HGG Community Forums

On my breeding stock? None. Pt tells you nothing about breed ability, its afpt you want to look at.

I agree, PT does not have anything to do breeding ability. Some of the Top Notch Producer foundation horses, which have 100% breeding ability(best an un-boosted foundation can be) and a random amount of showing ability, have PT scores that are lower than 1. Horses with PTs this low are obviously a disaster in the show ring so before we had pastures people would sometimes cull horses with PT scores that low, especially if they were short on barn space, because they wanted every horse in their barn to earn some money in the show ring. But now that we have pastures, you can just leave those horses in your pasture permanently so they will always have the full pasture breeding bonus and you can give their stall to a horse that will earn you some money/points in the show ring.

Here is an example of how a horse can have a great PT and be a terrible breeder. This is a foundation mare that has a 9.9 PT and is Failed papered, which means she is a bad breeder.
http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=904002

As another example, here is a spayed mare I bought as a show prospect. She has a great PT score of 11.6 but she only papered Yellow.
http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=888342

And as one more comparison, here are 2 of my 2G B papered colts. They are from my group of highest B papered colts and the comparison test said they are about as good as each other. One has a 9.3 PT and the other has a 10.7 PT.
http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=887423
http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=883219

This is my 2G A papered colt who tests superior to my best B papered colts. His PT is 10.5, which is lower than my B papered colt's PT of 10.7.
http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=883263

Average foal PT (AFPT) is important when you are looking at breeding stock. It only looks at the PT scores of a horse's foals, but horses that produce foals with good showing ability also tend to produce foals with good breeding ability. Personally, I cull any foundation stallion that does not have an AFPT of at least 9.5 and I like to see AFPTs of 9.8 or higher. However, most of my foundation studs are perfect foundation/are from foundation rescue and have 100% breeding ability so they will produce better foals on average than an ordinary C papered foundation stallion that usually does not have 100% breeding ability. All Rank Special foundations will have a breeding ability of 100% or higher. Most of them are equivalent to Perfect Foundations and have 100% breeding ability, but there are some Rank Specials that create horses that are Exceptional Producers/Exceptionally Perfect and they have 105% breeding ability. There is also an Exceptional Producer herd helper that creates foundations with 105% breeding ability.

Personally, I do think consistency is important to breed for. An inconsistent horse will always have a lower PT than a consistent horse with equivalent showing ability. I have a het snowflake colt who was born inconsistent and had a 9.5 PT. I used a GMT to make him perfectly consistent and his PT went up to 10. If you want to breed foals that will have predictable results in the show ring with PT scores that are as high as possible, you should breed for consistency. I personally will not keep an inconsistent colt for breeding. If the colt is perfect in every other way, I will use 1 GMT to make him consistent. Otherwise I will either sell him to someone who doesn't mind inconsistency or I geld him and add him to my show string. If I have an inconsistent filly that I really like, I will either GMT her consistent or I make sure to breed her to a perfectly consistent stallion.
Some people don't mind inconsistency at all, so it depends on what is important to you.

I only care about pt in my altered show horses.... some of my best producing mares have absolutely terrible pt scores

I think its rare that a horse is good at both breeding and showing

Pt is very important to me. I don't snip foals for low pt but I start looking at the parents if it happens too often.

@Kassierae I don't go through every horse haha! Every so often I'll do a quick search on my horses and look at those who are over 5 and ranking lowest in total points earned this year and then snoop through their records. If there's any obvious horses who are just failing miserably (10+ year old horses with less than 100 pts total) then I'll have a snoop to see if they were a recent geld/spay and figure out if it's worth keeping them or not. For the most part they're kept until they pass away, but you have the odd one which isn't worth keeping around.

Stallion I mentioned earlier is one who would fall into the YUM category but he has the benefit of being too good a breeder.


IV Undisclosed

This one would also catch my eye as being a YUM candidate but she's a recent spay and is still placing OK.


Show Line 6

If you really want to see glue factory, I came across this mare while I was searching for examples of low PT foundation mares. Failed papered and a 0.3 PT. :O Looks like someone is using her for implanting embryos.


Djf

@windward, yeah, but she is not black CHESTNUT, which is exactly what I breed for! :( Talk about getting your hopes up!

Wow I did not even notice that your mare was a chestnut! I assumed from her picture that she was a black mare. That sucks :(

I usually kind of ignore PT unless if its under 9.9 for foundations or 10+ for higher gens. Low PTs get put through a few breedings to roughly assess breeding ability. If they've proven to be poor breeders and been around long enough to have nice amount of points I'll snip the stallions and and keep the mares to produce auction fodder. Otherwise they get auctioned.

Unfortunately this method has eliminated a majority of my foundation mares. I plan to continue assessing the offspring but I've given up on my current foundation herd. There's a couple of gems that will continue to get special treatment but I'm not as gungho about breeding foundations anymore.

As for consistency, I don't mind it since I have a couple of good horses that are inconsistent. I do not have the patience to save up for GMT since I'm still trying to save up for a basic upgrade so I let it go and watch how things play out.