The Politics of Pedigree
by Roger Lyons
The recent series of posts relating to the table of ancestor preferences suggests that different ancestors have different roles and relations with respect to the stallion population. Maybe it’s time for a more schematic rendering of that variety.
Franco Varola famously placed the variety of touchstone sires (chefs de race) on a typological spectrum, using the analogy of the left and right wings (the dominant liberal and conservative ideological commitments) of the English-style parliament. His dosage analysis focused on the functional relations of the different types. However, his typology didn’t address the question of compatibility between individual ancestors. Could Varola’s analogy lead to a way of characterizing individual ancestors on that basis? Let’s give it a whirl.
Two structural changes are required.
First, our shift of emphasis means that we’re no longer subject to parliamentary rules. Out here in the street there’s a broader ideological spectrum, including radicals and anarchists, and, as the autocrat of your thoroughbred breeding operation, you ignore them at your peril. As we’ll see, it’s important that we sequence the four major ideological commitments in this way: radical, liberal, conservative, anarchist.
Second, the linear structure used by Varola won’t do. We need a structure that reflects the way in which the four ideological commitments relate to one another. So, the solution is to place them on a clock, with the radical at twelve o’clock, the liberal at three o’clock, the conservative at six o’clock, and the anarchist at nine o’clock. The question of compatibility is addressed by placement of ancestors on the clock, relative to one another and respective of their “ideological” commitments.
The radical, at twelve o’clock, is the easiest type, thanks to Varola, who familiarized us with “the Phalaris revolution.” Clearly, the radical is an incipient figure in Varola’s analysis and a pivotal one. As change-makers go, Native Dancer would be a prime representative of the radical commitment, but not the extremist that Phalaris was. The advantage of our compatibility clock is that we can place Native Dancer at around one o’clock if that seems right–the radical commitment shading into the liberal. Appropriately, the radical is diametrically opposed to the conservative, at six o’clock.
Accordingly, the liberal is opposed to the anarchist. Why? One might associate Mr. Prospector and Northern Dancer with the liberal commitment, whose distinction is that it defines the mainstream of the population at any given time and in any given place. The liberal knows how to conform and expects the same, gets along best with other liberals. For that reason, the liberal has a tendency to be complacent about the company it seeks and needs to be revitalized continually by radical and conservative associations. The liberal has no use for anarchy and will give it no quarter.
The conservative can get along with the liberal just fine if often on contrasting terms and might tea party on the anarchic side, but the conservative can’t abide a radical. I’m inclined to think Varola’s pure types, such as Bold Ruler and Double Jay on the left and Vaguely Noble and Alleged on the right, could all be considered conservative in their way. Unlike the radical, who wants to start something new, the conservative wants to preserve something long established, regardless of Varolan type. Remember, our clock doesn’t stop with what an ancestor contributes. Its hours mark where an ancestor is likely to fit successfully in the population.
The anarchist, at nine o’clock, opposes the liberal mainstream any way it must, just wants its distinctiveness to be respected. The survival of the anarchist is always under threat. Largely because anarchists don’t play well together, their best hope lies in alliances with either the radical or the conservative elements, at twelve o’clock and six o’clock, respectively. Graustark is almost certainly an anarchist, and I suspect Halo of leaning libertarian.
There, I think that winds up the compatibility clock enough to get its wheels turning.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Friday, March 11, 2011 at 6:55 am.
Native Dancer at the Vanishing Point
by Roger Lyons
Native Dancer has reached a genetic vanishing point in the sense that his influence is so pervasive that his contribution can no longer be contrasted in any significant way with the mainstream of the population. This is evident from the table accompanying my last post, which shows that in no instance do the strike rates of US stallions with mares in some descent of Native Dancer exceed their overall records. That is, no “contemporary” US stallion has a statistically measurable preference for mares in descent of Native Dancer. Keep in mind, though, that it’s because the broodmare population is so largely defined by Native Dancer. It’s like the air they breathe.
Moreover, only two stallions–Diesis and Dixieland Band–(that the table rather loosely defines as contemporary) fall below their normal strike rates when crossed with mares in some descent of Native Dancer, and they are both deceased. They were bred quite differently from one another with respect to Native Dancer–Diesis, by Sharpen Up, by Atan, by Native Dancer, and Dixieland Band, by Northern Dancer, out of Natalma, by Native Dancer.
