From: Melody
Dear Jessica, I hope you can help me evaluate my foals. I have just begun a very small breeding program for "home-made" sport horses, Thoroughbred-Clydesdale crosses. I bred old-style Quarter Horses for many years, and I know that different breeds move and grow differently, and perhaps I am confused because these foals are so different from the ones I am used to.
I have two young Clydesdale mares and took them both to a good local thoroughbred stallion last summer. I like to have foals born in the late spring. My two foals this year were born at the end of June and the beginning of July, one week apart. I took pictures and made videos of them at the intervals you suggested (three days, three weeks, three months) and was happy with them, now comes the long wait between three months and three years.
Right now they are growing very unevenly and look much less balanced than the foals I am used to seeing. Their movement seems good. They both have more "reach" than any foals I have bred before. But I have been talking to some other breeders in this area, and they tell me that because these foals are cross-breds, there is no way to tell what their movement will be like when they are full-grown, and I should not make any assumptions based on the way they move now.
I am giving the mares a year "off" before I breed them again. I thought this would be good for them and also give me a better chance to evaluate the foals, but is it true that the way they move now (pretty well, I think) has nothing to do with the way they will move when they are mature? They are likely to take longer to mature than my Quarter Horses used to, and I don't want to have to wait another four years before I know how they will move. Is there some way to tell early in a foal's life what kind of mover he will be, and is it true that this would not apply to a cross-bred foal? Right now they move straight and seem to have long strides that look more like Thoroughbred movement than Clydesdale movement. They overtrack a lot, but I think that's just because they are foals, not because of their breeding. My Quarter Horse foals would overtrack too at this age.
I await your response anxiously, Melody
Most foals will go through times when they are unbalanced - they're croup-high, then they're level, then they're croup-high again, and this continues until their growth slows and they begin to become more balanced. Foals destined to become small horses sometimes show very little imbalance at any age, but the larger a foal is destined to be at maturity, the more extreme these changes tend to be. If your previous breeding experience is with the old-style, bulldog-type of Quarter Horse, you're probably just used to seeing short, stocky, balanced foals that grow into short, stocky, balanced horses. When you begin breeding very large horses, you're more likely to see youngsters go through long stages of constantly-changing balance. This is why some breeders of large horses don't like people to see their two-year-olds, although they enjoy showing off their foals and their three-year-olds. ;-) I don't think you should be worried - just allow more time for these bigger foals to reach their mature proportions.
Gaits and movement are another matter entirely. What you see very early is a good predictor of what you'll get from the mature horse - assuming that all is well with the horse and that no illness, injury, mismanagement or bad training experience interferes with its development between foalhood and maturity, that is! There are many reasons for mature horses to move LESS well than they did when they were foals, but those reasons are all man-made. If all goes well, your foals should move the same way at maturity. If they move well NOW, that shouldn't change. If they move badly... that's unlikely to change either.
If you have a chance to attend some of the foal evaluations conducted by various Warmblood registries, it would be worth your while to do so. One of the basic ideas behind the foal evaluations is that the fundamental qualities of a foal's movement are present from birth, and will not change. A foal with short, choppy strides will not become a long-strided mature horse; a foal with low action will not become a high-stepping mature horse, a foal with balanced, sweeping strides will continue to show the same way of going as a mature horse. Of your two foals, if both have similar strides NOW but one, at maturity, is a hand taller than the other, then all things being equal, the larger horse is likely to have a slightly longer stride than the smaller horse, but this will be precisely because his basic gaits have NOT changed - the extra length of stride will simply reflect the additional length of leg and body.
So, although all breeders know that foals can grow in surprising ways and at very different rates, I think you should be very pleased with your two, based on your description of their movement. If you're seeing long, even, sweeping strides NOW, you should see the same kind of movement when they are full-grown.
When it comes to overtracking, you're right - it's very typical of young foals, and not at all surprising when you consider the relative proportions of their backs (very short) and their legs (very long).
Jessica
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