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| Story by Bernard le Courtois. It's already six years since the first appearance of the BLUP. In the beginning I was optimistic concerning the BLUP; even though I have always been convinced that nothing can replace experience and observation and the know how of a horseman. Today , with hindsight , I am aware of the system's aberrations as well as the way in which it has been abused and deviated. Let me try to make you share my point of view . I do not plead as a man of science , having no such pretentions , I leave that to Professors Signoret and Bouché-Pillon , who I will be quoting , but as a man in the field. My opinion is drawn from professional experience ;as a stud farmer , owner , judge , dealer and most of all as a breeder passionately involved in sport horse selection. The BLUP, which was presented as a gauge of the genetic value of the French sport horse , has progressed thanks to the constant and opinionated assistance of a top ranking public relations team who have skilfully and slowly driven home their message. I have to admit that it has been well mediatised. The ground was favourable : breeding has been in full growth for the past 10 years . The traditional breeders gradually losing ground to a new generation of "town" breeders ,ie. those for whom breeding is not a main activity. Facing them are the young National Stud executives who do not have the practical training their predecessors received , thanks to present modes of recruitment and training . Breeders today want a dialogue and ask for explanations or sometimes even justifications . Some of them , breeders and civil servants feel doubtlessly rather lost , as they do not master all the techniques of the business : selection, production, exploitation and marketing. Faced with such maleable novices BLUP could make its mark . In fact many newcomers in the horse world grabbed onto BLUP like a childishly simple life buoy. Suddenly they felt on a equal par with the professionals , imagining that this index would make up for their lack of knowledge , without realising that they were fooling themselves. They hid behind the BLUP , believing it would protect them. In the light of this attitude a new movement began to be felt . That of the sceptics. Today , many breeders , riders and stud farm executives no longer take such fallacious theories at face value . The time has come for the question to be properly debated and that our business sector, which is in full development , asks itself certain questions about the selection that the National Stud is beginning to install. They are using BLUP as their main criteria as if the investments made have to be justified at all costs. So what is the BLUP, and is it a method that can be applied to the sport horse? Is it correctly defined and calculated ? What consequences should we expect or fear from its use in orientating our breeding? Some answers can be drawn from experience and reasoning , providing prudence and rigor are applied. Professor Signoret said ; "The principal of the BLUP method is excessively simple , even simplistic. It affirms a priori that a foal that is born will, providing all else equal, represent an average between his father and mother .Breeders, genetic specialists, and those involved in improving domestic breeds know that , generally speaking , this is not the case. Only milk production is the happy exception confirmed by experience". It turns out that the equine BLUP index is nothing more than an adaptation of the American milk BLUP index. "Nothing prevents us from believing that in some ways the same is true of the quality of the sport horse. However , this is a radically simplifying hypothesis, far from reality, unjustified by any experience. This decisive experience can be simulated by supposing that all horses with a weak BLUP ( -5) were prevented from breeding. How many good , bad and champion horses would we be deprived of? There are many examples of champion Horses born with an ordinary or even bad BLUP. Just looking at the top competitions and the list of the 10 highest winning French horses for 1992, it is quickly apparent that half of them were born with a BLUP lower than 10: Roxanne de Gruchy, Norton de Rhuys, Nonix, President Papillon, and Orient de Frebourg. The others were concentrated around the same paternal origins with high BLUP's such as Laudunum (father of Raspail), Uriel (father of Paladin des Ifs) or Jalisco B ( father of Quidam de Revel and Quito de Baussy). The list could be added to with the most recent medal winners , all born with low BLUP's . Morgat (gold and bronze medal winner at the World Championsips), Quinta ( gold medal winner at the European Championships), Sissi de la Lande ( Silver medal at the Europaen Championships) without mentioning of course Jappeloup. The methods , statistics and probabilities take into account 95% of cases; considering as probable and representative of all the cases. The extreme and improbable cases are considered as negligeable , and are …..neglected. Yet horses truly classed according to their qualities are those which compete in A1 or CSI events. They represent 2%of the population . A lot of