Page 39 - November 2021

SPEEDLINES
“I think you need conformation, race record and a strong dam side to get good mares to prove a young stud. I think the mare is 70 to 75% of the whole equation. Raising babies or proving stallions, it is a strong influence from the mare side that makes a difference.” - Jude Robicheaux
exceptions to the rule, but if you look at First Down Dash and his mama. She was a phenomenal mare. And he is a broodmare sire. You look at Dynasty - he is looking like a broodmare sire.”
So, a stallion will pass his Y chromosome on to his son and the dam will pass one of her X chromosomes, giving us the XY genetics that makes the individual a male. Why is this important? The X chromosome has more genetic material than the Y chromosome. So, the dam provides more genetic information to her son than the sire gives that individual.
This brings us to the maternal grandsire influence and an interesting observation from Phillip Stewart, the Senior Advisor to Bob Moore Farms where FDD Dynasty stands. He stated his point this way, “I think the mare has a great deal of influence on our horses today and we should look back a little further in her pedigree. We have never talked about any mare or any great mare for that matter
and said her dam was such and such, we always say she is by First Down Dash. She is by Mr Jess Perry or Dash For Cash. So, I think you must look further back than the first dam. I think you have to go back a couple of dams and understand that a great deal of what she puts into her offspring comes from her sire line as well as the dam side of her pedigree.”
The key to the maternal grandsire
Ryan Robicheaux explained it this way on the criteria for selecting a stallion to stand on the commercial market and the role the horse’s dam plays in that decision, “The first thing I look for is the race record. What he won, where he’s won, the grading conditions and who he defeated
in those races. Then it is what sire he is by and what dam he is out of because when
a horse doesn’t have that great record you can sell him with the great mother he has, and what his brothers have done, what
his sisters have done and what his mother has done.” He used Heza Fast Dash, a stallion they have stood for many years,
as an example. His race record shows
that he won one stakes, the Blue Ribbon Futurity-G2, and he was second in the Remington Park Futurity-G1, earning $136,123. Heza Fast Dash is out of First Prize Dash, who is out of First Prize Rose, the dam of First Down Dash. She is the dam of six stakes winners with four of them being Grade 1 winners. Her foals have earned over $2.4 million. First Prize Rose is one of the all-time great mares. Heza Fast Dash is the sire of horses that have won over $34 million, and he is the broodmare sire of horses that have won $7 million.
So now, when you hear someone say that the dam is more than 50% of a horse’s genetics, you know the genetic reason why that is true and especially when it comes to her sons.
effect is again the X chromosome and
how the stallion passed the X he inherited from his dam on to his foals. Stewart is telling us that we must look at the sires that make up the sires in the tail female line and the passage of the X chromosome that can be passed down to the foal by the X chromosome that he inherited from his mother. He used Tolltac as an example
in that he passed to Dinastia Toll BRZ
the X Chromosome from his dam Little Smoothie. The other X she carried came from Phillips Filly, who inherited one X from her sire On A High and the other from her dam Sharper Image. Sharper Image got her X’s from her sire Easy Jet and her dam Miss Killoqua by Killoqua. Stewart is telling us that we shouldn’t overlook the stallions in the pedigrees of the horses we are looking at in these female families. They also pass an X on to their daughter and she could pass that X on to the next generation.
Jude and Ryan Robicheaux of Robicheaux Ranch, where Apollitical Blood stands, give us an interesting observation
of the mare’s influence on her sons and the commercial market. Jude states it this way, “I think you need conformation, race record and a strong dam side to get good mares to prove a young stud. I think the mare is 70 to 75% of the whole equation. Raising babies or proving stallions, it is a strong influence from the mare side that makes a difference.”
The first thing I look for is the race record. What he won, where he’s won, the grading conditions and who he defeated in those races. Then it is what sire he is by and what dam he is out of because when a horse doesn’t have that great record you can sell him with the great mother he has, and what his brothers have done, what his sisters have done and what his mother has done.” – Ryan Robicheaux
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