BREEDING is as much of an art as a science and when it comes to the latter, there is a growing wealth of reliable data available to help breeders with their pedigree research.

Increasing your pool of knowledge is a valuable tool for all breeders and one that can really pay dividends when it comes to making informed breeding decisions.

As both Martin Donohoe in Goresbridge and Stuart Clarke in Cavan will tell you, the main markets for Irish Sport Horses are Britain and America, particularly for event horses, followed by Canada and Europe.

Meanwhile, there is strong global demand for good ponies and work is well underway on Horse Sport Ireland’s new Irish Sport Pony Studbook.

HSI statistics readily show that of young horses sold out of the country, that subsequently achieve FEI standard Eventing level, over 40%are sold as young horses to the USA and are are produced there, and a further 27% are sold to Great Britian to be produced through British Eventing. In Ireland, of those horses that achieved FEI level competition 14% were produced through Eventing Ireland competitions and a further 19% came through the and Young Eventers Series, formerly called, the Future Event Horse League.

HSI’s own database, CapallOir, now renamed IHR Online, is improving all the time and will be relaunched in April. It’s an invaluable tool for breeders and we are adding layers of verified data into it on a constant basis. New forms allow each breeder to input certain data themselves and once this is validated by HSI staff, that will appear on that mare’s IHR Database record. Also, stallion owners can now submit covering certs online with the new system, saving time and money.

Asides from the pedigree of horses, each foal registered with HSI is now also on the IHR Database. In addition to data from FEI , EI, SJI and British Eventing records, more data is manually gathered for stallion records and genetic evaluations from USEF, Horse Telex and Hippomundo so it’s a constantly evolving process, which adds to the star ratings of the stallions.

BREEDING VALUES

Estimated Breeding Values (EBV) are a prediction of a horse’s ability to pass on genes to the next generation. EBVs normally range from 20 to 120 for any given trait. Most have a score of 80 to 120 and the average is 100. Any BV below 100 is below the average.

Therefore, a mare of 141+ is in the top 1% in the country. The Genetic Evaluation (GE) average is 100. So if you have a horse at 60 or 70, the chances of breeding a show jumping elite horse is less than slim. Whereas if that number is from 130 up, you have a good chance to breed a good horse or upgrade that mare line.

Apart from the figures, accuracy or reliability are the next most important factors to keep in mind. Accuracy ratings go from zero to 1, the closer to 1 the better, a reading of 0.7 or greater is okay for stallions. It’s also a fact that accuracy improves as the quality of the information improves. The challenge for mares in Ireland, is that many of them do not have a competition record and they have a limited number of progeny, therefore their accuracy values tend to be lower than stallions.

The available FEI data only includes data from ranking classes so in order to complete each picture of each animal, a laborious data-compiling process, using other reliable sources, is undertaken by HSI staff.

HSI also uses the Lifetime Performance Rating as a model, this identifies the success of a horse at a particular level, very similar to an approach used by KWPN. It gives two figures, both of which are fed into Genetic Evaluation data. Challenges are thrown up by the dearth of data on mares with as little as 3% actually going and competing.

HSI tries to encourage breeders to produce the mare, by funding young horse classes and specific mare championships and urges owners to provide additional performance information to us via IHR online. For mares who have not competed, we have other assessment. The mare inspection process, for example, gives breeders a chance to have their mare assessed.

Stallion book data with breeding values for top horses like Baloubet de Rouet and Cruising (ISH) are reliable due to the number of competing progeny, which, in turn, yields lots of information.

Validated Pedigree Reports are a source of good information for mares and allow breeders to see what particular nicks work for their horses.

Horse Sport Ireland is also providing free DNA tests for performance ponies for the new studbook.