effort is therefore spent looking for rare ( and therefore improbable ) champions using methods which distance them from that reasoning. How strange! A mass selection , such as the BLUP can , at its best , improve the average by reinforcing homogeneity. Consequently, on the whole, the worst will be a lot less bad , the average slightly improved and the best , brought closer to the average , will have hardly have progressed at all, while the exceptional will no longer exist. On the other hand, some methods can disperse yet not improve the average. Theoretically their interest can be proved and practically their value can be tested( thoroughbred improver). In the recent French teams in international championships and Nation Cups , there were to be found, besides sons of Jalisco and Uriel , many products of thoroughbreds , either by their father (Morgat , Norton de Rhuys, La Belletiere, Rienza des Loups) or by their mother , a cross breeding which is very unusual in our Studbook and yet successful (Jappeloup, Lafayette,Nonix, Punition…). In this way we are gradually coming to a concentration of our breeding blood on certain male lines, Orange Peel, Ibrahim, Almé and his descendants , Ultimate and Grand Veneur and his descendants who are too many. It should be said that in 1991 nearly 20% of the stallions were from Almé and Grand Veneur, and that the number is rising . As far as the specifically top level breeding is concerned ( stallions working with A I )36%of mares inseminated receive descendants of these two stallions and in the private sector this percentage rises to 52%. We are thus in a phase of increasing consanguinity, particularly emphasised by the fact that the stud horses are chosen from a tiny part of our breeding and not from the 14000 horses born annually in France. This phenomenon in amplified by BLUP selection and provokes what is labelled elsewhere the "syphon" effect( see article on the opening of the Studbook) As the basis for mixing and remixing is reduced , the genetic gain will slowly diminish. To conserve any hope of an optimal genetic gain we should , on the contrary, accentuate crossbreeding by mixing bloodstrains , in particular by the influx of that of sport thoroughbreds and foreign breeds. Unfortunately the system favoured by the commissions considering the problem , is nothing more than a selection of reproductors by BLUP (+21 for SF stallions), thus directly opposing the goals necessary to our breeds. Breeders stuck in an imposed system will no longer choose stallions on instinct , but simply according to BLUP rules. In fact if the selection of stud horses ( by approval) and broodmares( by drawing lots and by premiums ) is done by BLUP , breeders will irreversibly come back to BLUP stallions. As one Stud Director recently said at a sale of SF stallions " It doesn't matter which stallion I bring back with me, as long as he can BLUP my mares"! This is the perverted situation the system is getting us into. So we will no longer use the new xx or aa, since they have no BLUP, on the contrary they diminish the BLUP of the mares they cover. The same goes for foreign stallions. If you use the World Champion Abdulah, or one of the world leaders like Ramiro, your foal will have a ridiculously low BLUP. At a moment when Europe is opening up , this retrograde position does nothing for genetic progress. Professor Signoret asks the question "Which horses for which riders?" . A vast question that should restrain all dogmatism. Can a method which provides answers in terms of averages and probabilities really be applied to an individual and unique phenomenon such as the breeder and the rider ? This is a very difficult question applicable in all areas of science and its uses (human boilogy). BLUP is therefore only the best corrected linear estimate . Any other interpretation is optimistic". Personally I would leave it to competent scientists to prove that the transmission of a horses sporting abilities cannot be represented on a linear diagram , useful for the selection of domestic animals in alimentary farming (heritability of milk production for cows)but not transferable in our area of activity. Selection by index is founded on the following axiom "the probability of transmission of a performer is higher than that of a non performer". Certain scientists prefer to talk of a "performing animal presumed to have a transmitting quality , preferable to that of a non performing animal". In reality this first statement has often been proven wrong by the fact that ability can very well remain hidden for one or several generations(cyclic or sporadic genetics) or simply appear or disappear (paradoxical genetics) . Unfortunately the mediocrity of certain products of famous reproducers in whatever discipline,(racing, CSO,) sometimes reminds us of this , as Mr Bouché- Pillon points out . Let us take two examples: The xx Kaldoun (son of the famous Caro) was a good race horse, but not up to his pedigree. He was therefore posted to a stud farm at Anjou where he embarked on an anonymous career, covering a very modest selection of mares. And yet he turned out to be one of the best French Stallions of recent years and now is a stud on one of the