Special Terms in Breeding
Chefs-de-race
In the popular Roman dosage system developed by Dr. Steve Roman and his associates (see https://www.equineline.com/dirreffr.cfm?topic=rfdosage%2Ehtm for Roman’s explanation of the workings of his system), chefs-de-race (‘masters of the breed”) are stallions who can be statistically shown to throw toward one of five distance aptitudes: Brilliant (pure sprinters), Intermediate (tilted toward speed), Classic (able to get the distances of two-turn classic races, which need a blend of tactical speed and staying ability), Solid (tilted toward stamina), and Professional (pure stayers). Most chefs-de-race have their greatest influence in one category, but some divide their runners fairly evenly between two categories and are designated accordingly.
Chefs-de-race are not necessarily identical to the top sires of a given period. Some highly successful stallions, such as Storm Cat, throw a wide variety of aptitudes that do not slot neatly into one or two categories and so are not assigned as chefs-de-race, not because they are not important but because they do not help the dosage system in predicting a foal’s aptitudes. Other horses that have been designated as chefs-de-race were not top-level stallions but were good enough to have a fair number of stakes-winning offspring (which Roman believes are the runners who have the best opportunities to display their true abilities) and showed a statistically significant tendency to sire runners of a particular distance aptitude. The primary importance of a chef-de-race designation aside from calculating a foal’s dosage profile is as a tag that expresses the type(s) of distance aptitude that a given stallion is most likely to have contributed to a pedigree.
Female family
A female family is a group of horses that are all believed to descend in direct female-line descent from a specific mare, often called a “foundation mare.” The major female families are those that have been traced as far back as available records will permit; these are designated by numbers or by a combination of numbers and letters.
The original family numbering system was developed by Bruce Lowe, who in the late nineteenth century undertook the massive task of tracing the direct female lineage of every winner of England’s five Classic races (the Two Thousand Guineas, Derby Stakes, and St. Leger Stakes for both sexes and the One Thousand Guineas and Oaks Stakes for fillies) back to the foundation mares of the Thoroughbred breed. The mare that had the most Classic-winning descendants, Tregonwell’s Natural Barb Mare, was designated as the head of Family 1, and other families were numbered in the order of the number of Classic winners tracing to their foundation mares.
After his death in 1895, Lowe’s system was expanded to include previously unidentified English families, and alphabetical suffixes were added to designate major branches of the original families; thus, all horses with the family number 1-o are believed to descend from Tregonwell’s Natural Barb Mare through her tenth-generation descendant Penelope. Other researchers traced animals descending from American, Argentine, Colonial (Australia and New Zealand), or half-bred mares that could not be connected to any of the Bruce Lowe families and gave them family designations based on similar reckonings; thus, “A4” designates a horse from American Family 4 and “C2” a horse from Colonial Family 2.
Bruce Lowe formulated a number of theories regarding female families that have since been discredited, and he also incorporated pedigree mistakes based on flawed records into his family trees; similar errors are present in the American Stud Book, which American researchers made heavy use of. These mistakes have since been uncovered by discoveries of earlier breeders’ records and by studies of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed only through the female line and so must be the same for all horses actually descended from a given matron; a different mtDNA haplotype from the one expected indicates that there is an error in the recorded female line. Nevertheless, pedigree mavens continue to use family numbers as a more or less convenient means of identifying various lines of female descent. Where new discoveries have indicated that a horse’s actual female descent is different from the one traditionally given, I have tried to provide an explanation of the discrepancy under “Pedigree Notes.”
Foundation mare
The term “foundation mare” is rather elastic. In its widest sense, a foundation mare is one with wide-reaching influence on breeding in a large Thoroughbred population (e.g., “La Troienne was a twentieth-century foundation mare in American Thoroughbred breeding.”). A foundation mare can also be the mare standing at the head of a Bruce Lowe, American, Colonial, Argentine, or Half-Bred family (or a major branch thereof), to which all animals belonging to that family are believed to trace in tail-female. More narrowly, it can indicate a mare whose produce and family were particularly important to and associated with a specific breeding operation, thus being foundational to the success of that operation.
Matriarch
Like “foundation mare,” “matriarch” is not a hard-and-fast designation. It is most commonly used of a mare who is represented by several good producing daughters who, in turn, are producing good broodmare daughters of their own and creating distinct branches of the original mare’s family. La Troienne, Bourtai, and Best in Show are excellent examples of mares that would be regarded as matriarchs by almost any student of the Thoroughbred.
