Quite some time ago now I recall making the point that although it’s understandable that we breeders, especially those relatively new to the industry, can spend much time looking for the silver bullet, the theory that will lead to an avalanche of black-type winners, such a search is doomed to fail. Firstly, there have been so many smart people engaged on this quest that you’d think that one of them would have found the magic formula long since; secondly, no-one’s found it for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist.
This not to denigrate the remarkable level of success that some breeders have experienced but you’d have to take into account other factors when evaluating their success – apart from any magic genetic formula they may or may not have had. For example, some have been fabulously wealthy: Nelson Bunker Hunt did pretty well as a breeder before his ill-judged attempt to corner the global market in silver. Others have been expert horsemen and ruthless cullers of animals which didn’t turn out to be up to the standard expected – think Federico Tesio, the legendary Italian breeder.
My argument is that there’s one factor that supersedes all others and that’s sheer blind luck. Some of us will have bred a good horse early in our breeding careers and drawn the totally erroneous conclusion that this business is easy. In a sense that’s the worst luck of all because it leads to blind faith in our own brilliance leading to unwarranted expense and ultimate failure. We always need to remember that however clever we think we are, it’s chance that dictates which sperm gets to that egg first.
However, that’s not to say that we’re all doomed and that if we are not fortune’s darlings we have no hope of success. There are certainly some tactics we can use to nudge the odds just a little in our favour. Just one of these is to acquire a working knowledge of equine genetics.
In the remainder of this series of articles I’m going to focus on some of the myths and legends of genetics which, if we put our faith in them, will certainly lead to unjustified expense, if not abject failure.
