Cleo's Take on the Art and Science of Selecting Broodmares

Original article written by Cleo Patra posted 4 years 1 week ago

One fateful day (Year 20 - Fri Oct 05, 2007 3:41 am, if anyone is counting) I bred my first SIM foal. A turf sprinter called Maximum Motion. He failed to break his maiden in 10 starts, but did manage 4 placings and 10k in prize money. I do like to think I've gotten a bit better at breeding since having bred 16 millionaires, 147 stakes winners and 738 winners from 1527 foals bred.

I'm almost as baffled by breeding now as I was way back in year 20. Still think I'm mostly terrible at it, with moments of genius usually inspired by late nights and too much sugar. That said, here are a few of my founding principles for building a broodmare band for those who think I'm doing a good enough job to copy. The Steward will probably be yelling at the screen for half of this article going Wrong Wrong Wrong, so do take this advice with salt and form your own opinions ;p

Two things to note:
- I try to breed by aiming for high percentage success with small numbers, this guide reflects that. There is also success to be had by breeding sheer numbers and many other methods
- I only breed turf and dirt routers, so not everything I say here will apply to mixers etc. etc.

FIRST PRINCIPLE

Bloodstock agent comments: If the mare is formidable or better, good. Forget her comment, its now irrelevant. If she isn't formidable BYE BYE MARE.

Why?

These comments for me are only a starting point and a weeding tool. I've tried a lot of extremely well bred sub-formidable rated mares with top line stallions and exactly zero of them galloped any better than allowance and the daughters have gotten bad BS comments themselves. If you're playing the percentage game and trying to keep numbers down, sub-formidable mares are NOT your friend, even if they have extraordinary breeding. That said, if you're playing the big numbers game these mares *might* one day add some pedigree class to your bloodstock, but you're gonna throw a lot of money down the drain on the way.

Why is the comment irrelevant at and above formidable?

Bibliomania and Takemybreathaway are both "only" formidable. Remember Me is "only" a star. All are multiple freak and stakes producers and Bibliomania ended her broodmare career with 3 millionaires, Remember Me already has a millionaire from 4 raced foals. See? Comment irrelevant.

SECOND PRINCIPLE

Pedigree Pedigree Pedigree. It is your king, your queen and your SIM god. If you think you're getting a great mare who will produce winners because of a blue hen BS comment, BAD SIMSTER. Go and sit in the corner and think about your actions. No cookies for you.

The SIM's breeding code takes into account 3 generations of pedigree, so this is where you want to go to get an idea of how your mare will produce.

Stallions in the Pedigree

So generally a stallion won't make it into a pedigree without having had a certain amount of success on the track, therefore you have a pretty good idea that talent is solid throughout the males in a pedigree. If you're weeding out your broodmare band, have a quick look to see how each stallion produced overall, especially as damsires, and get rid of anything where the sire is truly bad. But you're mainly looking at the stallions for how they'll have an impact with the distance they preferred. For example, start crossing awesome plodder with awesome plodder and you'll have the fastest horse over 8 miles the SIM has ever seen but it ain't gonna do much for your bank balance.

You need to know what your mare is, so you know what to cross her with. For example, if you're trying to breed a Derby horse and you have a mare with a 10-12 furlong pedigree then you might want to cross her with a stallion who was speedy over 9-10 furlongs and has a colt producing bias. If you're trying to hit the whole TCT, you'll look for a superstar sire with a similar profile to your mare, with a lean toward speed to bring you into contention in Baltimore.

Mares in the Pedigree

Here is where the magic really happens. If there is a weak link in the pedigree of a broodmare then you can usually find it in her female family. The more genuine stakes winners you can pack into the female family, the more likely you are to strike gold consistently or at the very least eventually. You'll find weak links where mares were random slides or where some awesome stallion decided to be a butt and be weak as water in the shed.

Let's take a look at two example mares who highlight this super well. Both are Blue Hen BS comments, both get A- hypomatings with almost every stallion, both were stakes winners (although one was obviously superior to the other in that respect).

First up, we'll check out All That is Gold. She's an 8yo by Sidney, so no problems in THAT part of her pedigree.

1st Dam: Glitter - Here is where a lot of our problem lies. Glitter was a decent racemare ($280,600, 7 wins, 2 stakes wins) but our example mare here is her only decent foal. All That is Gold's 7 siblings are flops on the racetrack so far and her retired sisters couldn't produce a winner if you gave them a 2 furlong head start.

