Chapter Four-(2013 series of articles)
NOTES for Breeders Cup,
New Zealand
Yearling Sales, Champion Sires
1…The inaccuracies which are detectable in the
pedigree of both the sire and dam of Breeders Cup winner MUSICAL ROMANCE which I wrote about in Chapter
3-(2013) article, bought to mind one of the many chapters that I wrote last
year on quite an amazing new discovery which assesses the potential of stallions.
2….This method is revolutionary, and relies on
accurate
pedigrees. It also picks up all parts of the pedigree
that
do not match, so can be very predictive.
3….I’ve collected 15 generation pedigrees of 693
Champion Sires from around the world, found references to their racing ability,
and found information about their first 62 ancestors regarding winnings,
wins and breeding ability.
4…Remarkably, the majority conform to an exceptionally
high intensity formula.
5…Here are some of my thoughts when I researched
about incorrect pedigrees regarding what other people
have written. My own research would go into volumes
and I could give hundreds of instances where the
pedigree is obviously false in certain areas.
STALLION PRINCIPLES…
SUPER EIGHTEEN
METHOD -JAN 2012….
INCORRECT
PEDIGREES.
1….This new method of SUPER EIGHTEEN needs
some very
intense crosses to qualify, and unless it
encompasses all the pedigree, crosses that appear in the pedigree and would
normally be counted, in this format , unless they adhere to a mathematical
rule, now they are not counted.
2….Of course, this method is TOTALLY RELIANT
on
ACCURATE PEDIGREES.
3….This means record keeping and recording
has to be accurate,
and there are big pitfalls here, because
some physical working people are not good at recording. Some people rely on
memory, and this is not always accurate, because some facts get forgotten, some
facts get mixed up, but worst of all, when money and prestige are at stake,
some people can be down-right dishonest.
Throughout history, there are thousands of
cases where people lie or fabricate, and manipulate the truth for their own
ends.
4…The early pedigrees (c 1665 to 1724)
involved about 160 early Eastern imported horses and when they arrived, none of
them have surviving recorded pedigrees beyond themselves.
The
Arab’s were avid pedigree people and could recite pedigrees for generations for
their best and prized animals, so they had pedigrees, but these pedigrees were
not forthcoming with each of the imported animals.
5… Because Arab’s jealously guarded their
best bloodlines, it can be assumed that many of these imports into Gt Britain were
acquired from second best strains or by nefarious means.
6….About 120 of these early imported sires
were named after their owner, like Darley’s ARABIAN, Lister’s TURK, D’Arcy’s
White TURK, Leedes ARABIAN, and the SUPER EIGHTEEN method cannot be applied to
these early horses with no known background pedigree.
7….To further mess up pedigrees, one
authority claims one
stallion changed hands over 11 times and
his name and identity changed every time to identify himself with each of his
new owners, and another was disguised in early pedigrees under nine distinctly
different names and ownerships, and others are mooted to have had two or three
different names.
8….Another problem here is that owners kept
their own pedigrees and records, and did not publicly publish them. Some
owner’s records got lost over time, and some owners were not interested, or did
not keep records.
9…When a STUD BOOK came into being in England in
1791,
it was over a hundred years after the breed
had been developed
into a uniform breed, and trying to get
pedigrees right after
a hundred years would be almost an
impossible task for
the WEATHERBY family from 1791 onwards.
10…They used the collections of quite a few
predecessors who
had made brave attempts for a few years
each, but all failed
on accuracy and patronage terms.
11….A previous researcher CHENY, “took trouble to get his pedigrees RIGHT, but
his success was PATCHY.””
POND and HEBER tried to collect and publish
pedigrees for some years.
HEBER said” MISTAKES ARE UNAVOIDABLE”
“Many horses were unnamed, many shared the
same name and
much confusion existed. Many horses were
left out. Relying on
some owners was no guarantee of accuracy.”
“PICK had a collection of pedigrees of even
more doubtful heritage”
12….“The GENERAL STUD BOOK(1791) was
inevitably and unavoidably filled with errors of all kinds”
“WEATHERBY apologized for the many errors”
MONTGOMERY-“has spent many days investigating the
General Stud Book. It is replete with false
pedigrees, doubtful
pedigrees, and absolutely impure ones”
13….WILLETT.. “early methods of recording
pedigrees were unsystematic, inconsistent and frequently inaccurate”
BRUCE LOWE…a great researcher and developer
of breeding
by the FIGURE SYSTEM made many mistakes
when compiling
his pedigrees, so it’s easy to see how
hundreds of other less able, less knowledgeable, and less qualified people
would also make many mistakes.
