ForgotPassword?
Sign Up
Search this Topic:
Forum Jump
Posts: 3344
Apr 4 08 9:37 AM
vixen of doom wrote: You can't seriously be telling me it's a good thing to breed OUT the toughness and endurance of a breed and instead push towards slow, family-oriented breeding? I don't think it's ever been proven that a horse capable of working high-stress/high-endurance jobs are going to be any less capable to walk around a ring than one that isn't capable of doing those high-stress/high-endurance jobs. Though I do agree in working to keep them marketable, I like the idea of using outside blood to improve on them and add a little more 'pretty' into Appy lines. I don't think they are breeding it out. My apps are a lot tougher than my quarters - but they are crosses. Typically it is a once time cross to get some refinement, then you go back and breed to apps until you start loosing it. It is not that breeders are diluting the breed by constantly crossing them. But it is good to breed them in such a way that they can be marketable and sustainable. There is not a large demand for the old scruggy foundation type app. The issue isn't so much in preserving the actual bloodlines themselves (at least in my mind) as preserving the type itself. That's where I'm not a big fan of the Foundation registries, they focus too much on the bloodlines and not enough on the type. Especially with Appaloosas, since so little of the original bloodlines are left, and most of those are crossed with who-knows-what. They only allow crosses with TB, QH and arab I think the Appaloosa could use a lot of improvement, and a lot of work on getting back to that original type. Turning them into Quarter Horses with spots doesn't improve them as a breed, it just changes them into something else. Quarter horse blood might not be a bad thing to use in Aps, but it shouldn't be used to the point where it takes over. What's the point in that? It doesn't improve on Appaloosa traits it erases them. Honestly, Appaloosas would probably be better improved if something like the Crioulo or even knabstruppers were added as acceptable outcross breeds, since they at least share a lot of Appaloosa look and, with the Crioulos, a lot of the same Spanish ancestry. Quarter Horses are not the end-all-be-all of horse flesh, and I can't see them as the perfect out-cross for Appaloosas when their original uses were so different. ie: Sprint racing and cow working vs long distance trekking and hunting.
Share This