If you had to guess

How many Trakehner foals are born in the US every year? (registered or not)

50? 100? 200? I have absolutely no idea and was wondering if anyone did.

100, give or take a few.

Thanks Maren!

Have you been following a thread on Trakehnerfreun.de called something like 'So a Trakehner isn't good enough?'

For those who haven't, a quick precis - Petra Wilm, Chairperson of the Trakehner Verband bought her daughter a competition horse - an Oldenburg. The response seems to fall into two categories a) that was a really shoddy thing to do or b) maybe we should be breeding better horses.

From there the thread spiraled off into an interesting discussion of breeding/genetics. One poster put it very succinctly - he had a good mare and he bred her to a complimentary competition stallion. The foal wasn't particularly attractive, didn't have "the trot" and was sold, some years later, as a good competitive riding horse for reasonable money. He then bred the mare to that year's NM champion, the foal was accepted for the foal show and sold for very good money. It hasn't done anything in sport. Guess who he's going to breed to next time?

So if breeders are *having* to breed to The Hot Young Dressage Stud to make any money, is it any wonder that they are also not breeding competitive horses because the system and the Verband don't support that model (and possibly actively discourage it according to some)? And where is the breed going as a result? Both in terms of the Breed Standard and in terms of genetic (performance) diversity?

Back to my original question..... my initial reaction was - thank goodness we don't have foal shows here! We are free to breed to the Trakehner stallion we think best suits our mare and so, genetically, we must be pretty diverse in the US, which is a good thing for the breed. But then I wondered about how many foals are born and how many are from the big stud farms like GS or Valhalla or KD or New Spring and I wondered if really we *were* that genetically diverse after all?

First this:

One poster put it very succinctly - he had a good mare and he bred her to a complimentary competition stallion. The foal wasn't particularly attractive, didn't have "the trot" and was sold, some years later, as a good competitive riding horse for reasonable money. He then bred the mare to that year's NM champion, the foal was accepted for the foal show and sold for very good money. It hasn't done anything in sport. Guess who he's going to breed to next time?

This didn't happen, it as hypothetical. Probably got lost in translation ;-)

Foal shows are not the issue. NMS is. And the next mare inspection. Trakehner breeders still breed for that as a goal while it really should not be the goal at all. I for myself can't find myself and my breeding aims in this current political setting at all, which is why I am seriously debating to go someplace else with high blood % eventing types. But that's just me.

I applaud Mrs. Wilm because she did what she needed to do in order to get her daughter the ride she requires to make it to the top. Bottom line is we do not have a single horse (for sale) in our population that comes close to the quality they bought in Oldenburg. I spent several months last year looking for a party with enormous cash, and the horses offered for sale where not the quality required for today's highly competitive international GP world. Sorry. Needless to add, party last year found a horse, in Hanover.
This is the mare: First Class

I think the Trakehner Verband and its members should be proud to have a president that competes successfully at FEI Grand Prix level on a TRAKEHNER stallion (King Arthur, just a couple of weeks ago at the CDI NMS). What her daughter rides is nobody's business, or since when do we practice "clan liability"?
Petra Wilm always had Holsteiner stallions at her station, and she competed them very successfully. So should the Holsteiner Verband be mad too??

This is classical Trakehner breeder behavior - instead of fixing a problem and work solution-oriented, we gripe, and complain, and fill an online forum with miles of commentary instead of working towards a common greater goal.
The Trakehner breeder will be the downfall of this breed. And that was said way before my time, and whoever said it was sadly right.

Obviously, all this IMHO

And indeed, instead of griping about our president' very poor choice (as the initial threat starter over in that forum did), we should really analyze the situation and act accordingly.

Maren wrote:First this:

One poster put it very succinctly - he had a good mare and he bred her to a complimentary competition stallion. The foal wasn't particularly attractive, didn't have "the trot" and was sold, some years later, as a good competitive riding horse for reasonable money. He then bred the mare to that year's NM champion, the foal was accepted for the foal show and sold for very good money. It hasn't done anything in sport. Guess who he's going to breed to next time?

This didn't happen, it as hypothetical. Probably got lost in translation ;-)

LMAO. I think I miss a lot during translation, never mind the colloquialisms which translate very strangely

Maren wrote:Foal shows are not the issue. NMS is. And the next mare inspection. Trakehner breeders still breed for that as a goal while it really should not be the goal at all.

instead of working towards a common greater goal.

we should really analyze the situation and act accordingly

But how can you change a system and still remain in business as a Trakehner breeder? Do you think it can only change from the bottom up or from the top down? And what *is* the goal? And/or what should the goal be?

Do you think we are in a "better" situation here in the US? As in we have more flexibility in breeding (although I do wonder about the gene pool aspect)?

