It's important that people understand what a nick
is, and the difference between a nick and a nick rating. Nicks are
a fact, but nick ratings are a statistic, and we all know statistics
can be very misleading. Unfortunately, ratings are what people want
nowdays because it's easier to read a score and blindly accept it,
than to reason out the intricate process of properly mating your
mare.
The word "nick" has become distorted in breeding jargon
due to the proliferation of the ratings, so that many people have
come to use it as a verb. "What stallions nick with my mare?"
or "I want you to nick my mares." When I hear that, my
skin crawls. The nick ratings have created this quick and dirty
method of matching stallions and mares to the demise of well rounded
matings. I don't think this is what the creators of either popular
nick rating system intended, but that's what has happened. Nick
ratings have done more to take down real mating analysis than anything
I've ever seen.
What is a nick? In my article "Nicks
or Not," I explain that a nick is a real live genetic term
describing a cross of two bloodlines that produces superior results
a surprising amount of the time. It's not guaranteed, but it has
a serious track record. The A.P. Indy/Mr. Prospector cross is a
good modern example. Some of A.P. Indy's most important offspring
are the result of this nick including Horse of the Year Mineshaft,
and his good sire sons Pulpit and Malibu Moon, all sons of A.P.
Indy out of mares sired by Mr. Prospector. That's a nick.
It's rare, and it's very specific.
A.P. Indy on a mare by Mr. Prospector represents a very specific
pedigree alignment accounting for 75% of the same pedigree on paper.
If the mare is not by Mr. Prospector, we're not talking about the
same nick. Bernardini is by A.P. Indy and out of a mare by Quiet
American. Quiet American, by Fappiano, by Mr. Prospector, is a male
line grandson of Mr. Prospector. It's a similar cross, but technically,
it's not the same nick, because Mr. Prospector's influence is diluted
2 generations further back.
Since we know full siblings in actuality share only about 50% of
their genes, theoretically, the chances of genetic similarity based
on three-quarter relatives, relatives with 75% similar parentage,
are half of that, or 37.5%. A.P. Indy crossed with a mare
by a son of Mr. Prospector reduces the influence of Mr. Prospector
by even more, down to 62.5% on paper, or 31.25% in terms closer
to probability. The further back the key ancestor is along the
mare's male line, it's potential influence decreases dramatically
every generation.
That's not to say some bloodlines don't work better together than
others, because they certainly appear to, but to attribute the cross
to the singular presence of the male line ancestor of the mare crossed
with the subject stallion is extremely shaky science. The biggest
flaw in the system is that nick ratings don't account for the whole
of the sire's pedigree crossing with the whole of the mare's pedigree,
including instances of the key successful ancestor in other areas
of the mare's pedigree (like the sire of the second dam).
Likewise, nick ratings don't account for the fact that some sires
are more dominant than others, and, and some sires are more like
their mothers than their fathers. Northern Dancer was a very dominant
sire, and threw a lot of typical sons like Lyphard, Danzig, and
The Minstrel, but his best son, Nijinsky II, was a very atypical
son. Instead of the small, heavily muscled model, Nijinsky II was
a tall, rangy individual built along staying lines. As a stallion,
Nijinsky II did not throw a consistent physical type and his offsping
varied greatly in aptitudes and ability from sprinters to milers
to stayers. In the long term, Nijinsky II does not behave in pedigrees
like his sire, Northern Dancer and nick ratings ignore that entirely.
Mr. Prospector was a great sire of speed and class, but he did
not kick out cookie-cutter versions of himself or his sire Raise
a Native. In fact, many of his best runners throw back more to their
dam's pedigrees in looks and aptitude, in particular, perhaps his
greatest sire son, Fappiano, who was very atypical and has created
his own dominant and easily recognizable branch of the Mr. Prospector
sireline. They are usually tall, long backed horses with a lot of
bone. This is the branch that hs produced more of the stayers descending
from Mr. Prospector, including Victory Gallop and Unbridled. On
the other hand, Forty Niner tended to get smallish, heavily muscled,
handsome types like Distorted Humor. The two branches of Mr. Prospector's
sireline are very different, and yet nick ratings treat them as
interchangeable.
Don't fall into the trap and decide your matings based on a nick
rating alone, good or bad. There are too many more important things
to evaluate in mating your mare and all must be considered before
you make your decision.
