Line breeding horses

[OldKat]

Have been reading the previously posted threads in the “Horses” folder and saw some mentions of phenotype vs. genotype, appropriate conformation for work horses etc so I know there is some interest here in breeding. Before asking my question, let me give some background as to why I ask it.

I once read a book on line breeding by a Hereford cattle breeder named Lentz in Oklahoma. Ed Lentz, I do believe was his name. He stated that in earlier times the lack of transportation meant that cows (in the example he gave) would be driven to a nearby farm and bred to the local “outstanding bull”. Since there was a limit to the distance people could logically drive their cows to be serviced the offspring tended to become very uniform (over time) within a specific region, because they were closely related. He said this was in fact the origin of what we now call breeds.

There was and still is a need to protect against inbreeding, but his book gave guidelines of how to protect against this. He stated that his herd of Herefords was a “closed” herd, with no new blood in it since the sometime in the 1880’s or so. He said he had experienced NONE of the problems associated with inbreeding because he was carful to never allow the offspring to carry anymore than 50% of the blood of any given ancestor.

We used his principles and had great success with line breeding market rabbits when the kids were in 4-H & FFA. We could breed them to be like peas in a pod, which is very useful when trying to put together a pen of three uniform bunnies. So I know that line breeding can work. I am using it now with my Red Angus cattle, but just getting to the first generation crosses. I am looking to preserve a body type that was almost lost because of over dependence on show-ring standards & EPD’s (expected progeny differences). I think it could also be used to preserve the old time easy keeper type work horses, which may be called “chunks” in some regions (though I think that term may mean something else in other locales)

All of that to ask this, or actually these questions; 1) does anyone know of any draft horses breeders (of ANY breed) that use line breeding in their operation? If so, how could I contact them? & 2) Does anyone know of any breeders that can & will ship cooled semen from their draft studs? (since we now have the exact opposite problem of the earlier generation of agriculturalists in that we are now have almost limitless transportation … resulting in the stud farms being generally too spread out from each other) The idea of sending mares from south central Texas to Ohio, Pennsylvania or New York to be bred to the “right” stallion does not have a lot of appeal to me. Not that I am ready to breed my mares at this time, I am just thinking long range. Any thoughts would be welcome.

[Gabe Ayers]

Old Kat,

I am not interested in promoting line breeding as a principle of animal husbandry in the modern world, but I do have some experience with related horses being breed to each other.

When I first became interested in Suffolk horses, I was even poorer than I am now (1978). At that time there was a grading up program through the Suffolk
Association where a mare of like color and conformation could be bred to a registered Suffolk stallion and all females could be registered as percentage horses starting as 1/2, then bred to another registered Suffolk stallion and the female offspring registered as 3/4, then again with the females registers as full bred. This is how I got started because I happen to have an old family connection with the fellow that ran the killer barn that once slaughtered horses for mostly shipment of horse meat to Europe. This fellow had traded with my grandfather throughout my childhood and I happened to meet his
son after both our parental figures had passed on. He allowed me to collect some chestnut mares by separating them from the slaughter line and allowing me to have my pick. This is what I did to establish a cheap string of mares to start our program. I bought/swapped for a stud colt from an Amish that had bred the colt by crossing a sire back on a daughter, generally because he had not other sires available. This was the first Suffolk I owned and he was intended to be crossed on the mares from the killer barn that I had selected for conformation and color (chestnut). This horse was smaller than some, which I think may be a problem with breeding related horses. They can become diminutive or smaller. This first Suffolk colt (Samson) crossed very well on unrelated mares and produced horses that we much larger than him and were very true to type, color and maybe most important in this day and age disposition. I only kept mares from him and gelded every male and never sold a stallion from Samson. Of course as my luck had it, the Suffolk Association quit the grading up program about the time my stud colt and string of killer mares became of a productive age. So I eventually had to acquire registered Suffolk mares to keep the program going in order to keep the value of the offspring of a higher value for sale off the farm. I eventually got rid of all my killer mares and kept female offspring of the line bred or inbred stallion. In the end of the grading up program I think there were less than twenty percentage mares infused into the registered Suffolk bloodlines.

Since that time I have crossed all my mares with unrelated stallions and have kept a couple of colts entire and moved them into the market, that includes successful sires that have went all over the country, just a few, maybe three… These horses all were similar type, being short coupled, dark solid red and kind, willing workers that were easy to train and use.

