Questions and more questions.
I have a lot of those.
Do the parents’ racing ability affect the horse’s racing ability? How much? Do the grandparents’?
Is the ability to produce stars genetic?
Are there any sought after lines?
Is the horses producing ability related to it’s racing ability. So if a horse can’t run to save it’s life, will it’s foals be able to run?
I am mostly curious about #3. but the others are important too. As you can probably tell, I’m new and hope to really get a nice stable going. Looking forward to getting to know you.
Big name sire like What’s It Worth, Highland Rogue etc are definitly valuable, but I would say the most precious lines are from the top broodmares of FF. You can breed to any stud, but its more difficult to get a direct descendent through the female line of some of these lovely ladies (at the bottom of the HALL OF FAME page is a list of Riene de Course and Chief de Course broodmares and sires respectively).
Sought after lines can be very personal–I know I’m partial to some mares, simply because their sibs have run well for me. For example, I’m probably one of the people most partial to Highland Laird foals, simply because one of his sons has run exceedingly well for me (23 stakes wins). Of course, those with desireable lines on the female side will most likely be sold for large chunks of change.
As I’m not big into breeding yet, I can’t completely demystify it for you. However, some mares who have just not been able to run on the track to save their life, have gone on to be decent broodmares–producing at least consistent winners and sometimes stakes winners. Usually the cross, though, is rather important. Jason could (and should!) probably give a lecture on selecting studs for mares and what to look for. His babies always tend to come out rather pretty.
As for the inheritance side of things… yes, racehorses inherit their talent (or lack there-of) from their parents. Grandparents affect it in that they were the ones who determined the talent of the parents. In the case of in-breeding (the same horse appearing in the foal’s pedigree more than once) I believe the foal has an extra high chance of being like the grandparent (as well as a good chance of maturing late and having soundness issues).
Each horse has a BPF (bloodline producing factor or somethign similar) that determines how similar foals are to them. A super horse with a high BPF is almost definately going to throw nice foals. A nice horse with a low one will throw more random foals (ie less likelyhood of foals being consistantly like the parent). Stallions also have a BMBPF, which determines how well they throw good broodmares (in real life, Secretariat is known as a broodmare sire, his fillies didn’t race that great, but they threw awesome babies). I think in the last 2 weeks or so Shanthi posted something about the affect of a high/low BPF on mediocre horses, search for BPF and/or breeding and you should be able to find it.
There are lines that are known to do better (Rogue and Worth being two of these), but (no offense Shanthi) sometimes with these horses you end up paying way more than you should just because of the bloodlines. I think this is a bigger issue with Rogue right now than Worth, as direct Worth decendents are still racing. There are lots of other, younger stallions that appear to be doing just as well. Irish River and Secretary are both younger sires who’ve had a lot of success with their foals. There are probably 20-30 mares who’s lines make the foals nearly priceless. You can see the top ones of those in the Reine-de-course list, but there are quite a few others who aren’t on there yet. I think to be a RdC the mare has to have grandbabies running and kicking butt as well. (Could be wrong here, I didn’t make the formula that calculates RdC scores.)
And finally, BPF is a seperate stat from racing ability. They are both inherited, but are not related/linked.
Thanks to everyone who has replied to this thread, and I hope more of you seasoned veterans will add your thoughts! It has given me a lot of insight into the breeding world. I’ve seemed to pick up on the racing well though, but understanding the breeding part of the game has been illusive to me. I have my first broodmare, and even though she isn’t due until 2011, I am overwhelmed by the thought of picking a stallion to breed her to, because there are so many different factors you can try to breed for and tons of different angles to look at when choosing a stallion. So, once again, thanks to everyone for offering insight!
I am on the same page as Taylon. The “what makes a good mix” thing is something I find somewhat mystifying. I have made several broodmare purchases, A) because I could afford them and B) because their topside is somewhat fashionable. For the most part my mares are not great racers…again if they were I couldn’t have acquired them. When it came to breeding them my approach was simple and obviously not scientific eneough. I scanned the sire page and looked for high percentage of stakes producers. As an example, Gimme A Shot looks like a world-beater. His book wasn’t close to full and I really wondered why. I have one to him, and a bunch to Storybook’s stallion line, because they look like producers or have what looks like great potential. How they mix with Affirmed mares etc., is another story. So, as Taylon said, feel free to chime in. I would love to throw some nice babies and am more than willing to do the research. I just don’t quite know what I’m looking for.
When 2 horses are bred, a “quality index” of the average of the parents is generated. This index is then used to determine the overall quality of the foal. ALL breedings have a chance to produce any quality of foal: superdud, dud, average, star, superstar. Obviously, a really high quality pair of parents will have a better chance to produce a superstar than a superdud, but not by much (as both are rare).
As Andrea said, BPF/BMBPF combine to determine how similar the foal’s stats are to their parents’. However, there is a lot of randomness involved, to simulate real-life genetics.
It’s not bell-curved. Basically each horse (back in SD) got converted to our personal, cracked up system. Then some other random changes happened, and that’s how we got the stats now. So QI’s aren’t bell-curved, they’re simply a sort of I dunno… ranking score based on how good the sire/dam info is. It may or may not even be compared against min/max for all horses (I forget, I think it might be?)
Random horses generated in the past 4 months or so do have a very, very basic bell-curve generated in for each stat (ie <25%, 25-75%, 75%+).
