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.