I did have an accidental breeding of two half brother and sister pair a few years ago. This means the deer ran through the stallions electric fence while I was off the farm, out of town and the stallion joined the herd where all was fair game and he bred one of his half sisters (same sire for both). The offspring of this cross was an extremely common type Suffolk, being dark chestnut and short coupled, blocky animal, again that was extremely easy to work with. However the female that resulted from this line breeding is smaller than her herd mates from unrelated matings. She is sweet and beautiful, but is smaller. So I think that may be an issue with line breeding although this cross representing both parents only having half of the same blood through the having the same sire.

Since we now have DNA and blood typing it would seem that we could evolve our horses based on science of inter breed hybrids or breeding horses within a
traceable bloodline to horses that are not closely related at all, say third cousins. This is what we are basically doing in some cases now. I haven’t had a foal of this crossing yet, but will this spring. One of our current sires is a third cousin on the dams side with a couple of mares we bred him with. It will be interesting to see the results.

Now, we do have a local facility that collects and ships fresh semen all over the world. We advertise this on the Suffolk Association site and have not had a single taker thus far. We just charge the same fee for the stud service and let the rest of the cost be a matter between the A.I. lab and the customer.
I think it is very expensive for someone that just wants a great work horse.
I know artificial insemination has been used on mares in England from American sires and vice versa.

Frankly at this point I am charging the same breeding fees as twenty years ago and don’t have that many outside mares. Folks seem to want to bred there mares for less than $500.00 and that is not enough to make keeping a stallion worth it unless the horse works right along with all the others on the place. This is what we do and that makes the horse truly proven as a sire.

When taught animal husbandry in college the order of concern was, conformation, procreation and disposition. Today since most folks don’t work them enough to wear them out it seems that disposition may be more important as the first concern, then conformation and procreation or reproduction. If you can’t get along with them you aren’t going to work them no matter what they look like or how they are built.

These are just some thoughts from our experience. Hope it is enjoyable reading for anyone thinking of breeding work horses. It is a matter of doing the best we can with what we have. This particular breed is hard to out cross within the registry but it can be done with careful attention to the bloodlines and some importation of new blood into your breeding program every few years or so. There are some really good breeders of Suffolks and I think the president of the ASHA up in NH has some great stock. I wonder if he is on this site? John Hammond, are you here?

Good post Old Kat, keep us up with what you are doing, because the future could include transportation cost that prohibit the choice of distant sires. Maybe A.I. could be an alternative, but it isn’t cheap either.

The point is to work the horses in the settings that presents the culture as a superior practice and therefore making them worth more to anyone. That is our goal and approach in the practice of restorative forestry.

[OldKat]

Jason,

Thanks for the informative and in-depth reply. Wow, you really put some thought into that! Not in the form of arguing with you, because I don’t care for that sort of thing, but I have taken the liberty of copying parts of your post to clarify what I was saying in mine.

… I bought/swapped for a stud colt from an Amish that had bred the colt by crossing a sire back on a daughter, generally because he had not other sires available. This was the first Suffolk I owned and he was intended to be crossed on the mares from the killer barn that I had selected for conformation and color (chestnut). This horse was smaller than some, which I think may be a problem with breeding related horses. They can become diminutive or smaller. This first Suffolk colt (Samson) crossed very well on unrelated mares and produced horses that we much larger than him and were very true to type, color and maybe most important in this day and age disposition.

I think Sampson would have been defined as inbred, rather than line bred due to the fact that he would have had 75% of his fathers’ blood. There are very often problems that arise when crossing that closely. That is why Mr. Lentz in his work had cautioned against it.

I did have an accidental breeding of two half brother and sister pair a few years ago. This means the deer ran through the stallions electric fence while I was off the farm, out of town and the stallion joined the herd where all was fair game and he bred one of his half sisters (same sire for both). The offspring of this cross was an extremely common type Suffolk, being dark chestnut and short coupled, blocky animal, again that was extremely easy to work with. However the female that resulted from this line breeding is smaller than her herd mates from unrelated matings. She is sweet and beautiful, but is smaller. So I think that may be an issue with line breeding although this cross representing both parents only having half of the same blood through the having the same sire.

