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Re: [RC] Buying/selling horses - Chris PausI breed for a good, dependable, well built riding horse. The traits that make a horse good at endurance USUALLY are similar traits that a horse needs for other sport horse activities. In fact, the "sport horse" crowd is much more likely to pay a decent price for a prospect than is the endurance crowd. Two of my babies have gone to people interested in sport horse activites.. these are my Anglo Arabs. My purebred has gone to someone who does endurance. I'm keeping one of my own horses for myself. She's going to be an all-arounder for me.. endurance, CTR, and dabbling in a little bit of this and that. I can't designate what jobs these horses will get when they get to their new homes. but I can breed for good legs, soundness, good conformation and good brains. These criteria help a horse succeed at many jobs. And if they end up being someone's back yard pal, that's OK too as long as they are treated well. You are right in that as in the race horse industry, you can breed two champion endurance horses and not get a good endurance prospect. It's always a crap shoot. But there are certain bloodlines and certain conformation qualities that seem to have a higher rate of success over the long haul than others. Unlike the "big time" breeders, I can't mass produce foals and hope for one fabulous winner. I have to carefully select mates for my mares to give the resulting foal the highest odds of being a good quality animal. I hope this helps answer some of your questions. chris --- Mike & Laurie Hilyard <PFmorabs@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: I find this thread interesting for a couple of reasons - first off, how do you breed for endurance? Other than the slow heart rate that recovers quickly (essentially, a heart with great stroke volume), adequate legs, and an unstoppable desire to eat and drink, I'm not sure what the similarities are. Maybe a high pain tolerance? Someone pointed out a flat croup is rotten in the mountains - but is it as bad a fault in Michigan sand? A horse with perfect conformation for the rockies might get left in the Florida dust. ===== "A good horse makes short miles," George Eliot Chris and Star BayRab Acres http://pages.prodigy.net/paus =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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