BREEDING: A selection of studies from recent years

It has always been policy on the breeding page, wherever possible, to back up opinions, with studies.
Sometimes those exercises have endorsed widely held beliefs, quite often they have contradicted them.
Here is a selection, some of which may only have been relevant at the time, others should bear the test of time when applied to modern situations.

In March ’07 we looked at the relationship between career lengths and the age at which pups ran their first qualifying trials.
We discovered that the most common age for a greyhound to have its first race was 18 months.
Surprisingly, there was no evidence to show that greyhounds who debuted from 21 months old or later, had careers lasting any longer than those who started earlier.
A large percentage of this group were retired between their 40th and 70th races.
Overall, for the whole study, the average race career was 63 races and two years and two months.

A small study into the 100 leading open racers from 2005 showed that by the end of their careers, it was the stayers who had enjoyed the longest racing careers. Five of the top ten, in terms of races contested, were stayers. There were two pure sprinters, two four/six bend runners, and only one standard distance performer.

Following the retirement to stud of Westmead Hawk, we attempted to compile a list of the 10 greatest British bred of all time.  These were the choices: Bahs Choice, Decoy Boom, Endless Gossip, Junior Classic, Palace Issue, Trevs Perfection, Westmead Chick, Westmead Champ, Westmead Hawk, Yankee Express.

In Sept’07 we put together a huge article attempting to put the four fundamentals of breeding in their order of importance. We decided 4) Stud dog, 3) Feeding, 2) Brood bitch, 1) Rearing.

A  study into Mega Delight’s best two litters, by Sonic Flight and Larkhill Jo, discovered that on average, Delight’s daughters had ‘70 metres more stamina than her sons’. It also calculated/speculated that had Westmead Hawk ever raced over six bends, he would have stayed between 680-690 metres.

A colour study showed that between 1994 and 2005, and the wholesale arrival of Australian breds, the percentage of black greyhounds running in the Derby had risen from 21% to 53%.  There had been comparable falls in the percentage of brindles (29%-13%and fawns (16% to 5%).

A 2006 study into Top Honcho progeny showed that he crossed best with daughters of Slaneyside Hare and Murlens Slippy.
A similar study involving Larkhill Jo progeny also showed a preference for daughters of the same two stud dogs. Although both Hare and Slippy were former champion sires with large numbers of aligible daughters, other daughters of similarly busy sires such as Phantom Flash, failed to produce as many open racers.

A further study on longevity of race careers conducted in 2008 (35,000 races) suggested average careers were 67.7 races long.
However on this occasion, we also queried whether that figure was affected by breeding, specifically through the sire.
We checked through the progeny of the ten most popular sires of the period and discovered that progeny of champion sire Top Honcho were indeed also the most durable, followed by Spiral Nikita, Toms The Best and Larkhill Jo.
The least durable pups were by Staplers Jo, they averaged roughly 17 races fewer than Honcho’s.

We then asked, does the quality of breeder affect how many pups reach the track?
Since it was difficult to identify bad breeders, we compared results for top breeders against a random bunch of lesser known breeders.
Figures showed that breeders (combined) got 93.2% of their pups to adulthood (the naming stage). 77% went on to qualify for racing.
The difference between the big and small breeders getting runners to the track was around 3%.
However, the gap should probably have been greater since top producers like Sean Dunphy and Ian Greaves deliberately declined to send potential broods to the schooling track.
As for reselience, the top breeders tended to get around nine more races from each of their pups.

A 2008 study showed Top Honcho to be present in 38% of all racing pedigrees. The number of home bred dogs with no Australian or American breeding within three generations was 6%.

Mega Delight, the only brood bitch to throw three English Derby winners, died in January 2010.
To mark the event, we calculated the 10 most successful brood during the ‘noughty’ decade 2000-2009.
Open wins: 343-Mega Delight, 210-Minnies Sparkler, 177-Blonde Returns, 176-First To Return, 174-Farloe Dingle, 146-Davdor Diva, 141-Clodeen Magic, Myross Mistress, 138-Droopys Cheryl, 135-Queen Survivor.

A study showed that British racing was registering approximately 43% of all greyhounds born in Britain and Ireland.

2010 marked a rare double for British breeding Westmead Hawk became the first home bred champion sire since the war, with South Shields boy Jimmy Lollie finishing as Greyhound of the Year.

When, in 2011, brood Droopys Seville produced a GBGB open race winner from her sixth consecutive litter, we decided to check how she compared with the best of the best and discovered the following.
10 litters-Dream Orchid, 9 litters-Blonde Returns, 7 litters-Mega Delight, Westmead Move, 6 litters-Droopys Aliysa, Droopys Kylie, Farloe Dingle, Minnies Sparkler, Sadlers Return.

We also decided to track the progress of one of the biggest litters born in Britain in recent years.
Of the nine dogs and four bitches who were whelped from a Sep 10 litter by Royal Impact out of London Mia, ten went on to race and one, Farkland Impact, won three opens.

In 2011 Westmead Guru became the heaviest ever English Derby finalist at 39kg.

In 2011 we asked whether it was possible to assess a stud dog’s ability simply on the basis of his first 20 litters, even if he had a limited race career and attracted few proven bitches.
After an extensive study into ten high profile stud dogs, some of who made it, and some who didn’t, we concluded that careful study, would provide very useful clues.

In 2011 we traced the ten 2009 British bred litters who we had tipped for success when they were weeks or months old.
Conclusion: There were open race winners in seven out of the 10 litters selected. There were category one/two winners in three different litters.
Perhaps one further interesting point. Of the 60 pups highlighted at the litter stage, 54 made it to the track.’

In September 2012, we attempted to trace the most important brood of all time.
Since every dam has a dam, we determined that the ultimate mum would be the brood who had more than one outstanding daughter.
We opted for Ordeal, who was bred by SS Owens from Glenwherry in County Antrim in April 1887.
Ordeal produced two outstanding daughters in Salmon Fly II (by South Londonderry) and Vixenish (by Herschel).
Salmon Fly can be found on the bottom line of the pedigrees of champs such as Pauls Fun, Sole Aim, Ballyregan Bob, The Other Toss, Romping To Work, Moral Standards, Desert Pilot, Mountleader Peer, and those exceptional broods, Maythorn Pride and Millies May.
Vixenish appears on the distaffs of possibly the three most important track broods of the last 50 years: Clomoney Grand, Sheila At Last and Skipping Chick.
We calculated that roughly 28% of major event winners are descended from Ordeal.