This message is from: "Mike May, Registrar NFHR" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
At 07:20 PM 1/20/01 -0400, you wrote:
Karen questioned why mares don't go through the same process. The reason
is that ideally it's the stallions who have the most influence on a breed,
seeing that mares have one foal a year, and stallions several.
However, that depends on what standards a breed has for its stalions. I
once went to a Morgan breeding conference where they said the average
Morgan stallion bred 1.2 mares per year. -- Obviously, as regards
influence on the breed, there's not much difference between Morgan mares
and stallions. --- That's not the tradition of Fjordhorses. The breed is
traditionally improved through the stallions.
I think you are overestimating the amount of breeding our Fjord stallions
do each year Carol. I just pulled some interesting numbers from the
database to add to this 100 day testing discussion.
I have found that we have 280 living stallions that were born prior to
1/1/1999 registered in the NFHR.
We have 330 total living stallions registered.
Now for the interesting part.
I registered 370 Fjord horses in 2000. That comes out to 1.32 births for
each breeding age stallion.
Now I am sure that not all of these 280 are still stallions but I would
venture a guess that at least 250 of them are. That makes the births
almost 1.5 per stallion. Now I am sure there were also more born that
haven't been registered too but I doubt that the number would get much over
2 per stallion even then. I don't have a way (other than counting the
mares on the stallion breeding reports) to tell how many mares were
actually bred in a particular year.
But is sure does seem like we have a whole lot of stallions out there not
earning their keep as breeding animals. I do get a LOT of breeding reports
with "No mare bred this year" on them.
I just leafed through all of the 2000 Stallion Breeding Reports that were
filed (155 of them) to see which horse bred the most mares last year. The
prize goes to Flotren owned by Julie Will. Flotren bred 18 mares last
year, the next highest was 11 mares bred by 2 different stallions. Most of
the reports (probably 95%) fit on one page or not more than 6 mares bred.
Mike
=======================================================
Norwegian Fjord Horse Registry
Mike May, Registrar
Voice 716-872-4114
FAX 716-787-0497
http://www.nfhr.com
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
