Lady Ashlee Ann, this great 25 year-old harness racing mare produces the winner of the 2018 Little Brown Jug, Courtly Choice and he is her 15th life foal and 13th winner.
Nothing makes me laugh more than when I hear from those so call "harness racing experts on breeding" (Stallion owners, professionals, stud masters and the so called pedigree buffs) sitting behind their computers making outlandish remarks about how to breed a champion, when in fact the majority do not know what they are talking about! None of us do when it comes to breeding! I believe that there is only one rule with breeding horses and that is "THERE IS NO RULE"
One of the arguments you hear from a number of these people is that old mares are no good to breed from, that you must breed to young mares!
If only we knew it would be easy and the rich man would own the business. I have said many times that harness racing is the only business in the world that can make billionaires into millionaires! It is because the people with a lot of money think that money can buy success in breeding but that is not the case when it comes to breeding. No, breeding is not that easy!
With the $436,560 Little Brown Jug just completed yesterday I checked to see how the winners were bred and what number foal each of the starters were. Here is that result and the oldest foals produced were the best performers;
1st – Courtly Choice 15th foal (by Art Major from Lady Ashlee Ann by Camtastic)
2nd – Dorsoduro Hanover 13th foal (by Somebeachsomewhere from Deer Valley Miss by Artsplace)
3rd – Lather Up 10th foal (by I'm Gorgeous from Pocket Comb by In The Pocket)
4th – Hayden Hanover 4th foal (by Somebeachsomewhere from Hana Hanover by Western Hanover)
5th – This Is The Plan 4th foal (by Somebeachsomewhere from Thats The Plan by Western Ideal)
6th – Done Well 2nd foal (by Well Said from Dagnabit Hanover by All American Native)
7th – Babes Dig Me 3rd foal (by Bettor's Delight from Western Babe by Western Hanover)
8th – Stay Hungary 5th foal (by Somebeachsomewhere from My Little Dragon by Dragon Again)
That was the final field but here are the other starters in The Little Brown Jug for interest;
Nutcracker Sweet 10th foal (by Bettor's Delight from Sweet Future by Falcons Future)
Hitman Hill 7th foal (by American Ideal from Fox Valley Shaker by Incredible Finale)
Wes Delight 6th foal (by Bettor's Delight from Maid West by Western Hanover)
Key Advisor 3rd foal (by Somebeachsomewhere from Credit Rating by Western Honover)
Decoy 1st foal (by Somebeachsomewhere from Live Entertainment by Real Artist)
Below is a great statistical article about "Do young mares produce better race horses than old mares". This article was produced by Dr Mike Wilson of Canada a few years ago with help of Standardbred Canada.
John Curtin
Harnesslink Media
Dr Mike Wilson's article
Over the years, a number of articles have been written on the relationship between birth order and racing success. All of the ones I have read have claimed that the first and second foals are more likely to be winners than are foals of older mares. None of the authors of these articles have taken into account the different numbers of horses in each of the different parities. (Parity is birth order; for example a first foal is first parity, a ninth foal is ninth parity etc). Finally after a lengthy article on this subject in an edition of Canada’s Standardbred Trot Magazine, I was prompted into doing that analysis myself.
With the able assistance of Janet Cookson, of Standardbred Canada, I obtained the number of foals registered with Standardbred Canada and The United States Trotting Association for the years 1991 to 2001, and of these the number of winners, in each year, that had won more than $1,000,000, $500,000, or $100,000. These winners were related to birth order. The analysis was cut off at 2001 so that all horses had at least two years of racing. The raw data was then adjusted for each parity to 10,000 births so, if there were 20,000 first foals racing and among them, for example 2,000 winners, it would relate to 1,000 winners per 10,000. Similarly, if there were 2,000 tenth foals, in the same period, and only 200 winners, it would also be 1,000 per 10,000.
In total, there were 158,357 foals registered in North America in the period of 1991 to 2001, consisting of 46,756 trotters and 111,601 pacers. Tables 1 and 2 show the numbers in each parity and the number of winners at three purse-earning levels. Indeed, as others have described, there is a fairly steep drop-off in the numbers of winners as parity increases. It might appear that a first or second foal has five or six times the likelihood of winning $500,000, than for example, a ninth or tenth foal. However, if you look at tables 3 and 4, which show the same date adjusted to 10,000 horses in each category, you will see that no such trend exists. In fact, a ninth or tenth parity foal, from either a trotting or pacing mare, is as likely to become a millionaire, as is a first or second foal. Similarly, no loss of performance potential exists in either gait for $500,000 or for $100,000 trotting winners. Older pacing mare progeny appear to produce approximately 2.5% fewer $100,000 earners per 10,000 foals than do those of young mares, however, a statistical analysis of this data (performed by Dr. Kate Dewey of the Department of population Medicine at the University of Guelph), indicates that the foals of older mares are as likely to be winners in each purse earning levels as the foals of early parities (p<0.05).
