In my column for last month’s Stallion Issue (Dec. 1, p. 59), we created our “hit list” of stallions. Now it’s time to talk about our mares, and the first question we have to answer is, “Is my mare a breeding candidate?”

Regardless of the breed, I think it’s important that we look at our mares honestly to decide if they have qualities we want to reproduce. This should be a major consideration in determining our breeding goals.

The quality of mares being brought into this country has greatly improved over the years. Fifteen years ago, we had many Thorough-bred mares, which certainly have their value, but those Thoroughbred mares were not necessarily the best for the type of sport horses we’re trying to produce. Today we see many good warmblood mares coming into our breeding programs, along with some excellent Thoroughbred mares and even mares from other breeds.

The most important thing we can do as breeders is to determine our objectives. If we are a professional or even amateur rider, are we breeding to produce our own sport horse to ride? Or are we breeding for the marketplace? Are we breeding for sentimental reasons? Do we have a sport horse mare who has an injury and during her year off could carry a foal? Do we have a young mare needing another year or so to grow up before being able to determine her riding value, and should we have her carry a foal for the year? These are a few of the many considerations we breeders have to evaluate when deciding whether to breed a mare.

With all of these considerations and options in front of us, my primary advice is to be aware of the “breeder’s trap.”

What am I talking about? Well, I mean that over time you get to know a mare who at first glance seemed to have incredible conformation and movement but who simply doesn’t produce the quality you want. (And that’s something you can’t evaluate with just one foal).

It’s hard to evaluate how well a mare will produce in the very beginning, even considering all of the criteria available: pedigree, history, conformation, movement, character, soundness. That’s the breeder’s trap: You see a beautiful mare with all of these qualities, so you expect her to be a good producer, until she fails to produce any quality foals. And since that’s the only true objective in breeding–to produce high-quality, improved offspring–you can either stay trapped or make a tough decision and remove her from your breeding program.

Then there are mares who don’t look like high-quality broodmares, but they produce a quality foal every year, regardless of the stallion. They’re the dominant mares, just as we have stallions who are dominant in their reproduction.

When you have an average mare who produces outstanding foals, it takes horsemanship and knowledge to believe in the foals she’s producing. But if you’re looking long-term at your mare, she must produce good-quality foals. The longer you take risks with mares who are not producing good foals, the more likely you are to lose your incentive and enthusiasm.

During the good times, but especially during the bad times, as a breeder you must continue to make good choices.

Mares have both interior and exterior values that we have to evaluate. The exterior values are the ones we can see: conformation, movement, attitude and character. The interior values are what come out of the mare: how nervous she gets and what she produces.

In order to really get to know a mare, you need to look at both her interior and exterior values. And this evaluation leads to our choice of stallions, to the place where we start to complement our mare information with our stallion information.

Of course, a very important piece of mare information is to make sure she’s reproductively sound. Often we proceed with breeding the mare because we know her external values, but then three years later she still hasn’t produced a foal.

This is another area of caution for breeders: Investigate the total package before you make any decision so you don’t get discouraged by something you cannot change.

If you’re breeding for your own personal program, to produce a horse for you to ride, you don’t have to be as demanding about these factors when you evaluate your mare. But there’s no reason to keep trying to produce a good-quality foal year after year if you haven’t succeeded.

If you’re breeding professionally, though, you must go through the steps of making sure your mare is a producer before you purchase her.

Mares that have a good competition record can be a great place to start in putting together your broodmare herd, but past-performance records do not produce foals. You really have to be careful with breeding competitive mares; you have to make sure that they reproduce the qualities you want in their foals. With both stallions and mares, neither their pedigree, their looks, their character, nor their movement matter if they cannot produce the foals you want. Please, remember that.

As we move forward with our mares, we need to make good choices, to look at our mares object-ively, and to determine our breeding goals. Then we have to determine, from our hit list of stallions, which ones will best complement our mares?

As I said in last month’s article, it’s very important for us as a country to produce the best we can from every horse we have, because we don’t have the numbers to make mistakes. And I think we’re now on the right track. We’re more educated, and we’re making better choices, as shown by the quality I’m seeing at breed inspections and in the show rings.

Our American-bred horses are becoming more successful and gaining more recognition. We just have to continue to make our choices count to keep moving forward.

Scott Hassler