most famous Normandy stud farms. Elsewhere , Grand Veneur , who was considered to be a brilliant stallion ( an opinion uttered in caution) comes from a succession of minor stallions linked to good mothering stock, retracing to the xx Ultimate. Ultimate was one of the best post war thoroughbreds ; sire of Kultimate, himself sire of Quirinal, two stallions who never left their mark. The latter engendered Amour du Bois , a stallion who left no long lasting memories and yet is the sire of Grand Veneur. Here are two examples of sporadic genetics. Had the producers been selected by the BLUP at that time , Kultimate or Quirinal would certainly never have been stallions and Grand Veneur would never have been born. To put it another way , choice is an advantage to the performer but other factors come into consideration , in particular the breeders genealogical knowledge or instinct, but also that a part of chance called luck which decides that such and such a match will be successful. For example , the xx's Ultimate ad Rantzau preceded Ibrahim in the farms in the south of the Manche . While Rantzau was a far better sire of performers than Ultiùmate ; it was nevertheless with Ultimates daughters that the partnership with Ibrahim was miraculous. Another example : why did the xx Caro , who served as stud in France never produce CSO cracks while in the US , where he is now based , he has done .In the 1992 CSIO at the Baule the US team was strengthened by four xx' s , including two sons of Caro. Surely this is due to the phenomenon of mixing blood and to professional experience ie,to the experts knowledge ,and not to some cooked up index. Finally the example of the stud farm at Zangersheide in Belgium where the fantastic Almé was kept for several years. This stud farm stuck rigidly to Hannoverian yet did have a Holsteiner mare , Heureka, a one time winner of the Grand Prix at Aix La Chapelle. It was from this mare that "Z" had their crack foal , after 20 years of breeding and several hundred births. Champion of the World Cup, Olympic vice champion Ratina Z( Ramiro and Argentina Z by Almé and Heureka). No index could have forecast the magic made by mixing Holsteiner (Ramiro and Heureka and French Sport blood, Almé). It must be understood for once and for all that not everything in breeding is measurabe. The phenomenon that certain scientists call the " dynamic effect", and which we breeders call base stock seems to me fundamental in horse breeding. The science of breeding is more about evaluating a pedigree than reading an index. Why is it that riders are so little concerned with a horses origins and have never even heard of the BLUP? Simply because all that interests them are the horses abilities and what it feels like to be on his back. The evaluation of a animals quality is a matter for experts not for software , it is a man that rides a horse not a computer. Let us return to the principle of the BLUP method. " When calculating a BLUP, the ruling attributes zero value to an individual whose value is unknown."-Henderson 1973. This arbitrary rule is laid down for milk producing cows was justifiable then : most cows give milk! But is it valid for horses whose ability has not been tested? This is true of a lare part of the population ( non performing reproducers, exported horses etc)and apparently to any individual foreign to the breed, who could bring in improvements ( thoroughbreds or foreign breeds). How can we judge the genetic and sporting value of the current European champion Quinta, born a SF but of fringe origins , and now a major international champion under Swiss colours ? Her value is inestimable. She remains at the same index level as when she was exported , her level may even diminish because of lack of performances….. in France. How will we measure the BLUP index of a foal by Ramiro ( one of the best stallions in the World) of Holstiener breed and uterine sister to Narcos II, Larry, Mazarin and Quat'sous? An exceptional pedigree of remarkable genetic interest and yet this foal will only have half its mothers BLUP because Ramiro has a zero BLUP rating! What will the BLUP be for te French sport foal by Olisco and from the xx Olmypic champion Touch of Class ? The list could go on. Practically speaking , if this rule is applied with a certain logic, it can be damaging. " If it is true that a high BLUP always means something , and a low or zero BLUP simply means that nothing can be said. The absence of proof is not in itself proof." Our SF and AA breeds draw their wealth from their crossbreeding. That is what gives the versatile French horses there strength and brings the success in all three Olympic events. The BLUP only concerns one event , the CSO, out of the three used to show off our breeding results. No recognition for families producing winners in eventing or dressage. As you will have understood , to have a BLUP, a horse must not only be born SF but also have effected the whole of his sporting career in France. Otherwise it is impossible to calculate the BLUP value. Consequently this loophole penalises all the horses ascendants and relatives. The BLUP index is applied to the family . It not only discourages export, but it is a total