I was astonished to see the very high early culling rate practiced by North American Standardbred breeders. Twenty percent of first parity mares do not produce a second foal, 15% do not produce a third foal and another 10% fail to produce a fourth foal. These culling decisions were all taken before the first foal had raced as a two-year-old! What would these data show if the 45% of culled mares had been kept in the breeding herd until they were in their ninth or tenth year parities? Why were they culled? Are older mares retained longer because those mares are superior by pedigree or by some other parameter? I intend to answer some of these questions in a later analysis.
The belief that early foals are more successful than those of later parities has led to price difference for them at major yearling sales. Murray Brown, of Standardbred Horse Sales Co. in Harrisburg, PA., once told me that after the third parity, pacing yearlings (and to a lesser extent, trotters), drop off in price rapidly. From my analysis of the data, it would appear that buyers would be well advised to not automatically exclude yearlings from older broodmares!
If older mares are at least as likely to produce big winners, as are younger mares, it begs the question as to whether there has been any genetic improvement in the ten years looked at in this study. The practice of breeding proven broodmares to new stallions and new broodmares to proven stallions is a breeding policy many currently follow. What would happen to the numbers if the policy were reversed? Could it be that older mares would look even better? In the meantime, this study clearly suggests that at yearling sale time, “Go for the old girls!”
Table 1: Number of Pacing winners (1992-2001 North America) | ||||
by Birth Order and Earnings | ||||
Birth | Winners over | Winners over | Winners over | # of foals |
Order | $1,000,000 | $500,000 | $100,000 | registered |
1st | 24 | 116 | 2,448 | 23,779 |
2nd | 25 | 17 | 1,830 | 19,067 |
3rd | 15 | 84 | 1,437 | 15,733 |
4th | 17 | 81 | 1,196 | 13,043 |
5th | 14 | 45 | 898 | 10,760 |
6th | 11 | 41 | 718 | 8,757 |
7th | 5 | 24 | 574 | 7,076 |
8th | 2 | 19 | 436 | 5,667 |
9th | 6 | 21 | 317 | 4,391 |
10th | 5 | 16 | 238 | 3,328 |
Total | 124 | 564 | 10,092 | 111,601 |
Table 2: Number of Trotting winners (1992-2001 North America) | ||||
by Birth Order and Earnings | ||||
Birth | Winners over | Winners over | Winners over | # of foals |
Order | $1,000,000 | $500,000 | $100,000 | registered |
1st | 13 | 62 | 784 | 10,312 |
2nd | 4 | 46 | 668 | 8,238 |
3rd | 13 | 34 | 499 | 6,709 |
4th | 10 | 29 | 369 | 5,509 |
5th | 4 | 21 | 312 | 4,446 |
6th | 3 | 10 | 235 | 3,495 |
7th | 3 | 14 | 188 | 2,831 |
8th | 3 | 13 | 173 | 2,216 |
9th | 4 | 9 | 119 | 1,730 |
10th | 1 | 5 | 81 | 1,270 |
Total | 58 | 243 | 3,428 | 46,756 |
Table 3: Number of Pacing Winners (Adjusted per 10,000 foals) | ||||||||||
By earnings and birth order | ||||||||||
Earnings | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th |
>$1,000,000 | 10 | 13 | 10 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 7 | 4 | 14 | 15 |
>$500,000 | 49 | 61 | 53 | 62 | 42 | 47 | 34 | 34 | 48 | 48 |
>$100,000 | 1029 | 960 | 913 | 917 | 835 | 820 | 811 | 769 | 721 | 715 |
Table 4: Number of Trotting Winners (Adjusted per 10,000 foals) | ||||||||||
By earnings and birth order | ||||||||||
Earnings | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th |
>$1,000,000 | 13 | 5 | 19 | 18 | 9 | 9 | 11 | 14 | 23 | 8 |
>$500,000 | 60 | 56 | 51 | 53 | 47 | 29 | 49 | 69 | 52 | 39 |
>$100,000 | 760 | 811 | 743 | 670 | 701 | 672 | 664 | 780 | 687 | 637 |
By Mike Wilson
Warrawee Farm