The australian sires fertility list needs changing

[triplev123]

.......and bugger me if I can get the tables I wanted to add to this post to transfer properly. :(
I'll get back to you shortly.

[triplev123]

Sires Fertility List
I’ve long held the view that the current Australia 'Sires Fertility List' is very poorly named & quite ill-conceived.

The current format.
Sire Total Services Normal Births Mare died birth (1) Mare slipped (2) Mare missed Foal died (3) Mare died (4) No Returns Percentage


Proposed changes to format.
Sire Total Services On Farm PTIF/% Semen Transport PTIF/% Mares Missed Normal Births No Returns Percentage

The reason I propose these changes is that I believe the current format and in particularly the columns marked as (1) (2) (3) & (4) to be of absolutely no assistance whatsoever to Breeders seeking to make an informed decision about a given Sire’s fertility. A Breeder comes away none the wiser for having paid for, downloaded and read over them...and given the time and cost involved in compiling them on the part of HRA and the fact that Breeders pay for access to these figures, this is completely unacceptable.
At the same time as basically doing nothing to help the cause of the Breeders, the current format also serves to quite adversely & most unfairly affect a Sire’s true fertility figures, his job being done once the mare goes in foal.

While it is obvious that the number of mares that missed should be recorded against a sire's fertility....I am of the opinion that no sire can reasonably be held responsible for in-foal mares subsequently slipping, for mares dying, for foals dying at or soon after birth etc. yet under the current format/ system....THEY ARE? Why?

Once again, I’d like to underline the fact that THE CURRENT LIST... IS NOT A SIRES FERTILITY LIST.

It is a LIVE FOALS TO MARES BRED LIST ONLY....and it does nobody any good.

A true Sires Fertility List should be a strict measurement of a Sire’s Fertility, of his capacity to get mares in foal. No more, no less. A sire’s fertility does not subsequently cause a mare to slip an early pregnancy, to die during gestation or birth and nor can a sire be reasonably held responsible for foals that die during, at or after birth.

THOSE ARE NOT FERTILITY RELATED ISSUES. THEY ARE HUSBANDRY/VET CARE RELATED ISSUES.

To underline the absolute folly of the current format, the TRUE figures for the 2009/2010 Season are in fact 6299 mares served and in foal plus 211 no returns, from a total of 8,415 services performed and this amounts to a much healthier In Foal/Sires Fertility figure of 74.85%.

Interested in everyone's thoughts.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
That being the result of the sense that is rearly used, common sense.

To add to that and to assist breeders a % infoal per mares cycle for each stallion. This would
also help when choosing a stallion to breed, given the cost of a single breeding and the cost
of having later foals every year:(

You would never get a job at HRV..haha

[triplev123]

That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a while justdoit. I'm not overly endowed with that sense as a rule so many thanks. :D
I wrestled with various ideas on how to re-design the current format because having been defeated at the first clash in the past by such things I was very mindful of that old Chestnut "That'll take some IT work and right now we haven't got the $$$ to do that so..." and that sort of thing...so I managed to come up with a new format that kept the same number of columns as the current format and merely removed the irrelevant to breeders information columns and their respective headings & replaced them with the aspects of the modern day business that would really make a difference to Breeders.
I've passed this on to Andrew Kelly and Harvey Kaplan, both Panel Members & I sincerely hope that it gets a fair hearing from the wider group. Quite frankly I will be right royally pissed off if it doesn't. That's a distinct possibility because at the Menangle meeting the other night I got the impression that John Bagshaw wasn't at all keen on the idea of having the On Farm & Off Farm services broken up into two seperate figures followed by the respective PTIF %'s recorded by each breeding method. Maybe he didn't understand what I was getting at, maybe he did, but that's the impression I was left with anyway. I don't think he's a fan. We shall see. I can't see how anyone could reasonably object to it but hey, anything's possible I guess.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
Anything that could possibly have a negative impact on a stallions or a farms marketing will not get much
support by this panel.
The farms have this and more info that they could give breeders, it is up to them.

Try breeding Brahman or Angus Cattle and you will get alot more information, breed averages for just about
anything you can imagine.

[triplev123]

