The manager of one of America's top Thoroughbred farms discussed selection of breeding stock at a CTBA seminar
by Rick Simon
from THE THOROUGHBRED OF CALIFORNIA, November 1996
Pedigree, Performance and Conformation.
"Any discussion of breeding stock comes down to those three ingredients," noted Dan Rosenberg, manager of Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Ky., one of America's most successful Thoroughbred nurseries. 'What we're always trying to do in selecting mares, stallions or matings is to try to balance these elements."
Rosenberg was the keynote speaker at a seminar on Selection of Breeding Stock held at Harris Farms in Coalinga, Calif., on Sept. 28. The seminar was sponsored by the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association, with funding assistance from the Oak Tree Racing Association.
Of course, everyone wants as much pedigree, performance and conformation as possible in breeding stock, but Rosenberg noted that the few mares who are strong in all three areas cost too much for most breeders to afford them.
"The problem is to get the most bang for your buck," he suggested. "Always buy as much pedigree, as much performance and as good conformation as you can possibly afford." In considering pedigrees, Rosenberg believes in the adage, "The family is stronger than the individual."
"Good families sometimes go quiet for a couple of generations," he said, "but they always seem to come back. If I have to sacrifice a strong family close up, I do want the mare to trace back to a very strong foundation broodmare. When the first and second dams are a little weak, it is also important to me to look at the broodmare sires of these first two dams.
"I'm not particularly interested in a mare by an unsuccessful stallion out of an unsuccessful mare who is by an unsuccessful stallion, no matter who the third or fourth dam is. This is not necessarily a matter of a family having gone quiet, but possibly a matter of a family having been poisoned."
While he will go back a few generations to find strong family connections, Rosenberg doesn't want to have to search too far back to find top racing performance. He wants performance "up as close as I can possibly afford." He advises avoiding mares and stallions who had a lot of chances and couldn't win.
'What we have selected for in Thoroughbred breeding for 250 years is not speed or a physical type," he reasoned. "It is an innate desire to win, and it is competitiveness and courage and grit. A horse with plenty of opportunities to win that doesn't win maybe didn't want to win badly enough.
"If I can't buy a mare with top performance, I want to find a mare who showed some real ability," he said.
Rosenberg told breeders and potential breeders in his audience to do their homework in studying a horse's racing record. For example, find out how many starts the horse had and against what kind of company and where. If possible, talk to the owner, trainer and jockey about the horse.
"Pretty is as pretty does," Rosenberg offered, as he turned his attention to conformation. "I have to like a winner of a good race, no matter what the horse looks like."
He told a story about the Tartan Farms dispersal several years ago, when "the smartest people in the world" were shopping and saying, "Have you ever seen such a bunch of crooked mares?"
"The fact is every one of those mares ran a hole in the wind and every one of those mares produced stakes winners," Rosenberg said. 'to me, that's the model."
But Rosenberg does look for some conformation traits when selecting broodmares. He likes a "big and roomy mare" who can carry a big foal, because he feels a small mare cannot develop a good foal in utero.
"I do think a good shoulder and balance are important," he continued. "I don't mind if the knees are a liffle offset or the legs toe in or toe out to some degree, within reason. I do not want mares who are back at the knees or with bad feet. I have found that bad feet are highly inheritable."
Rosenberg says another important consideration is the age of the mare. In an older mare, there is additional information available ‹ her produce record. 'That's probably the best measure," he said.
However, he noted there is a bias in the marketplace against foals of older mares, because statistics show older mares produce a lower percentage of superior runners than younger mares do. Rosenberg believes those statistics are skewed.
"I find, in general, that young mares are bred to proven stallions to get them off to a good start, and older mares are bred to unproven stallions to get the stallions off to a good start," he said. "Since most unproven stallions don't make the grade, younger mares have a far greater opportunity to come up with a good racehorse than older mares.
"It's hard for me to imagine a mare's genetic potential can change with age," he continued. "Fertility is another story. There is ample evidence that once a mare gets past 17 or 18 years of age, her fertility declines dramatically."
Rosenberg noted that people looking to get a big bang for their buck sometimes purchase an older mare and hope they get a filly. He thinks that can be a good way to go, but cautions that the breeder may not get many chances with an older mare.
