I've been working on some new data models for the yearling sales season. The goal being that if the average sale has 3% Elite racehorses to all horses, and the average bloodstock agent gets about 10% Elite racehorses to purchases, if you can get a data algorithm to get you started with a shortlist at each sale with a little north of that latter figure, that you are putting yourself in a position for more consistent success. In analyzing the dataset, which is substantial, it i

Without in any way belittling or demeaning those that struggle daily with substance abuse issues, I feel that I have to start this post with an Alcoholics Anonymous type confession - I was once a Pedigree Analyst. As a preface, this is a bit more of a personal post, so if you were hoping (expecting) something of a more technical nature, feel free to move on. For those that are happy to indulge, I was one of 'those guys' who believed that the pedigree held the answer, and by a

We were asked to provide a viewpoint for Europe's largest racing paper in the Racing Post, talking about our services and how they can be applied to the Thoroughbred Industry. Click Here to take a look at it. #Thoroughbred #RacingPost

In the middle of January on PLOS One, the paper that outlined the development of the Equine 50K SNP chip was released. The chip, or genotyping array, was actually developed back in 2008 and since that time they have gone on to add another 11,000 SNP's to another chip tabbed the Equine 70K chip (even though it only has ~65,000 usable SNP's), which was the technology that we used to complete our genome wide study on athletic performance in thoroughbreds and in turn create the g

The concept of a 'mitochondrial eve' is a concept that has been around in human terms for some time. The idea is that we as humans all trace faithfully back to one female, or the 7 Daughters of Eve if you have read Bryan Sykes interesting novel on human mitochondria, and it is borne about by one of the principal achievements of mitochondrial genetics, which is the classification of all modern Europeans into seven groups, the mitochondrial haplogroups. Each haplogroup is defin

Two really important scientific papers were published today (at least I think they are!). The first was a paper written by Matthew Binns to do with inbreeding in the thoroughbred. He and his team found (unsurprisingly) that the thoroughbred has increased in inbreeding coefficient in the last 40 years, and even more so since the advent of big stallion books. The papers is really quite eye opening as it outlines the rate of inbreeding and how with the advent of big books, the r

Just yesterday we highlighted a paper that discussed the great progress that has been made in the equine genome, and how the thoroughbred industry at large can use genetics to truly improve the breed. The paper specifically mentioned the good ground that can be mede in identifying and selecting against diseases and heritable traits that impinge on performance. Recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) is a common, performance-limiting, allergic respiratory disease of horses characte

While they do not mention performance, a paper has appeared in this months Equine Veterinary Journal (click here to read it online) outlining the benefits and challenges for genomics in improving the thoroughbred. It is a very well written article and one that we thoroughly recommend that all breeders interested in genomics to improve their results read. #EVJ #Thoroughbred

There have been a few new studies release in the past week or so that are of interest. The papers are attached to the links This one is on the muscle loss that occurs following exercise. It is based on trotters but we think that the same would apply to thoroughbreds also. It mentions some specific amino acids and the like to supplement post work to increase muscle recovery and reduce muscle loss. It is a little underpowered, not enough horses really, but it is a very interest