskin colt or filly will run around 12-18k, and only go up as the horse ages. Sir Keith's stud fee is $1200 if I decide to go with him. She is broke to ride, so I'll be riding her once her foal is close to weaning. It can take a while to sell a gypsy just b/c of the investment, but all of the stallions I listed are well known and their foals sell well.

I have no way to know what the market will be in a year or two. A farm an hour away from us imported 140+ gypsy vanners this past year. Almost all of them are tobiano and traditional colors so that's a plus for us, but I'm sure they'll saturate the market quickly. The money part of this will obviously come into play, but it's not the most important thing to me. I get a lot of enjoyment just being around gypsies, so regardless of monetary gains it's all worth it to me.

You can ride the mare as soon as you feel she is recovered from foaling to help imprint the foal to seeing a rider and halter break the baby. This is often useful and makes further training a lot less stressful. One mare that I used to have that I had bred could not be ridden at the time she foaled, so I used my old eventing horse to pony her with the foals at foot, at less than a week old, and used the same horse to pony the foals as soon as they were more used to haltering. (Also imprinted the foals with Dr. Miller's method at birth.) They were very easy to train using these methods.

 

[Peaches Lee]

Quote:
Several breeds, especially the rare ones like this one, use linebreeding to lock in the desirable traits, especially if their stud book is still in the stage of accepting foundation stock into the book.

The breed that I have has faced extinction twice, and so you don't find pedigrees out there where some linebreeding isn't present. So I wouldn't turn down a good stallion for breeding based on that.

Ugh! Don't I know it. Friesians and Cartujano Andalusians--lots of linebreeding for reasons you stated above. At one point Friesians were down to just 3 stallions

There is only so much you can do, but due to genetic issues, I try to stay away from close pedigrees (like mare & stud have same sire).

 

[georgialee]

duckluck - thanks so much for all that info

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Yeah but we STILL can't see most of the mare's or stallions' actual conformation.

Maybe that is just the way the Vanner world is, I don't know, but it does kind of *worry* me not to be able to tell how any of them are built. (Even your own mare, although YOU at least can look at her even if we can't)

Just doesn't seem to be a great way to breed functional horses. Oh wait, I forgot, they're not functional horses, they're (as you say) Fabio

-- I don't know, whatever, it is not horse breeding as I know it anyhow.

(e.t.a. for Jamie_Dog_Trainer -- to be fair, with stallions on a heavy breeding schedule you usually try to go into the breeding season with them carrying good weight, so they can have decent fertility and "vigor" throughout the season; and many many breeding stallions are not actively-working athletes for any of a variety of reasons some of them legitimate, therefore it can be a real fine line between lardy and too-thin-to-breed-optimally. So, it is sometimes reasonably excusable to have stud horses look kind of flabby. Honestly I kind of suspect that most of those are like that partly because of draft horse physique, partly because it "sells" better to have them looking Big if flabby than thin-but-fit, and largely because I doubt anyone is really doing anything terribly fitting-up with them in the first place, they are not really "using" horses most of 'em)

Pat

 

[welsummerchicks]

'plenty of pictures'

not where you can see the whole horse, and very few videos where you can see where they move - except for the rainbow and kittens slow mo running in the pasture, which doesn't help.

I would be far more concerned about the stallion owner's experience with shipping semen, their overall conception rate and the rate for that stallion, whether they are shipping chilled or frozen, whether the stallion has any STD's, all the nuts and bolts.

As well I would want to see that the stallion has done something, dressage, driving, whatever, I don't care, but I want to know that he's done something substantial, stayed sound, and maintained a good disposition.

I would definitely see the stallion in person. I want to know for sure what sort of temperament the stallion has, by seeing it myself, not having someone tell me what it is. The apple's not going to fall very far from the tree, so I want to know what the stallion is like.

That the offspring are selling well now - I'm sure all breeders say that. I'm not sure a stallion is going to stay popular unless he's doing something. And there is no American organization that actually collects information about sales of stallions' offspring or what they sold for.

I think someone picking out a breeding stallion for their vanner mare today, needs to prepare for a more competitive market in which movement and conformation become increasingly important. There are still plenty of 'hair and color people' in vanners, but with the recession things are changing gradually but perceptibly for the breed.

There are websites out there of 'performance vanners' doing dressage, driving, all sorts of stuff.

what's going to be selling by the time that baby's for sale will probably be different from right now. i would avoid the more extremely drafty stallions.

 

[GeneJordan]

I can't help you with a choice, but she is a beauty...