Katewerk wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:53 pm
starrydreamer wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 11:44 am
Wouldn't capping the number of mares a stallion can breed to in a year HELP genetic diversity? That means that more foals are born with different sires. And if a stallion does get hot, offspring will be more in demand, and stud farms can increase stud fees. Stallions don't need to breed to 200 mares in a season to become elite - just look at War Front. Even early on in his stud career, he didn't breed more than 140 mares in a season. He managed to get a good number of black-type winners and his quality of mares and stud fee went up accordingly.
Improving genetic diversity is a risk management concern.
A few years ago, an Australian horse named Shellscrape went to stud. He was ingloriously pensioned after 20% of his first and only foal crop were born without tails. Because he was at a smaller breed-to-race farm, that first crop of 59 foals wasn't such a huge number. The sons were gelded, only 19 of those 56 were winners so it's unlikely that many of the fillies are breeding on.
Now if that had been a horse like Justify, he would have served somewhere between 400 and 500 mares in his first year at stud, between Kentucky and Hunter Valley shuttle duties. It would take some time after the first crop of foals was born for people to realize there was a problem, so potentially he could serve another 50-100 mares before being pulled from service. If this hypothetical horse served 250 mares in Kentucky in his first season, 220 of them delivered a foal, and the total foal crop is 20,500 (JC 2020 numbers), then our hypothetical stallion with a genetic defect would have sired
1 out of every 100 foals born that year. And that genetic defect would also be present in Australia thanks to the shuttle.
If the genetic defect were not something visually obvious at birth, like a missing tail, but something that didn't show up until much later, then after 5 seasons of 200 mares, the potential for that genetic defect to spread rapidly increases. A couple of sons retire at 2, fillies enter the shed, etc, and that's how you wind up with HYPP spreading through the Quarter Horse breed. Again with a hypothetical situation, if a horse breeds 1% of the total foal crop each year for 5 years, and the devastating consequences show up after 4 years, the consequences to bloodstock are huge. After 5 years at 200 foals a year, plus 1-2 stallion sons who enter stud at 3 breeding 150 mares each, then you're suddenly talking about removing a LARGE number of stallions and breeding mares from the overall population, which would be far more devastating to smaller breeders than not getting a chance to go to Into Mischief at $225,000. Imagine if 500-600 mares, some from rare mare lines, were removed from a population of 20,000 overnight.
One of the unintended consequences of limiting the number of mares bred is that good mares who would otherwise have access to an elite sire may no longer "make the cut". As a result their yearlings are likely to be less valuable (if not less competitive on the track) and without access to genetic infusion from top tier sires, the decline could lead to an accelerated loss of female lines from the gene pool.
Of course, the opposing argument could be made that second tier sires will get more opportunity to prove themselves with a higher quality mare than they might otherwise be booked to them, but the cut off number is probably too high for that.
Into Mischief started out at a fee that was two postage stamps and a ham sandwich. In his first four crops, he has 42, 37, and 37 foals. He now breeds over 200 a year with a fee that is more expensive than my house. Dynaformer, Distorted Humor, Kantharos, Scat Daddy, and Laoban all fit that mold and I could reel them off the top of my head.