I'm starting to think along those same lines justdoit.
It seemed to be all well and good, very much good fellow well met, when we were going through the admittedly very interesting overheads but for what was no doubt a largely predetermined outcome...but raise something which required a little more discussion and some in-depth analysis and it started to look more than a bit wobbly.
I raised the On-farm & Off-farm data being presented and, call me a cynic but the predetermined aspect was confirmed for me when the immediate false negative was put forward from that area of the business, one that I was ready for, "How can we possibly determine which yearlings were bred on-farm vs Semen Transport?" I was just a bit suprised by that. This was followed by "Yes but so much of the Industry relies on semen transport now so what would be the worth?" Again, that's a furphy because there is still a significant amount of 'on-farm' work being done and the infinitely better figures that engenders serves, in some cases, to bolster the overall fertility figures of some sires that cover mares on both an on farm and semen transport basis.
It also became clear that apparently few bother to look at their Service Certificates because Semen Transport breedings are duly noted thereon. The data is already available, just that it is not being used...at all.
In fact ALL of the Stats that Breeders require to allow them to make significantly better informed decisions are available to us right now.
In one form or another they are already being collected either on a State or on a National basis, it's just that they are not being used effectively & presented accordingly. With each State now linked via that computer network who's name escapes me at present, I can't see the problem.
As such, and as I pointed out to Andrew Kelly the other night, we need not embark on some bold new statistical gathering journey, we need not even spend vast amounts re-jigging the database...rather we merely need to quite simply reformat the presentation of currently existing streams of information (by way of re-naming existing columns on the current report format).
The more that I look at and into the quality of the information the current format offers the observer, which is zilch, I just can't believe the grossly misnomered HRA Sires Fertility List has been allowed to survive for so long, unchallenged. It is nothing short of a shambles. Whoever came up with that format was clearly unable to determine the information which cuts to the chase from that which serves virtually no Breeder educational purpose whatsoever.
It's a fact that we already know exactly how many mares are served on-farm and off.
It's a fact that the resultant number of services carried out and the resultant In-foal %'s for each breeding basis are already available.
It's a fact that the current format disguises a MASSIVE Husbandry issue in Australia by way of around 13.5% of all mares that initially went in foal, failing to go on and produce a live foal.
It's a fact that the Breeders currently & invariably seek to lay the blame for this discrepancy at the feet of the Studs, when the figures tell a vastly different story...their mares are going In-foal at a very good rate given the widespread use of Semen Transport in this Country....it's that they're just not getting over the 'produce a live foal line' come foaling time or soon after that is the issue.
It's a fact that the TRUE In-foal % here in Australia is around 74.5%, not the dreadful 61.7% that the current List erroneously proclaims.
Again, as noted in my initial post to this thread, the gap between the two figures is as a result of entirely non-sire related issues. They are instead HUSBANDRY issues but sit back and watch some of the Breeders squirm when you mention that aspect. Lastly...
It's a fact that the collation and presentation of ALL such currently collected figures would serve to produce a fundamentally better informed Breeding Industry.

I can't see how they could not adopt those proposed changes in entirety. There is no valid not to do so.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
A stallions or a mares breeding efficiency should be
their ability to produce offspring that reach the races?
The on farm/off farm stats do not interest me, unless my mares are not infoal:)

[triplev123]

G'day justdoit,

I think it would tell you a whole lot about sires and their viability on-farm vs off-farm however for me the major thing is the 13%+ margin between the mares that the stallions get in foal and those that go on to produce a live foal.
While there's obviously no way that figure can be reduced to zero it nevertheless serves to rather starkly highlight that there is a MASSIVE Husbandry issue here in Australia.
The fact that around 74.5% of all mares served actually go in foal...but only 61.7% go on to produce a live foal speaks to a general lack of mare care post breeding through to foaling and to a general lack of foal care beyond that.
At present many within the Breeding fraternity are extremely fond of assigning the poor reproduction figures to the sires & the studfarms...as they invariably do with almost anything that goes against them in that arena...however, the loss figures speak for themselves. Fault lies a whole lot closer to home, in fact squarely upon their doorstep in many instances.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
The 13+% of mares need to be looked at individually and then IMO their will be little surprise as to which mares have failed to produce live foals.

[triplev123]

G'day justdoit,

Agreed. You said that "their will be little surprise as to which mares have failed to produce live foals".
I think we might be on the same wave here.
Are you alluding to the owner/s of mares that failed to produce a live foal?...that this group is more than likely made up of multiple repeat offenders in that regard?
Or are you getting at something else?

[buster]

id say for the most part, those foals were lost for factors outside of control of the owner, old mares obviously hard to get to hold the foal, mares could pick up a cold for 48 hours and lose it, plus the fetus' that are aborted due to genetic incompatibilities / issues

[Ziggy]

....

[triplev123]

id say for the most part, those foals were lost for factors outside of control of the owner, old mares obviously hard to get to hold the foal, mares could pick up a cold for 48 hours and lose it, plus the fetus' that are aborted due to genetic incompatibilities / issues

G'day Buster,

I can't agree with you there.
Save a Lightning Strike, Meteorite or an Alien Abduction, the vast majority of factors that cause the loss of pregnancies, of mares during gestation and the loss of foals at or very soon after birth most definately lie within the scope of influence of Owners.

In terms of mare and foal loss at the point of birth in particular, you would be absolutely amazed by the number of mares that are run like cattle, left to their own devices to foal all alone in a paddock some place & so on and you'd be further amazed by who does it.
As for the older mares, there's nothing obvious about it at all.