nonsense in any selection scheme, since a large part of the elite of the production is eliminated. Exported horses are above all genetically high products, or good sport horses whatever their origin . This index only takes into account performance since 1972, as it did not exist before then. It is as if our breeding programs have only been working for 20 years. All that preceded is forgotten. For example , great international champions produced by the best stallions in the 50's and 60's (Furioso,xx; Seducteur,aa) such as Mélisande , Lacchante de la Dame, Camelia, only have BLUP's of 6 or 7 , levels which in no way correspond to their quality. These mares are mothers or grand mothers of stallions or broodmares who can draw no advantage from their ascendants success. In 1972 everything starts from zero, good and bad alike. The fact that there have been several generations since then changes nothing , the game was rigged from the start. Finally the BLUP gives an advantage to the fashionable SF male lines to the detriment of thoroughbreds and Anglo Arabians. The inventors of this system obviously wish to put an end to AA and xx used for crossbreeding. Should we allow people to assert their personal opinions in the form of a national ethic, simply because it is convenient to and justifies the index system they wish to impose. With selection by BLUP; it is feared that the highest performing stock will be restricted, thus posing a real threat to the wealth of the genetic inheritance. The consequence must be estimated by those more competant than myself , I simply wish to draw to attention several points which seem important. The use of BLUP can lead to errors: the index does not show quality. It is one of the elements that have to be taken into account , particularly t make up for lack of knowledge. But this elementary information bears no comparison to the deep and subtle knowledge of a real expert. One should also be aware that by insisting on the BLUP index , the normal and desirable mecanisms will be disturbed. It is true that it is becoming impossible to sell males or females if they do not carry high BLUP rating. Some buyers will not even bother to look at foals with a BLUP below 15. On the other hand, the systems perversions are helpful to those who sell useless horses to novices who look no further than the BLUP rating. Breeders who try to sell their production on the strength of the mother, will have to use BLUP purely for marketing purposes. At the Stallion Sale at St Lô, a horse was presented with a high BLUP but in a dreadful state; ( unkept, unshoed, his mane tousled). The person presenting him said , "So what , with his high BLUP they have to approve him!" The dreadful thing is that the inconsiderate use of BLUP means that knowledge of family trees of the competence of an expert loses all importance. I am sure that in the end this irreplaceable expertise will be lost. The report by the commission for the selection of stallions , written in October 1993 could not have been clearer. Up till now I have never chosen a stallion or a mare on the strength of its BLUP, and I have never tried to use BLUP for breeding. I hope I never will.. When I choose a mare for say Jalisco, the only thing that counts is that she is close to the blood, distinguished with good hind quarters. Above all I wish the mare and the stallion to complement each other. If I send a mare to Galoubet( the highest ranking BLUP on the market) I do not care about the index. I try to produce above all a rather stocky foal, but wit good lines and blood, because the good international Galoubet's are made that way. If I bought the exceptional sport thorougbreds Laudanum and Hand in Glove, and used them with the daughters of Almé, it was simply because it was a crossing that appealed to me, and because I believe that sport xx's have a role to play in improving breeding stock. It is not the fact that Laudanum has a very high BLUP , while Hand in Glove has none( his sporting career was made in USA) that justifies my crossbreeding. I deplore the way that Hand in Gloves products are unfairly treated, compared to those of Laudanum because of the current blupmania. I wish that all breeders could do the same . But I fear that if the system is maintained they will be dissuaded and that instinct will be lost to the need to master complicated calculations by way of planning crossbreeds. I remain convinced that "the setting up of a numbered index to give an objective value to each horse can be useful in compensating for insufficient knowledge or judgement. But it is an elementary estimation , incomparable to the opinion of a true connoisseur. The BLUP method relies on simplistic theories which are from reality. Scientifically it is not cautious enough and experience has not brought it any credibility. Consequently, its systematic use in guiding the breeding of the French sports horse should not be taken lightly. The present and predictable effects of such a use are likely to weaken the potential and diversity of the breed, to exclude the possibility of using certain exceptional subjects and to degrade breeding and destabilise the market". That is why I say today , "Stop the BLUP". |