Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025

We Have A World Full Of Satllions From Which To Choose

In today's sport horse-breeding market, the world is at your fingertips, as far as access to stallions is concerned. These days, we really do have choices.

Primarily thanks to the Internet (and the numerous equestrian publications), marketing is an area that has really developed for breeders over the past few years. The sport horse world has become a truly international marketplace.
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In today’s sport horse-breeding market, the world is at your fingertips, as far as access to stallions is concerned. These days, we really do have choices.

Primarily thanks to the Internet (and the numerous equestrian publications), marketing is an area that has really developed for breeders over the past few years. The sport horse world has become a truly international marketplace.

Record keeping is now readily available for approved or recognized stallions and their offspring through the U.S. Dressage Federation and U.S. Equestrian Federation, as well as through many breed societies. These are all signs of how breeding has taken off and become a truly international business.

I believe this is the major reason why the quality of U.S. breeding has the chance to move forward in such a positive manner. With information now being much more accessible to the breeder or to the mare owner, we all have a better understanding of how to make our choices, of how to make choices based as much on quality as on convenience or price.

We can now easily choose stallions that represent the larger warmblood breed societies, and we can choose between approved stallions standing here or approved stallions standing in countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. Both are good choices because of the vastly improved quality of the stallions standing in this country. Today, the old adage that the Europeans would only sell their second-string horses to us is totally off base.

The worldwide marketplace has enabled anyone to go abroad to purchase top-quality mares, top-quality stallions and top-quality young horses through either the well-established auctions or through private sales. Consequently, the quality of the stock in this country is far above what it used to be.

Now the two choices we really have are to work from the American base or to use imported frozen semen to improve our stock. This is where we stand today, working together.

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Mare owners have particularly made a big investment and brought over top-quality mares to America.

As a result, we’re seeing a lot of success being built in this country. Now, I don’t think our breeding marketplace is sustainable by itself–I don’t think any market is sustainable by itself–because we’ll always need to look to supplement it with outcrosses. So, through the technology of frozen semen (and the other breeding technologies), basically we have a virtual candy shop when we look to pick a stallion.

Because we now have such a tremendous candy shop of stallion choices, some people ask, “Why do we need to rely on European markets? Why do we need their horses?”

Because we still need to de-velop larger scale and scope in our breeding program. We need to develop our own bloodlines, and we need to incorporate new lineages and quality into these lines. There will always be a place to add new stallions or new bloodlines, especially through the mares, additions that will help us expand our own breeding programs.

We’re certainly on the right track, but I believe strongly that we’re not able to be self-sustaining to generate the quality needed. I certainly hope that one day we’ll only need to go to Europe to import specific bloodlines. But right now I think it would be wise to use the opportunities we have available to keep expanding, to bring in new stallions and better mares and mare lines.

I believe that the marketplace in America has really grown. Thanks to the record keeping we have now, we can see what American-based stallions are producing, and we can compare that to the influence of frozen semen from foreign-based stallions. That’s an extremely positive development, a sign that things are moving forward in a very good direction.

I can’t say that the quality of our mare base, or the quality of the foals hitting the ground here, is truly comparable yet to Europe, but on percentages, in a way it is. The Europeans produce so many more sport horses than we do here in America, which means that they can simply produce more superstar horses than we can. I still think that the percentage of top horses we produce is equivalent. But the bottom line is that Europe will continue to produce more top-quality horses, at least for the foreseeable future.

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The Europeans still have the same percentage of average horses and the same percentage of lower-quality horses; and that means we have less to work with and must make the most out of every horse. This makes our selection process critical, because of the small scale we’re talking about. It means we have to select our matings even more carefully than they do, to enable every combination to have a chance to push us forward. We can’t just hope that we–or someone else–will be able to make the young horses we breeders produce into a successful horse.

We need to make the most out of every combination and choose carefully so that our young horses, because of the limited numbers that we have, will have the best chance to represent the breeder, the breed society and the sport.

Most mare owners have only one, two or three mares, and they need success with these few combinations to want to continue breeding. If the matches they choose produce useful, financially rewarding horses, it keeps them engaged and their whole program grows larger and more exciting.

Having said that, as we look through publications like this Stallion Issue, where we see a world of choices laid out before us, the first step we have to take is to go through all the pages and develop a few stallion candidates. The first step for the mare owner in decision making–through publications, through using the Internet, through talking to friends or another method–is to create a list of stallions in which you’re interested.

My next column, in January, will address what to do once you’ve established your “hit list.”

Scott Hassler

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