The Three Chimneys manager also recommends "ruthless culling" as part of the on-going selection process.
"It is important to look at your broodmares every year and determine which ones are performing up to expectations and which ones are not," he advised. "As breeders, we are constantly trying to move the bottom out and raise the level."
That is another reason Rosenberg likes to breed young mares to proven sires.
"If I have bred my mare to an unproven stallion and the first two or three foals don't run, I don't know if I want to get rid of this mare or not," he noted. "If I breed her to a horse I know gets runners and she still can't get a runner, it does tell me something about her."
Rosenberg said the same principles he applies to selecting mares apply to selecting stallions, although he puts some added emphasis on pedigree. "A stallion with a great race record and a very weak pedigree has far less chance of siring good racehorses consistently than a good racehorse with a great pedigree," he said. "I would prefer a stallion be a graded stakes winner, but if not, I would want to have a very good idea of what kind of ability he had. A royally bred full brother to a champion that ran 10 times and couldn't win does not interest me. A fulL brother to a champion who broke his maiden his first time out and never ran again might interest me."
Rosenberg also considers a stallion's 2-year-old record.
"It does seem to be important that he at least was precocious enough to get to the racetrack at 2 and to win," he maintained.
Another thing he considers when selecting a stallion is the number of mares mated to the stud, which he feels is particularly important from his position as a market breeder.
"I need to have enough foals by that stallion out on the racetrack competing to give him an opportunity to come up with a good one and for him to be in the public eye," Rosenberg said. 'VVith stallions that have very small books, you are fighting an uphill battle as a breeder."
As with mares, Rosenberg tends to play down minor conformation flaws in stallions and feels the importance of a stallion's conformation relates more to planning which mares will be bred to him than whether he likes him.
"If he can get runners, I like him," he said. "Once a horse is a proven sire, buyers tend to forgive conformation flaws that they expect to see by that sire."
He recalled an instance at a Keeneland sale when a prominent California owner and trainer were looking at a Mr. Prospector colt.
"You know, I've looked at every Mr. Prospector in this sale, and they're all crooked," the owner said.
"Yeah, but they limp fast," the trainer responded.
In planning matings, Rosenberg recommends breeding strength to strength and avoiding breeding a weakness to a weakness.
"This pertains not only to conformation traits but to racing characteristics and temperament," he said. He feels breeders make a fundamental mistake when they try to compensate for a characteristic of a horse by breeding it to a horse with an opposite characteristic.
"I remember in high school biology learning about Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics," Rosenberg said. "He bred tall peas to short peas, and he didn't get any medium peas. You either get tall or short; that's the way genetics works.
"But I find people who have a great big mare and breed her to a tiny horse thinking they are going to get an average size foal, or they've got this tiny mare and want to breed her to a stallion 17 hands to breed some size into her," he said, carrying the pea analogy to horse breeding. "I don't find it works that way at all.
"The same with speed and stamina. You have a mare that was really quick at five furlongs and breed her to a horse that could run a mile and a half, and you think you will get a horse that can run a mile. I think what you get is something that can't run at all."
Rosenberg also points out that mating two horses with similar conformation characteristics will produce more consistent conformation results.
"You have a mare who presumably is a model of what you are trying to accomplish," he said. "If you breed her to a widely divergent type of horse, sometimes you are going to get what he looks like, sometimes you are going to get what she looks like. It's always a guessing game and the odds are always against you, but if you breed like to like, you narrow that range and are more likely to get what you are looking for."
Rosenberg says there are rare stallions and mares who are strong enough to overcome and improve whatever they are bred to, but pointed out, "Both parents contribute 50 percent of the genetic material. Putting too much emphasis on either the sire or the dam is probably a mistake."
In the end, Rosenberg notes, no matter how careful and selective a breeder is, the odds are against making a profit in the marketplace or making the grade on the racetrack.
"We just hope that one day we can breed one or sell one or race one that makes up for all the others," he concluded. "But this is a wonderful challenge. It is a great combination of art and science. You have to control all the factors you can, and in the end, you just go with you gut feeling and hope you have guessed right enough of the time to get a little bit lucky.
"You have to love this to do it. You have to be at least half crazy, and probably all the way crazy helps, to persevere.