Copyright Anne Peters, 2012
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Example 1: Working at Three
Chimneys, I took numerous calls from breeders wanting to breed
their mare to Sky Mesa. An alarmingly high number of these calls
were from breeders owning Storm Cat-line mares, because it was
an "A" nick based on the cross of Pulpit and Storm
Cat. Of course, the breeders were overlooking the fact that
this is exactly the cross that produced Sky Mesa. A cross of
Sky Mesa on a daughter of Storm Cat would be inbreeding 3x2
to Storm Cat, and Sky Mesa on a daughter of a son of Storm Cat
would be inbreeding 3x3 to Storm Cat. Anyone who has laid eyes
on Sky Mesa knows that he's a very large, thickset, heavily
muscled horse on legs a little short for his mass. By inbreeding
to Storm Cat, a very similarly built horse, you're adding more
of the same, and the last thing you'd want to pile on this physical
model is more of the same. I discouraged breeders from doing
this, but the nick ratings were touting it as a great cross
and some didn't want to hear my cautions. By ignoring the rest
of the pedigree, the rating was pointing breeders down a potentially
disastrous path. Even now, after Sky Mesa is a proven stallion
in his own right, the cross of a Storm Cat-line mare with him
generates an "A" nick rating, based on the Pulpit/Storm
Cat cross. Shouldn't this rating be adjusted to show the results
of the Sky Mesa/Storm Cat cross specifically? Those figures
would give a clearer picture of the real value of the mating,
since Sky Mesa himself has not proven to be a good cross with
Storm Cat-line mares, and I think it's obvious why that would
be. |
Example 2: A client is excited
that his mare, hypothetically crossed with a certain successful
but extremely crooked son of Storm Cat, generated a nick rating
of "A++" with a variant of 31.20 (which apparently
is off the charts. I wouldn't know, because I don't pay attention
to this sort of, er, stuff). His mare is by Speightstown (Gone
West - Silken Cat by Storm Cat). He wanted my opinion. I
explained to him that the mating would also result in inbreeding
2x4 to Storm Cat, a horse who is notorious for passing on offset
knees. Since the stallion in question is extremely offset, which
is why he is commercial poison, inbreeding to the source of
this major fault would not be a good idea. "Oh," he
said, "I didn't think about the inbreeding." No, the
nick ratings don't remind you to avoid potentially negative
inbreeding in their algorithm. |
Example 3: Before he
had runners, nick ratings proclaimed that Flower Alley, Distorted
Humor's first and best son at stud, would be a good cross (an
A nick) with Mr. Prospector-line mares. After all, hadn't Distorted
Humor (by Forty Niner by Mr. Prospector) sired a Grade 1 winner
from the cross named Flower Alley, out of a mare by Lycius by
Mr. Prospector? Distorted Humor also had a Grade 2 winner, Sharp
Humor, from another Mr. Prospector-line mare, by Woodman. Both
Flower Alley and Sharp Humor were inbred 3x3 to Mr. Prospector.
This sort of close inbreeding is unusual in high class runners
and although the cross has worked with Distorted Humor, that
doesn't mean it translates into success with his sons, especially
those bred on the same cross. Distorted Humor was not closely
inbred but these sons are. The rule of thumb when using closely
inbred horses as breeding stock is to outcross, outcross outcross,
to maximize "hybrid vigor" to get a superior athlete.
I discouraged breeders from breeding Flower Alley to mares with
additional close crosses of Mr. Prospector, but many of them
still did, because it was a "good nick." Fast forward
to the present, when the same cross of a Mr. Prospector-line
mare with Flower Alley is given a "C+" nick rating,
because this cross is not working. None of his 4 graded stakes
winners are from Mr. Prospector-line mares, and only 1 of them
(Neck 'N Neck) has an additional cross of Mr. Prospector in
his dam. Nick ratings will blindly recommend continued crosses
of a pattern that will not have the same genetic benefits in
the second generation as it does in the first generation.
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Example 4: A client
called in a very bad mood because he had just looked up the
nick rating of a yearling that a prominent bloodstock agent
purchased for him last fall. It was a "D" nick, and
the client was fuming. He was going to call the agent and give
him an ear full of language. "Hold on," I said, "let
me look at the pedigree and see what's going on. You know I
don't like nick ratings, but we also know this agent is a good
horseman." So I looked up the catalog page, and immediately
saw why the dam had been bred to the sire. There were 3 stakes
horses under the first 2 dams, and all three of them were by
Sire X or a son of Sire X, and this yearling was also by a son
of Sire X. So the mating was actually a very logical one, and
the good genetic cross might have also led to the good conformation
the yearling displayed to impress the agent to purchase it.
The nick rating wasn't paying attention to any of this, however,
and gave the prospect a "D" without any further thought.
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