The “I dunno” portion of the program makes me feel better, I think, about the path I’ve taken in selecting stallions for my mares. After reading the first part of the thread I was thinking there was some sort of formula for matching bloodlines for a better shot at something good. I think what I’m seeing, though, is it’s really a crapshoot. Sure, the really nice racers with great bloodlines (mares) should have a better shot of producing than the sort I’m currently accumulating. I get that. Given what I’m dealing with mare-wise, it would appear that you just find something you like…lot’s of Storybooks for me …and see what happens.
I tend to lean towards the belief that certain lines are far superior to others. This I guess is most evident in my breedings for this year where I’ve focused on developing some lines for my stable centred largely around Highland Rogue and What’s It Worth. I don’t really see the point of smaller stables experimenting with breedings or looking for cheap studs. If you only have a dozen or so mares to breed I would be figuring out the maximum I could spend on a stud and then breeding to these guys because, in most instances, they’re proven. So, I’d look at studs like Highland Bandit (and other Highland Rogue sons such as Highland Laird), Cigar, Seattle Slew, A.P. Indy and What’s It Worth.
Linage wise, I’ll happily fork out big dollars for a mare that has a nice dam and/or granddam but was a shonky racer on the track. From what I’ve found by going through copious numbers of lines is that seemingly crappy mares from good lines can throw good foals. Daughters of Townsend Holly are probably a fairly reasonable example of this. Townsend Joy was only placed on the track but has thrown a couple of stakes quality runners. Ashleigh’s Wonder was unraced on the track but has thrown some very nice stakes horses as well as some ‘cruddy’ daughters who have produced stakes placed horses.
After having my stable downsized, I have to look for new breeding stock. After having 50 mares of which about 80% were of very high quality I know what to look for. Basically I will look for mares who are by proven broodmare sires (examples include Highland Rogue and Seattle Slew), or who are from nice damlines (look at the Reines-de-Course broodmares). Breedings will be selected based on what crosses work and what crosses will give me well bred breeding stock in the future (for example High Times will definately go back to What’s It Worth in 2011 and Highland Gold will visit another Worth son). I’m a poor-ish stable (around $200,000 in the bank on any given day) and can’t afford to muck around with my limited number of broodmares by picking out studs based on the fact that they’re running cheap. It’s a whole three years to wait for the foal to run and I’d like the breeding to give the horse the best chances to be worth the wait.
Edit: I’m not sure I made any point with this post…
Yeah, I think breeding in FF is a lot like real life…breed the best to the best and hope for the best.
Unlike other games, I don’t think there’s really a “bad” cross you can pick…however, breeding a turf-y horse like King David to a really nice dirt mare like Second Chance may get you a horse that doesn’t do very well on either surface. However, “doesn’t do well” would likely be a relative term, if the foal can kick other horses’ butts on its worst day.
Well, i’m not what you would consider an ‘old timer’ ( No offense to anyone intended) but I am no longer a newbie either.
Breeding mystified me too, at first. My first breeding season was last year. So far I have 4 Approaches to picking Stallions.
Mare line. If the mare has not had any foals, then i look at her dam. Did her Dam have any MSW, SW, SPers? if so, who was the stallion. Is that stallion still around? Can I afford him. if he’s not around then is one of his sons?
A good example of this is my Mare, Beautiful Disaster who is 1/2 to MSW Crusader. I bred her to Crusaders Sire, Gimmie A Shot , and now have a lovely black colt that is a 3/4 sibling to a MSW.
The Breeding page and Stallion Statistics - Who throws SWers? Pick the best i can afford and breed to them. Who has crossed well to my Mares line in the past , this takes some research but worth it. Any other mares by my broodmares Sire, that crossed well with a particular line? You get the idea
New Studs. Often for unknown mares, or when I just can’t figure out which stud, I will go with 1st year sires. FF just added some RL studs to the line up, I bred to several of them this year, just because I liked that horse RT.
my own Stallions - I try to send 2 mares each to my own stallions.
I"m not sure if this helps anyone or not, but I thought i’d toss in my 2 cents.
As far as I’m concerned, this is easily the most enlightening thread I’ve seen. The Vaucluse and Morning Star posts broke it down to a less random way of thinking. I don’t doubt that you can get a great thing from virtually nothing (or vice versa), but I like the thinking behind how you guys approach the selection process. What it does is make for more work, but that’s the fun of this game. I’m done with the 2010 breedings, but I’ll be scoping out 2011 like mad. I really think this at the very least will give me a little more to think about when I plan next year’s breedings.
I like, use and reccommend Rhi’s idea regarding looking at crosses that have worked well in certain families and breeding based on those lines. Yes it might have been done before, but hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Last year (2011 foals), I bred the Central Coast Lodge mares specifically (apart from the 30 mares that went to I’m A Classic and Highland Mystery) to studs that their dams had had some success with. I can’t remember exactly, but of the 20 mares I sent to outside studs, I was going to end up with something like 80% of them being at minimum 3/4 siblings to something quite tidy. Even some horses I sent to my Highland Rogue son (such as Reason Enough) had previously crossed well with Rogue lines or had family who had worked well.
I actually tend not to pay overt amounts of attention to surface likes/dislikes. I’ve generally found that with raced studs that I like (and they have to be pretty high calibre) and with studs that haven’t raced (or raced under the old code) that they seem to throw relatively 50-50 surface wise. Distance is a bit more of a factor to me. No point sending a 24 furlong steeplechaser to a 5 furlong dirt master… That’s just common sense. Which by itself should get even the most clueless breeder by.
Again, no answer required. Jeez is that plagiaristic or what?
…and see what happens.