14….Many people made mistakes, or were
inaccurate on some
pedigrees, but the biggest problem is that
following generations blindly copied these mistakes forward into future
generations.
15….A big attempt at trying to understand
or correct pedigrees
can be seen at such great recommended
Internet sites as:
-----INBREEDING-Incestuous matings of the
Thoroughbred ----------racehorse ..James Hardiman
-----Thoroughbred Bloodlines…Patricia Erigero
-----Who’s Your Momma?....Patricia Erigero
------Thoroughbred Bloodlines…Lord
Rockingham’s collection of pedigrees..by A.J.HIBBARD.
-------The Spots.. by Miodrag Milovanovic
and Anthony Byles
-------Bloodlines by Elizabeth Ross
-------Foundation Matriarchs of the
Thoroughbred…C Matthes
16…..WEATHERBY…in his Introduction to a
stud Book…..
“to correct the increasing evil of false
and inaccurate pedigrees”
“The register was calculated to REDUCE the
risks of fraud and
genuine cases of mistaken identity.”
17….COLONEL BRUCE.. compiler of an early
USA Stud Book,” had many detractors because of his inaccurate and
openly criticised fraudulent work of
recording pedigrees.…”
…..“impurity of the American Stud Book”
…..“doubts about reliability of Colonel
Bruce’s work”
…..‘he did, in various, numerous instances,
high-handed and unwarranted things which the facts, the evidence and the
testimony extant, stamp as indefensible”
18….HERVEY comments.. ”BRUCE was dependent
on the patronage of leading American Breeders in order to publish his work, and
this dependence disposed him to give uncritical acceptance to the pedigrees
offered to him.”
“he shovelled into the Stud Book pedigrees
so impossible as be nothing less than absurd, and this gave to outrageous
fiction the official stamp of veracity.”
“to trained scrutiny, the omissions, errors
and contradictions
were so
obtrusive as to become both exasperating and inexcusable.”
19Recent
studies along the dam-line Mitochondrial DNA has
shown
conclusively that there are many errors in the General
Stud Book.
Reference should be made to the excellent articles
written by
Patricia Erigero…”the study implies that the pedigree of virtually every
thoroughbred today is incorrect in one or more branches of its’ family
tree”
20…To combat the present day errors of
identifying horses, the NZ and Australian Stud Book authorities have followed
other
Stud Book’s by demanding branding of foals
when on the dam with a unique stud brand, plus a consecutive foaling number,
plus a numeral to signify the year the
horse was foaled.
21…Even with these safeguards, over 300
foals were disqualified from the 1993 Australian Stud Book because of false
pedigrees or mismatching, or different parentage to that stated, and picked up
by Blood Typing of the supposed parents being
compared with the foal put forward for that
parentage.
22….Freeze branding came into New Zealand in
1970 after iron branding to distinguish or identify foals and yearlings.
Complex systems of recording mares served,
on what dates and by what identified stallions have been in vogue for quite
some time, yet errors are still made.
23….A stallion return with all information
is sent to the Racing Conference after mares were served giving full details of
mating dates, full particulars of each mare
regarding colour,
markings, owner, and parentage of the foal.
Then after foaling a year later a further
return is lodged showing the colour, sex, and markings of all the foals.
24…A return is also made for each mare, so
her full particulars can be recorded in the Stud book.
Then, mares and stallions were blood-typed,
so foals can be checked against their parents to verify their correct
parentage.
25….This has resulted in dozens of
inaccurate pedigrees being picked up each year.
Now, DNA and chips are being used to
establish and verify correct parentage.
26….In the 1993 (Volume 38) of the
Australian Stud Book,
The Parentage Validation Program
established that there
were about 324 mares or instances where
mistakes were
made in reporting or recording, and the
Blood typing or
DNA picked up the anomaly. These published
findings
can be seen at the back of that Stud Book.
27….During over 30 years of critically
studying pedigrees, we have found dozens of really good sires that have clearly
missed the boat in established and proven methods of breeding in their pedigrees.
28….The SUPER EIGHTEEN method uses a full
pedigree base and is proving exceptionally accurate in identifying pedigrees,
and also parts of a pedigree which are very suspect for accuracy.
29….They have added a confirmation of error
on just about all the pedigrees we have been extremely doubtful about over the
years.
30….Importantly, they have also shown a value
added component and verification for a few sires that we could not absolutely
double tick before.
31….We are extremely happy with them now,
because this method is very intense, and utilizes all parts of a pedigree.
32….Overall, the intensity makes the
pedigree validity exceptionally good and very satisfying because there is now a
method available to provide a standard for excellence and also one for
comparison.