I have no solution to the problem Fiona. The "goal" as defined in our bylaws is a versatile riding horse for the three Olympic disciplines. Yet we don't produce sport horses as a goal, we produce inspection site champions, of which just a handful ever reach serious competition level. My personal breeding goal is exactly that - a versatile riding horse with talent for the upper levels. I will most likely never breed such a horse, but I aim at that because the lesser rest needs a home too.
In its panic to be competitive in today's market, our leadership has actually done the breed a great disservice over a long period of time now, and some things can't be corrected. I don't think I'm in any position to offer a solution, I don't have one, but I can for myself decide weather I want to play along or not. If the leadership requests more idealism and educated breeding decisions, more inclusion of rare genetics and blood horses, but then those foals never see the support that the 100th Millenium foal gets, we're just on the wrong track.

The absolute top performance horses of the past 10 or 20 years that have stood out internationally were either byproducts or horses that had the luck of ending up with an idealistic owner. There is a bigger gap between the riding part and the breeding part in the Trakehner breed than in any other German horse breed - Holsteiner breeders as an example use "old" stallions because they know what these guys have brought to the table. The Trakehner breeder (gross generalization here) is very resistant to using old stallions in fear of not being able to sell the foal, or the 2yr old colt for approvals. That is very short-term thinking and hazardous for the breed on many levels.
We have old, highly proven stallions that are completely overlooked. And while this is obviously something first brought on by inividual breeder's decisions, they base this decision often enough on what their leadership shows them in real life.

Example:
Last approvals in MS Handorf. Among the few colts was a liver chestnut son of Phlox (Waitaki) out of a highly decorated Anglo Trakehner mare. I had seen this colt during the NMS selection tour in 2012, and he was selected for NMS, just got sick and couldn't go. A formidable (free)jumper, smaller package horse, super type, a clone of his very famous sire - I might add the top 1 Trakehner show jumper producer of our time, a spot ahead of Abdullah - based on the success of his Trakehner offspring in competition. This colt here was an ok mover, not great, but ok. Not approved due to lack of movement quality. He might also have had a bad day and yes of course, judges can only judge what they see (or at least should do that). At the same event, a colt of 176cm height (17.3h), with orthopedic shoes in front, and a more than questionable foundation, was approved. Exactly how many mares would the little chestnut show jumper have bred? Would he really have done any harm to the breed?? Now we have a pushed and hyped obviously tained young stallion approved that will breed many mares, trust me.

The Verband would be really well advised to start a new process of how we look at young horses. They could be the first to do this, and thus set themselves apart from others. We could evaluate future bereding stallions under saddle, let them be 3 or 4 when we "approve" them preliminarily. Then, evaluate their progress under saddle, performance test them, if they fail, they lose their approval. Yes, hores can get sick or injured - tough luck, I'm sorry. We have so many approved stallions to begin with.
Evaluate their foals, and see how these foals develop under saddle. Again, failure to produce means loss of approval. Don't think for a second this was any different in the old days in Trakehnen.

Part Trakehners in other registries are bringing in the better FEI results right now and that is a very dangerous situation. We have enough people here that believe the Trakehner only "works" with the better, more substantially moving mares from Hanover and Oldenburg. Sooner or later we will have to ask ourselves what exactly our right to exist really is.
Not a pretty thought ...

It's interesting to read this. One thing that occurs to me is that there are very, very few breeders in the US with profitable operations, let alone Trakehner breeders. It seems to me that really if we're breeding with an eye to running a business then we'd be much better off not breeding Trakehners. I know it's got to produce something to be feasible, but in order to produce top quality horses we need to ignore the market trends. That makes breeding much more a labor of love and passion then anything else.

One thing that gets to me is the lack of responsiveness by stallion owners in general(not Kim or Anissa obviously!) I've been emailing and leaving messages for months with one owner that has multiple stallions and with three others that have one stallion I'm interested in. Not a single response. No wonder some of the top mares in the US are being bred to non-Trakehner stallions. Not only is it difficult to reach the stallion owners, but many times the stallions aren't being competed or marketed so the mare owners don't know anything about them. Missy Miller's mare, Amazing Grace went to Keltic Lion in large part because everyone in eventing knows he competes and Bruce Davidson always picks up his phone.

Just my thoughts

Maren wrote:
The Verband would be really well advised to start a new process of how we look at young horses. They could be the first to do this, and thus set themselves apart from others. We could evaluate future bereding stallions under saddle, let them be 3 or 4 when we "approve" them preliminarily. Then, evaluate their progress under saddle, performance test them, if they fail, they lose their approval. Yes, hores can get sick or injured - tough luck, I'm sorry. We have so many approved stallions to begin with.
Evaluate their foals, and see how these foals develop under saddle. Again, failure to produce means loss of approval.

THIS!!!!