2nd Dam: Limitation - At first glance this doesn't look like a weak link at all. She's a millionaire! She won an International Oaks! She has progeny earnings of $2,887,265. HOWEVER, when we look at her daughters we see a big red alarm in Limited Edition. She was the result of a steward lease and very much failed to fire as a TBS mare and was dumped on the sales page for just 200k after only 5 foals. When we do a search on Limitation as a second dam, its easy to see that her other daughters were equally underwhelming broodmares.

3rd Dam: Without a Sound - Again, looks okay at first glance. She won $281,300 and produced two stakes winners. However, she is a random slide horse (her own dam was a very average racehorse) and that is potentially the source of most of the failings in this bloodline.

The result of this female family is an alleged Blue Hen who has thus far produced 3 allowances from 4 foals. I keep breeding her because if she does hit the right nick and produce a good one, it will hopefully eventually produce its own good one and gradually over time those weak links will get far enough back in the pedigree to allow the family to produce more consistently good horses instead of its current one per generation trend. This will also hopefully weed out any influence of weak stallions, which I admittedly didn't look closely at in this analysis.

Second up, we'll check out a true Blue Hen in Special to You. She's a 9yo by Two Toned. She's a little bit pretty.

1st Dam: Shahir'ra - $37,922,840 in progeny earnings, 11 millionaires from 14 foals. 'Nuff said.

2nd Dam: Sieve - Only won 400k herself (lol at that being a tiny amount in this family) but $10,955,220 in progeny earnings, by Black Condor (drool) and 4 millionaires from 10 foals. No weak links here, folks.

3rd Dam: Sauveur - Stakes winner of $798,550 and also the dam of Magdalena (won 2 million, produced Renewed in Spirit who has 4 millionaires from 11 foals of which several are still racing and may join that group). Once again, not much going wrong here.

So only counting the progeny directly from the 3 dams themselves, we have 16 millionaires from 38 individuals. You'd have to be very very unlucky to have a broodmare refuse to produce at least one good thing when it comes from a family like this (if you did, its probably 100% her sire's fault). This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Everyone wants these mares. I paid 15 million for Special to You and that is probably going to look cheap by the time she finishes impacting my bloodlines in 3 generation's time. Sell your firstborn to get these mares. Use them to swap into equally nice bloodlines.

So when you're selecting broodmares, pedigree is everything. Ditch that blue hen mare with a female family full of mares who couldn't make 10k in the track and nor could her foals. Try to build up to a band with mares who have at least 2, if not 3, stakes winning and producing 1st, 2nd or 3rd dams. Virtually every leading sire in routing has at least 2 stakes winners or producers in their female family. That is the sort of class you want to be aiming for.

THIRD PRINCIPLE
Hypomate ratings and nicks: As long as the rating is B+ or better, I'm happy (although I've had a lot of luck with A-). The true art to this part of having a broodmare is finding the right nick. Why did Special to You go to Sidney 3 times? Because her dam went to him 6 times and hit a millionaire every single time.

But not every nick will shove itself in your face like that. I use the damsire search a LOT to find out what mares by the same horse are matching well with. If I'm trying to breed precocious, I'm checking out the 2yo crop. A bit more longevity and I'm looking to see what those 4 and 5yos are doing. If a damsire has 6 and 7yos on the ground and none of them have hit the 500k plus mark, then I'm going to look at selling my broodmare if she fails repeatedly with 2-3 of her foals.

Also check out what the Steward is doing with her mares by the same stallion. This is particularly useful if your mare is one of the first generations by her sire so you don't have a lot of damsire data when she starts her career.

If the mare has successfully producing sisters, have a look at what is working with them. Don't forget to take the sires of the sisters into account though. A super producing Doctor mare is probably going to nick differently to her super producing Heart of the Storm sister.

And finally, inbreeding. I love to go 3x3 or even 2x3 to true Blue Hen mares. My freak yearling colt, Fade to Black, is 2x3 to Shahir'ra and I may have drooled a little over that hypo. Sometimes you'll also hit on a stallion that really works. 3x3 to Vernacular was absolute gold for a while there and I have a freak yearling filly who is 3x3 Sidney. Be careful with inbreeding to stallions though, you can double up on traits you don't actually want (see the 8 mile super plodder from earlier).

FOURTH PRINCIPLE
It takes time. So much time. Allll the time. I started playing in mid 2007 and its very much only the last 10 or so seasons when I've consistently bred stakes quality horses every season. Keep trying. Keep learning. Even with the mares I have, there are slow seasons for sure (looking at you 2yos, 4yos and 6yos! Wait... there's a pattern there).

If you made it to the end of my rantings and ramblings, well done. You have the perseverance to maybe figure out this breeding craziness (ha!). Seriously though, I hope this helps you breed your next freak (wink wink nudge nudge check out my Breed a Freak competition on the forum /EndUnsubtleHint). Thanks for reading!

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