Reasons can no doubt be given for why they had trouble with mares in descent of Native Dancer, but the fact that they did so has always had more practical import than the reasons why. More interesting here is that their aversion to mares in descent of Native Dancer and their shared birth year of 1980 renders their stud records especially useful as measures of the proliferation of Native Dancer’s influence.
Consider what it could mean that both of these stallions had significantly higher strike rates with mares born prior to 1985 than with mares born after that year.
Dixieland Band got superior runners from 50 of 435 individual mares born prior to 1985, for 11.5%; but, of the 644 mares born after 1984, 51 produced superior runners by him, for only 7.9%. Furthermore, only 23 of the 396 mares born after 1989 produced superior runners by him, for only 5.8%. As Native Dancer’s influence spread throughout the later population cohorts, Dixieland Band’s strike rate with those mares declined. Of the 219 mares with Northern Dancer in their ancestries, only 10 produced a superior runner, and he was barely in range of his average with mares in descent of Mr. Prospector.
Diesis’ stud record reflects the same broad pattern. While 48 of 343 mares born prior to 1985 produced superior runners by him, or 14%, only 28 of 453 (6.2%) born after 1984 did so. Of the 277 mares born after 1989, only 10 (3.6%) produced superior runners by him. Diesis got a superior runner from only one of 64 mares with Mr. Prospector in their ancestries, and he was barely in range of his average with mares in descent of Northern Dancer.
With each successive broodmare population cohort, in which crosses of Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector assured a rapid accumulation of Native Dancer influence, the strike rates of Dixieland Band and Diesis declined. It seems warrantable to conclude that Native Dancer’s proliferation in the broodmare population had a more profound effect on their stud records than could possibly be attributed to a decline in viability due to increasing age.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 6:48 am.
Measuring Ancestor Appeal
by Roger Lyons
Recent posts about Dixieland Band and Graustark preceded their broader context, which arrives as a table, titled “Ancestor Preferences of Major US Sires.” The table covers 164 ancestors and reflects, among other things, how well or poorly individual ancestors of broodmares are playing to the contemporary stallion population. Links to three different versions of the table are provided below.
The table is very simple once you catch on to the concept. To over-simplify, there’s about a 31% chance that a stallion whose name you pick out of a hat is going to react well with Storm Cat in the ancestry of a mare and only about a 9% chance of an unfavorable reaction. That leaves about 60% that do okay with Storm Cat, but not many breeders dream of results that are okay.
If your mare is by Storm Cat, the odds are not bad that you’ll draw a suitable stallion by chance, at least in that respect. However, if her dam happens to be by Halo, with which only 13% of the stallion population react favorably against the 22% that react unfavorably, it’s more complicated. Thus do questions of compatibility arise from the layers of a mare’s ancestry.
Clearly, the breeding of some mares renders them far more flexible as to the selection of a mate than other mares. Ideally, you would want a stallion to have high stike rates with a mare’s entire ancestry. Some mares may have a range of such options, but for other mares there’s no such stallion.
Anyway, for each ancestor, I surveyed 71 proven sires to determine, first, how many of them sired foals out of at least 10 mares in some descent of the subject ancestor. Second, the qualifying sires were divided into two groups: 1) those that, from mares in some descent of the subject ancestor, had strike rates significantly above their overall records and 2) those that had significantly lower strike rates with those mares.
Here’s the legend for the resulting table:
Ancestor–the subject ancestor as represented by broodmares.
Sires–the number of stallions (from among the 71) that sired 10 or more foals with mares representing the ancestor.
Approve–the number from the “Sires” group with significantly higher-than-average strike rates.
Approve%–the percentage of “Sires” with significantly higher-than-average strike rates.
Disapprove–the number from the “Sires” group with significantly lower-than-average strike rates.
Disapprove%–the percentage of “Sires” with significantly lower-than-average strike rates.
There are three versions of the table, one listing 164 ancestors by “Approve%” rank to show them in order of the frequency of high strike rates by the stallion sample; another listing them by “Disapprove%” rank to reflect the downside risk; and then an alphabetical listing so you can have fun looking them up individually.
Bear in mind, the survey includes only US sires. Danzig’s approval rating of only 14% and disapproval rating of 23% would be vastly different based on a survey of European or Australasian sires. Nevertheless, Danzig is a problem for a lot of US stallions.
I’ll comment further on this table in future posts, beginning with the reason why Native Dancer’s approval rating is the lowest in the list.
Posted by Roger Lyons on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 7:04 am.