Mare Inspection Statistics

[By Doug Leatherdale, AHS President]

By way of an experiment, AHS published full Hanoverian mare inspection scores for 2003 and 2004 in the Winter 2004/05 issue of The American Hanoverian magazine.

Since this issue hit our members’ mailboxes, the central office has been inundated with letters of appreciation from members throughout the country. A typical example is the following, received February 11, 2005:

Dear AHS President Doug Leatherdale:
Thank you for collecting, compiling and publishing the Hanoverian Mare Inspection Scores for 2003 and 2004 in your recent quarterly magazine. These are such valuable statistics for American breeders striving to make wise breeding decisions. By making this information widely available, you have been enormously helpful to your members.

Anecdotal reports about bloodlines and breeding crosses are always fun, but statistical evaluations truly give genuine examples to support our attempts to produce better performance horses. Please keep these informational reports coming so that breeding decisions here in the U.S. are more a matter of science than art.

All your efforts toward improving member education over the past several years are really coming together to produce noticeable benefits and are really appreciated.

Sincerely
Active AHS member
Diane Hume

The material provided thus far is a starting point, and a significant one at that. In the case of younger, newer stallions, for example Arrian, Contucci and Davignport, AHS members now have full scores for every single one of their mares inspected by AHS. The board determined that the scores from 2005 forward will be published in the Mare Book Section of the Breeders’ Guide and Stallion Directory. We fully agree with Diane Hume that this material should permit members to make more intelligent breeding decisions.

Over the years this will undoubtedly become essential research and archival material for present and future Hanoverian breeders in this country. Finally, the Society owes a huge debt of gratitude to Executive Director Hugh Bellis-Jones for compiling all this data in such an accurate and user friendly format.