This And That

Hello all!

Been a while since I've posted, so I thought I'd give a bunch of updates on the horses. A lot of randomness, sorry.

200 Babies

I am very pleased with this year's foal crop! I bred three mares, 2 Morgans and 1 SFH, but I forgot to confirm one mare and she doesn't appear to be pregnant, so just 1 Morgan and 1 SFH. They are lookers though! I imported one color custom suckling to make up for the unconfirmed too. :) Unfortunately I missed training them all during their first month.
DIY Learn To Play Piano
Isn't she beautiful? My second SFH baby, and the first by my color custom sire. I breed these guys for fun. My first goals are color and 5 gaits, then speed and nice temperaments.
The import: All My Secrets
Just looks like a bay silver right? Well, I took a gamble looking for a PRL/prl or prl/prl color custom, and she tested heterozygous for pearl! Yay!!! I really want to get pearl dilutes into my colorful SFHs. Now to find another pearl...
And last but not least, Controversial.
My jaw dropped when I saw her. I haven't had a double cream in so long! And she has a better temperament than her parents? Wow. I have a feeling this girl is going to take the show ring by storm. Her sire is my GCh Intolerable Acts, and her dam is unshown, but has produced two show monsters for me already. To top it all off, Controversial showed movement after only 1 night of pasturing and less than a month's training!

201 Babies

I just bred 4 mares for 201 babies, and will add one more soon. In the end I hope to have 4 Morgans and 1 Dutch Warmblood due. I am SUPER excited for them as I think they will be wonderful horses. I will update my Broodmare barn soon so ya'll can see the crosses.

 Individual Brags

 The Nurse
I purchased this mare from Thaya. And I LOVE her. She is unshown, and has a high COI, but man, she throws some amazing babies with my stallions. Check her produce out.

Route SixtySix Kicks
I am kicking myself for accidentally exhausting this girl way back when the energy changes were implemented. She is passing her prime show age, but yet she has been quite a monster in the showring. She is really kicking my other horses' tails! 5 points from her ICh, but I am hoping I can maybe still show her to GCh... That will be a challenge though as she has no majors yet and I really really want her in the broodmare barn. We may have to settle for ACh...

Prescription For Sunlight
This girl is my pride and joy right now. She is flying through the show brackets, and is an ACh at only 5 years old! She is scoring about 80 consistently in Expert Gaited In-Hand, and is doing really well in 3-Gaited classes too. Wanna know the best part? She has a major conformation fault. I barely notice it, but her toes point out a little. And yet she is an amazing In-Hand horse. Arguably one of my best show horses ever. I have no doubt she will become a GCh, but we have NCh in our sights too...

Alice In Strings
He is getting older for a show horse now, but I just love this guy. He is about to become an ACh, and could possibly earn a GCh title too. He doesn't have that extremely good movement I used to push really hard for, but I am planning on using him as a sire to increase intelligence and stamina in my herd. He will have his first foal in 201!

Infectious Love
One of my favorite up and coming stallions. On his way to ACh and possibly GCh. He has a special place in my heart as he is also a full brother to Love Infection, whom I lost a long time ago to rouge trainers.

Begaafd
My first Dutch Warmblood/DHH foal! I absolutely love her, and I am a sucker for rabicanos. I am focusing on breeding for conformation in my DHHS though, and am not caring about temperament. A "hotter" temperament horse isn't such a bad thing when you want a more showy, excitable horse. But of course my first DHH has a very good temperament. XD Not gonna complain though.

LS

I am switching over my goals of breeding for gaited showing to cutting cows, so I sold off all but one of my LS (I only had a few), and purchased three others. I am looking for LS with decent intelligence, speed, and movement. I bought:
Rowenmore
Sour But Sweet
LS Crossroads
Turns out all are related lol. But I am very pleased with them so far.

Experiments Update

I really need to update my experiments section... I have been trying out several new tactics and gadgets lately...

Old Bloodlines

I was looking through the pedigrees of my Morgans the other month and was shocked to find a couple of my horses trace back to my old old Morgan bloodlines An example: Perfectly Camouflaged
He traces back to GCh Sugar Plum Fairy Ballerina, Candyland, GCh The Widow's Last Rose, and GCh Recurring Nightmare. *Sniff* I almost teared up when I read those old names. So happy to see a few descendants still active.

Increasing Selection Intensity

Not all that long ago, I had 100 horses. I decided to change up and cut back though, and have been around 50-60 horses lately (3 breeds + a few LS and retired horses included). I have really been increasing the "intensity" of my selection to do this.
1. Before, I bred anywhere between 6-17 horses a year, and lately have been down to about 3 a year. I was taking more risks and making a lot of crosses that might produce a nice horse or might produce a flop. I have mostly stopped this though. In doing so, I have been producing mostly nice quality show horses now, instead of just a few nice ones.
2. I have also been breeding to suit a stallion, instead of to suit mares. Meaning I pick one or two stallions a year to breed to and then select the best mares for them. I used to find all the mares I wanted to breed, then selected any stallion for them. For some reason, this seemed to lead to me breeding more horses each year then I needed...
3. I have set several culling "checkpoints" now too to really increase selection intensity. I review my horses at 7 months, 2 to 2 1/2 years, after a BCh, and after a ICh, and then I cull the lower end horses. Hopefully all these things will increase the quality of my herd.

Plucking The Grey Hairs

I'm sure several of you have seen my previous two posts about the frequency of the grey gene in my herd. I am not a fan of greys. Just recently, half of my Morgans were grey. I have good new though! Through my increases in selection intensity, I am down to:
16 mares, 8 are heterozygous for grey.
Phenotypic frequency of .5, allelic frequency of .25.
14 stallions, 2 heterozygous for grey, 2 homozygous. (I am rarely using the two homozygous studs anymore though)
Phenotypic frequency of .29, allelic frequency of .21.
Overall:
Phenotypic frequency of .4, and allelic frequency of  .23! They were just at an allelic frequency of .3 and a phenotypic frequency of .52.
Yay! I haven't even been trying to decrease the grey either. :)



.... So yeah, a bunch of random stuff. Thanks for reading!