ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF HORSE BREEDING

Career profiles for King Ranch and commercially marketed sons of Old Sorrel: What is a breeder to do with good horses that don’t quite fit his objectives? Horses are lovely creatures, each of which is valuable in its own right. No ethical breeder views his livestock as mere ciphers in a mathematical formula or beads upon a chromosomal string. Bob Kleberg, for example, certainly had favorite horses, such as the Old Sorrel son Tino and the mare Brisa, animals he loved to ride and his partners for years in everyday work on the King Ranch.

While it is absolutely necessary to meaningfully test and cull each foal crop, it is not usually necessary to kill foals in order to get them out of a breeding program. Tools generally employed are gelding males, making mares into “using horses” or kids’ ponies without breeding them, and outside sales. Kleberg retained the

Old Sorrel sons Babe Grande, Cardinal, Hired Hand, Little Richard, Macanudo, Solis, Tino and Tomate Laureles as major parts of his breeding program, while for various reasons letting Comanche, Lucky Strike, Old Man,

Red Rattler, Sancho, Silver King, and Smoky go to outside buyers.

A survey of online records of mares brought to these stallions for cover shows that the two groups of horses had very different careers:

King Ranch stallions were mated far more frequently to daughters and granddaughters of Old Sorrel, for example, than were the stallions who had commercial careers. As might be expected, the “outside” stallions (black line) stood to mares sired by a greater variety of stallions, while the King Ranch stallions (brown line) more frequently covered descendants of Old Sorrel (who were also therefore descendants of Hickory Bill). Both groups stood to similar overall numbers of mares.