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They are certainly selected for your #1 premise below, but not for your #2 premise.  By the TB industry's own stats, only 3% ever even get to the starting gate.  The attrition means big business.

 

And indeed, those that break down DO often become the parents of the next generation of race horses--that has been a major contributing factor, IMO, toward the general trend.

 

Your paragraph about how amazing it is that any survive the training is sort of contradictory to your paragraph right ahead of it that states that those who don't get the time and LSD to build bone don't become the parents....etc.

 

One of the places where I think that TI was right on was with his ideas about building bone in young race horses wtih proper conditioning--and he was swimming upstream against the entire TB industry.  And while some may be using his methods, I'd wager that the vast majority are not.  TB training is going on much as it used to, and horses break down, oh well....  You were on the mark with your previous prognosis that the rules don't change.

 

You ARE right that TBs and QHs don't mature any faster than other breeds--at least their skeletons don't.  Deb Bennett has good numbers on that.  Their muscles do, though, and therein lies a part of the problem.  They LOOK mature--kind of like the 15-year-old girl in the D-cup bra--but their skeletons are still not fully developed, just as the 15-year-old's sense of responsibility has not yet developed to where she is quite ready to be a consenting adult.  We call the 15-year-old girl jail bait, but we call the 3-year-old TB business as usual.

 

Heidi

I vote against genetic predisposition to breakdown.  Here is my reasoning:

There are two selective pressures put on US TB's

1. Be able to run very fast for ~1 mile as a young horse..
2. To not breakdown until they have raced for a couple of years.

Horses that break down, when raced much to young, when raced without the
time and LSD to build bones are not the parents of the next generation of
race horses.

If you look at how they are raised and trained, the remarkable thing is not
that an unacceptable number breakdown, but that so many do manage to survive
the training.

I am also not convinced that TB and QH actually mature as much "faster" than
Arabian horses as casual observation suggests.  I postulate that:

1. They are fed a much higher protein, and higher calorie diet.  This causes
extremely fast growth, and will cause the growth plates to close earlier.
2. They have a genetic predisposition to develop bulging muscles.  These
bulging muscles make them look more mature.

It would be interesting to raise a group of Arabians, and TBs on good grass
pasture, on say a 1000 A hilly ranch where they had to travel miles each day
to get feed and water.  I'd bet that their development and age when growth
stopped would be pretty similar in both groups.



Ed
Ed & Wendy Hauser
2994 Mittower Road
Victor, MT 59875

(406) 642-9640

ranch(at)sisuwest(dot)us


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