True story... About 6 years ago I was looking for something very specific to breed a mare to. My requirements: I needed VERY fertile due to my mare having issues with getting pregnant (and this also eliminated all frozen), I wanted something that didn't have Anduc in the first 4 generations (not that I don't like the line, just was looking for something different), and that complimented the mare (I knew that she needed to be "modernized" a bit - she has short stumpy legs lol, and I wanted some height, and she has a good hind end but needed a freer shoulder and could use a tad more hock action. Finally I wanted to avoid the crazy SO that either are difficult to work with, don't return calls, have weird collection schedules, horrid contracts etc. I came up with less than 5 stallions on the ATA roster. I imagine that list may be shorter now since many of the stallions that we on that list are now retired/dead. (and I wasn't worried about the jump - the mare puts a jump on her kids, but I also didn't want to kill the jump ).

If I'm lucky enough to get 2 fillies this season and the Hennie foal is as good as I expect, I'll be stallion-shopping myself in a few years (obviously can't breed a Snapper daughter to her grandpa Taz). Starting w/criteria defined by Maren above and adding what I personally require in a stallion makes my shopping list very, very short:

1. Must have offspring competing under saddle. Approved sons or premium daughters are certainly nice but they may or may not become future sporthorses (see Maren's comments above on NMS Champions).

2. Percentages matter. A stallion's w/25-30 offspring 5+ with only 2-3 (roughly 10%) doing well u/s (above entry levels) is not a good bet for me.

3. TB blood. I'm breeding & selling eventers - which is my market for @ least the next 5-6yrs. Not only the breed needs infusion of good TB blood, but so does my breeding program. And TB blood especially seems to really 'awaken' the Ramzes AA blood.

Anyway, you can see where this is going, right? At present that leaves me with 1 ATA-approved stallion. Luckily, Cyriz's owner is very responsive & good to work with. However, really hoping Pirjo Majurin will produce semen for US market from her stallion Ruffian Reef xx - currently standing @ Majenfelderhof.

I see we're all pretty much going along the same lines here (very reassuring!). Ruffe is a wonderful stallion Kim - but he would not fit your list either due to lack of offspring numbers, hence hardly any under saddle.
I don't even think we would have to limit ourselves to too strict a standard. I bred to Bonaparte AA because I don't know a better, more performance proven AA out there today, and he only has a handful (literally) foals on the ground. Gamble, certainly. But also what makes it all worth it for me. And lol, that foal even got a Verband premium inspection score, not that it helps her or me in any way

All I want is not to be punished for my breeding decision. And I want the Verband and the ATA to begin and see long term goals need to be reached. Not the next 10 years, more the next 30 or 40 years. We may not have a Trakehner horse left if we restrict all decisions on quickie market-oriented sales that help nobody.

The issue is that most breeders today don't breed generationally, if "we" are lucky they are only thinking of their next generation of foals, not 3 - 4 generations down the line and what their long term goals are. And that is not just a Trakehner thing. Just my 2 cents which isn't worth much

acottongim wrote:True story... About 6 years ago I was looking for something very specific to breed a mare to. My requirements: I needed VERY fertile due to my mare having issues with getting pregnant (and this also eliminated all frozen), I wanted something that didn't have Anduc in the first 4 generations (not that I don't like the line, just was looking for something different), and that complimented the mare (I knew that she needed to be "modernized" a bit - she has short stumpy legs lol, and I wanted some height, and she has a good hind end but needed a freer shoulder and could use a tad more hock action. Finally I wanted to avoid the crazy SO that either are difficult to work with, don't return calls, have weird collection schedules, horrid contracts etc. I came up with less than 5 stallions on the ATA roster. I imagine that list may be shorter now since many of the stallions that we on that list are now retired/dead. (and I wasn't worried about the jump - the mare puts a jump on her kids, but I also didn't want to kill the jump ).

It certainly worked out well, though!


As a new member of the Trakehner family, I'm really enjoying this discussion and thinking about how it will relate to me (and my filly who was the third out of the cross Anissa is referring to) eventually.

Welcome new member NetG!

This is a very heavy topic. Thankfully, I am only breeding for my own personal partner, but I still feel responsible for putting something on the ground that will be a good advocate for the breed. What I find challenging is the trying to sort out what is fad and what is proven. I look with amature eyes and see some stallions that I like and others that I don't. I am limited to what is promoted online, (videos pictures, who is competing with TKs and what are the bloodlines) I've been reading ALOT! But anyone can write whatever they want about how much hock action, how much sit, how free a shoulder, or how trainable their lines are, but it is all so subjective!

Ok, new member statement finished Please don't judge me!

As time goes on you'll see more and more with your own eyes Elizabeth and that is really key. We all have personal opinions and if one thing is true about breeding, then it's this: this is not an exact science. In fact, it's far from it. Today, people tend to come running with index points and charts that suposedly measure a stallion's quality as a breeding animal, but bottom line is that much about horse breeding is still about gut feeling and knowing your horse (mare in that case). I'm big on researching pedigree info as much as possible, especially through the dam side (which is also true for the dam side of a potential sire I am looking at).

You'll find this is a disease - we get hooked on it and it never goes away!!