70% + Winners / Starters

[alphastud]

Can anyone list all or some of the current Stallions that have a winners / starters rate of over 70% for their Australian born foals?

Here's a link to the list of stallions http://www.harness.org.au/ausbreed/studs/INDEX2.HTM

I'll start with SOMEBEACHSOMEWHERE 82%, BETTORS DELIGHT 77% and ART MAJOR 73%

I think that the results will surprise.

[teecee]

Is this a quiz? With the link to all such stallions supplied in your thread and 3 such examples you will know the answer with a little further research of your own.

[alphastud]

Thanks Tony, the post was intended to challenge breeders (our) pre-conceived ideas around successful stallions.

In this case, I've used winners / starters as a yardstick.

I found the results interesting when reviewing a few stallions and so thought that it may interest other breeders.

I don't know the full results and don't have the desire to do the research however it would interest me.

Let me know if there's a problem with this and I can delete the post.

Thanks,

[gutwagon]

Winners to foals is a more important stat to look at. Art Major drops to about 40%.

When you breed a foal you can't choose if it will be good enough to make it to the races. Winners to starters is just something used by studs to make their stallions look more attractive. That figure of 40% would rise to closer to 50% when you take away the foals that are too young to race but that still means even when you send a mare to one of the top stallions you only have a 50% chance of getting a winner ! And a winner could be just one 3.5k race !

[aussiebreno]

Winners to foals is a more important stat to look at. Art Major drops to about 40%.

When you breed a foal you can't choose if it will be good enough to make it to the races. Winners to starters is just something used by studs to make their stallions look more attractive. That figure of 40% would rise to closer to 50% when you take away the foals that are too young to race but that still means even when you send a mare to one of the top stallions you only have a 50% chance of getting a winner ! And a winner could be just one 3.5k race !
+1

[alphastud]

Hi Rick, are some results based on winners / foals from a small sample of stallions.

This stat may be unfair to the newer stallions as they have a larger proportion of unraced horses.

What stallions have your or Brendan recently bred to?

The number of mares bred to these stallions in the 2017 / 2018 season suggest that winners / foals is NOT high in their decision making.

SOMEBEACHSOMEWHERE 37%
BETTORS DELIGHT 40%
ART MAJOR 40%
LIVE OR DIE 39%
MODERN ART 37%
GRINFROMEARTOEAR 34%
AMERICAN IDEAL 31%
SPORTSWRITER 26%
ALL AMERICAN INGOT 25%
WESTERN TERROR 22%
ROCK N ROLL HEAVEN 21%
CHANGEOVER 19%
ROLL WITH JOE 11%
FOR A REASON 11%

[gutwagon]

Richard, I would say that people bred to most of the stallions on that list for commercial reasons . If you want a good yearling price you must breed to one of the top 5 stallions.
40% is a good figure, as you can see you have listed 3 of the current leading stallions and 40% is the best you can get. Not many stallions that have 300 plus live foals will have better than 40%.
Personally I breed to race and choose stallions that I think will give my mare the best chance of producing a good horse. Once I decide the bloodline I want for the mare then I pick a stallion that fits my budget and is producing some fair horses. I do look at winners to foals and $ earned per starter. I don't look at winners to starters.
So far my best result came from a budget stallion (Peace Of Art) where my mare produced his highest money winning mare in Aus.
In my opinion many breeders are just like sheep and follow the latest fashionable stallions and don't do their homework , they don't care if the foal is any good , they just want a good price for it at the sales.

[Showgrounds]

Interesting figures, they highlight the quality of horse may have improved over recent decades but winners to foals ratio remains much the same. A lot of this might be attributed to who ultimately ends up owning and training the yearlings. For instance, a Bettors Delight or Art Major in my care might be no better than one sired by shank's pony. They might be well looked after but the cabbage required to give them the very best opportunities just aint there!

Without doing any homework, I reckon Fake Left, an absolute freak of a sire, had a winners to foals ratio around 60%. Many, many years ago I did some research into Sheffield Globe, a stallion that died in 1970 after only five commercial crops. It's hard to imagine now a stallion if his quality standing in South Australia. I had him back then as 115 winners from 182 foals (64.8%). I just checked the HRA website which has him at 194 foals for 120 winners - 61.8%. He threw some real class but just didn't have the numbers on the ground to make a top broodmare sire. None the less, he pops up back in the pedigrees of several top horses if you look hard enough.

[Richard prior]

Winners to foals bred stats can be deceiving, I’ll use Bettor’s as an example, Say for instance he has served 600 mares in the last 2 seasons, He may have 300 yearlings on the ground and 300 foals as well, So I tend not to include those until they hit the track.

[gutwagon]

It would be good if the HRA stats included "Foals of racing age" . Most intelligent breeders would realize that they need to subtract the last 2 years worth of foals away from the live foal numbers to get a more accurate figure. Also 2yo races don't start until around December so at times you need to subtract the last 3 years of foals away.
So a "foals of racing age" number would make things much easier and would make some stallions look much more attractive to breeders.

[KTQ]

It would be good if the HRA stats included "Foals of racing age" . Most intelligent breeders would realize that they need to subtract the last 2 years worth of foals away from the live foal numbers to get a more accurate figure. Also 2yo races don't start until around December so at times you need to subtract the last 3 years of foals away.
So a "foals of racing age" number would make things much easier and would make some stallions look much more attractive to breeders.

100% agree

[Richard prior]

100% correct Rick

[gutwagon]

Winners to starters % would be improving in recent times due to the shortage of horses and the increased amount of races. There are less foals bred every year so a smaller pool of horses yet we are having many more races ran . It would also be improving the winners to foals %.
The old stallions 15 years ago had many more horses to race against and many less races being ran . That is one of the main reasons modern day sires have very good %s compared to >15 years ago.