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Cheers · Jan 26, 2016 3:52 PM

So...I'm culling my mares and having a hard time doing it.

I have a lot of 4 to 6 year old foundation brood mares. Obviously they don't have many foals on the ground. While I am trying to impose a 3 strikes policy, I need to do a pretty hard cull this season. So my question is this--if I have a mare with only 1 or 2 foals on the ground and her average foal PT is lower than her PT even though she's been bred to top stallions (perfect foundations or rank specials), should I cull her? Oh yeah, and there will be lots of Ausmerican foundation brood mares in the auctions for the next week or so...

Abbey Road · Jan 26, 2016 5:25 PM

AFPT is a really good basis to cull on, in my opinion, although an "average of one" isn't, really. I'm not sure I would cull based on a single foal's PT, unless of course you're not that fond of the mare anyway.

Abbey Road · Jan 26, 2016 5:32 PM

I'm going to throw an example out, for the heck of it.

http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=131818

This mare's PT is 11.7, AFPT is 11.53. She's produced everything from 11.1 to 12. She's got a pile of *Gold mares and *Star stallions (and geldings) among her foals. If I went by her first foal, which is an A gelding with a PT of 11.3, I'd have missed out on a few very good babies (and show ponies).

Food for thought. :)

Cheers · Jan 26, 2016 5:40 PM

So, Abbey, this is my issue. Of the 700 or so gen 2 foals I put on the ground this season, probably 40 were culled outright for having PTs lower than 9.5 (my gen 2 cutoff). Of those, probably half were also spayed or gelded by the free tests. I tried to get rid of those mares as I went if it was their first foal. If not, I made a note and its counting as 2 strikes in the 3 strike policy, but that still only covers a very small portion of my mares. I've probably culled or sold another 60...but I really need to cull another 200 or so (because I've had a few create sprees with good HHs) and I'm just struggling!!! Halfway through my pastures and a long way to getting a manageable cohort of foundation mares...

Anyone want to volunteer to cull my girls for me?

Abbey Road · Jan 26, 2016 5:54 PM

My suggestion would be to decide on an AFPT benchmark for that particular generation. Anybody with 2 foals and an AFPT less than that gets booted. Rather than using the mare's PT to gauge it.

Are you culling yellows? I'd start there.

Cheers · Jan 26, 2016 6:13 PM

yep, culling most yellows. A few get to stay because their breeder (me) was an idiot at stallion selection for their first few foals and they've since produced excellent kids.

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