When breeding animals that are half sister & half brother you derive at an offspring that is a grandson or granddaughter to the common ancestor, but would percentage of blood wise be equivalent to a son or a daughter. When I was line-breeding rabbits which by the way was an excellent species to utilize (for obvious reasons), I never experienced the problem of smaller offspring. Though honestly, with an animal that has a target market weight of only 5 pounds it could have been happening and I couldn’t tell. Unless the bunnies could only reach say 3&1/2 pounds I probably couldn’t tell the difference anyway. This would be a good thing to watch for however, so I will be sure to monitor this with my cattle.

Also, isn’t the gene pool of the Suffolk breed in the US fairly small to begin with? That was the case originally with Red Angus cattle and they had to be very careful when making any given mating to make sure there where not too many closely related ancestors. Now that the registrations are in the million plus range there are obviously more individuals to select from.

Since we now have DNA and blood typing it would seem that we could evolve our horses based on science of inter breed hybrids or breeding horses within a traceable bloodline to horses that are not closely related at all, say third cousins. This is what we are basically doing in some cases now. I haven’t had a foal of this crossing yet, but will this spring. One of our current sires is a third cousin on the dams side with a couple of mares we bred him with. It will be interesting to see the results.

Actually, I think breeding third cousins would still be considered line breeding … though admittedly not really close line breeding. Good luck with this batch of foals, I am particularly interested in the how the foals turn out from the two mares you mentioned.

Now, we do have a local facility that collects and ships fresh semen all over the world. We advertise this on the Suffolk Association site and have not had a single taker thus far. We just charge the same fee for the stud service and let the rest of the cost be a matter between the A.I. lab and the customer. I think it is very expensive for someone that just wants a great work horse. I know artificial insemination has been used on mares in England from American sires and vice versa.

I guess it may have to do with some difference between handling bull semen vs. stallion semen or maybe a it is case of scale (i e demand), because bull semen is generally priced at about $15.0 per straw. That makes it a viable alternative for AI breeding cows. If the semen was priced at the same price as a live cover then I could see how it would not be an attractive option for most people. Of course, in my case it still might be because there are so few drafter stallions in my area. Also, I wonder how much of this has to do with the difficulty of finding a vet or AI technician that will AI the mares? I know in our area most will not fool with it.

Frankly at this point I am charging the same breeding fees as twenty years ago and don’t have that many outside mares. Folks seem to want to bred there mares for less than $500.00 and that is not enough to make keeping a stallion worth it unless …

I fully understand what you are saying. Really very few draft horses in my part of the country, and there really never have been. However, there are PLENTY of light horses here and the keepers of stallions say the exact same thing that you say. Certainly there are people that will pay more for a stud service, but most wont.

Similarly, it is rare around here for people to bring a cow to have it bred to someone’s bull. Usually if they have more than just a few cows they will buy their own bull. However, few want to pay more than about 1&1/2 to 2 times what a cow will sell for. This has resulted in some serious problems for us. I can say without reservation that the cattle within a 50 mile radius of where I live (and there are tens and hundreds of thousands of them) are generally the sorriest they have been in my lifetime. Probably the sorriest they have been since they roamed semi-feral in this area in the days after the Civil War. This results from the continued use of inferior bulls, the bull-of-the-month mentality (where every time a new breed came to the US people would buy one to put into their herd) and generally poor management practices. We now have mostly what I call “Shegotsum” cattle … which is what you hear when you ask the question; “What kind of cow is that?” The answer goes something like this … “Well, she got some Hereford, she got some Angus, she got some Charolais, she got some …. (any of about 10 other breeds)”. No inbreeding here, but unlimited crossbreeding seems to have resulted in a mongrel cow herd. Kind of like the Canardly dogs Carl mentioned in another thread.

Good post Old Kat, keep us up with what you are doing, because the future could include transportation cost that prohibit the choice of distant sires. Maybe A.I. could be an alternative, but it isn’t cheap either.

No, it seems that nothing that has to do with horses is cheap.

The point is to work the horses in the settings that presents the culture as a superior practice and therefore making them worth more to anyone. That is our goal and approach in the practice of restorative forestry.

This is a VERY good point. I hadn’t thought of it like that before. I’ll have to remember this.

Thanks again for your reply.

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