There is in fact no physical reason why they cannot keep on producing successfully well into their 20's. Generally speaking it is only hard to get them in foal and to hold on to a pregnancy if you don't look after them properly throughout their entire reproductive life and especially so prior to & after they're bred. I'd even go so far as to suggest that the vast majority of those difficult to get in foal older mares are in fact man made.

For example...we've got a well into her 20's mare that as of this season has had 14 foals in a row and is carrying her 15th. She has never once missed & in the last two seasons as a 22yo & 23 yo has gone PTIF with just one service on her foal heat.
The trick with her is to pay attention to her teeth, to her feet and above all else, to rug her during the winter time so she doesn't drop any condition. Easy as pie.

Genetic incompatibilities most certainly do exist in horses as they do in so many other creatures including human beings... but looking at it logically they'd account for a mere fraction of the overall 13.7% annual loss.

It's all about Husbandry.

Given the widespread use of semen transport here in Australia, if almost 75% of all mares served annually end up going in foal then I think that is a damned good result & if we got up closer to 80% then it would be outstanding.
I honestly don't think we could ever get up much beyond that save us going back to all mares being served on farm which will never happen obviously.

Something additional to the above and the previous has just occurred to me as I write this. If almost 75% of all mares served go in foal (in 2009/2010 it was 6299) and from those only 5,197 live foals resulted, that means the loss is in fact even larger that the 13.7% discrepancy between almost 75% and 61.7% that I've been banging on about.

The loss is not 13.7% at all. It is in fact 17.5% i.e. 6299 mares that were PTIF for final result of 5,197 Live Foals. Think about it. That's fast closing in on 1 in 5 mares to go in foal don't produce a Live Foal. That's way too high to be explained away by factors that are beyond the infleunce/control of Breeders.

[justdoit]

Good morning or Good evening? TripleV123,
At what stage of pregnancy did the mares absorb, slip or abort is very important information when looking at the now17.5%,
these factors are less likely IMO to be caused by the owner. generally:) Foals deaths at the time of birth, hours after or days after the breeders and or caretakers in most cases have to take the blame.
All factors have to be taken into account when finding out the reason for the 17.5% loss.

[triplev123]

G'day justdoit,

That's fair comment. I don't think the entire 17.5% is as a result of lax Husbandry practices, it would be absurd to suggest such a thing, but I am certain that a very large slab of it is.
I think yours is a great idea but a huge problem arises in working out at what stage the mares lost their pregnancies after they're pronounced In Foal because quite often they're speared off into a paddock and there they remain and unless they start to swell at the appropriate time nobdoy realises they have slipped. That aside, there is no escaping the fact that once a mare goes in foal that is the Sire's job done. Everything beyond that is under the influence of the Mare/Breeder.

[justdoit]

Hi TripleV123,
I agree with you.
Also it would be good to see a sires list with the number of runners from each crop 1st/2yrolds, 2nd/3yrolds etc with the number of live foals produced included in the list
Did you ask someone else on this forum to contribute to this discussion?

[triplev123]

Good point. I would like to see that information displayed as well but that would be elsewhere on a Sires Earnings List. Interestingly it is shown on the NZ Sires Earnings Lists but not the Australian version. Buggered if I know why. Of course, the stuff I'm banging on about above and previous is entirely Sire's Fertility List applicable.Two seperate areas but BOTH in need of some serious overhauling.
In answer to your question, yeh...I asked the one and only Mightymo...but to be fair, work wise he has been loaded up like a Greek Donkey of late. Perhaps he will favour us with his thoughts once he stops long enough to be able to sit down. :D:D:D:D

[triplev123]

C'mon Mightymo, you're not getting out of it that easily. :p
Do you agree that the current Sires Fertility List requires a complete overhaul...or not?

[mango]

Hi Justdoit

Just reading your post from a week ago regarding the sire's list and number of runners from each crop 2/3yr old's and number of live foals produced that year. That would be great it would give people more of an idea on actually how good these stallion's are and how many starters they are getting early on. Bettor's is a great sire and has 2/3yr old's flying but some people don't know he served 540 mare's in his 1st season, 273 2nd season and 449 his 3rd season off hand i'm not to sure how many live foals there are. Live foals/starters/winner's would give breeder's more of an idea when selecting stallion's.

[triplev123]

G'day Mango,
Unlike NZ, the fact that the current Australian 2yo & 3yo Sires Earnings List & the 2yo & 3yo Individual Winners List do not make note of the number of foals each sire has in the given season's crop is nothing short of deplorable.
For example, here in Australia last season Art Major & Bettor's Delight were virtually line ball on the size of their respective 2yo crops. This season here in Australia you'll find Art Major has the best part of 3 times as many 2yos as does Bettor's Delight...I think the numbers are something in the vicinity of 220 vs 80. Now because that information is not freely available anywhere who amongst observers could possibly be expected to know that last season's picture and this season's picture on the 2yo Sires Lists here in Australia are vastly different by way of a simple function of numbers? Foal crop figures should be clearly noted on all such lists. The Kiwis do so...and we should do likewise.