Reines-de-Course
Reines-de-Course are designations awarded by the late pedigree analyst Ellen Parker to mares that she believed to be of particular influence in Thoroughbred breeding over several generations through their descendants. While most Reines-de-Course were good producers during their own breeding careers, some were not particularly distinguished as dams of winners and received the designation based on the produce of their daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters.
Sire of sires
This term is not a fixed designation but is used to refer to a stallion perceived as having an unusually high number of successful stallion sons, especially sons that have successful sons of their own. Examples of horses commonly hailed as “sires of sires” include St. Simon, Hyperion, Northern Dancer, and Mr. Prospector. While meaningful when applied from a historical perspective, “sire of sires” can be used a bit overenthusiastically by stallion managers trying to market a new stallion whose sire has had a couple of sons that have managed to sire one or two outstanding runners but have not necessarily proven to be consistent stallions.
Tail-male or tail-female
These terms are simply shorthand for direct descent from sire to sire (tail-male) or from dam to dam (tail-female).
In the popular Roman dosage system developed by Dr. Steve Roman and his associates (see https://www.equineline.com/dirreffr.cfm?topic=rfdosage%2Ehtm for Roman’s explanation of the workings of his system), chefs-de-race (‘masters of the breed”) are stallions who can be statistically shown to throw toward one of five distance aptitudes: Brilliant (pure sprinters), Intermediate (tilted toward speed), Classic (able to get the distances of two-turn classic races, which need a blend of tactical speed and staying ability), Solid (tilted toward stamina), and Professional (pure stayers). Most chefs-de-race have their greatest influence in one category, but some divide their runners fairly evenly between two categories and are designated accordingly.
Chefs-de-race are not necessarily identical to the top sires of a given period. Some highly successful stallions, such as Storm Cat, throw a wide variety of aptitudes that do not slot neatly into one or two categories and so are not assigned as chefs-de-race, not because they are not important but because they do not help the dosage system in predicting a foal’s aptitudes. Other horses that have been designated as chefs-de-race were not top-level stallions but were good enough to have a fair number of stakes-winning offspring (which Roman believes are the runners who have the best opportunities to display their true abilities) and showed a statistically significant tendency to sire runners of a particular distance aptitude. The primary importance of a chef-de-race designation aside from calculating a foal’s dosage profile is as a tag that expresses the type(s) of distance aptitude that a given stallion is most likely to have contributed to a pedigree.
Female family
A female family is a group of horses that are all believed to descend in direct female-line descent from a specific mare, often called a “foundation mare.” The major female families are those that have been traced as far back as available records will permit; these are designated by numbers or by a combination of numbers and letters.
The original family numbering system was developed by Bruce Lowe, who in the late nineteenth century undertook the massive task of tracing the direct female lineage of every winner of England’s five Classic races (the Two Thousand Guineas, Derby Stakes, and St. Leger Stakes for both sexes and the One Thousand Guineas and Oaks Stakes for fillies) back to the foundation mares of the Thoroughbred breed. The mare that had the most Classic-winning descendants, Tregonwell’s Natural Barb Mare, was designated as the head of Family 1, and other families were numbered in the order of the number of Classic winners tracing to their foundation mares.
After his death in 1895, Lowe’s system was expanded to include previously unidentified English families, and alphabetical suffixes were added to designate major branches of the original families; thus, all horses with the family number 1-o are believed to descend from Tregonwell’s Natural Barb Mare through her tenth-generation descendant Penelope. Other researchers traced animals descending from American, Argentine, Colonial (Australia and New Zealand), or half-bred mares that could not be connected to any of the Bruce Lowe families and gave them family designations based on similar reckonings; thus, “A4” designates a horse from American Family 4 and “C2” a horse from Colonial Family 2.
Bruce Lowe formulated a number of theories regarding female families that have since been discredited, and he also incorporated pedigree mistakes based on flawed records into his family trees; similar errors are present in the American Stud Book, which American researchers made heavy use of. These mistakes have since been uncovered by discoveries of earlier breeders’ records and by studies of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed only through the female line and so must be the same for all horses actually descended from a given matron; a different mtDNA haplotype from the one expected indicates that there is an error in the recorded female line. Nevertheless, pedigree mavens continue to use family numbers as a more or less convenient means of identifying various lines of female descent. Where new discoveries have indicated that a horse’s actual female descent is different from the one traditionally given, I have tried to provide an explanation of the discrepancy under “Pedigree Notes.”
Foundation mare
The term “foundation mare” is rather elastic. In its widest sense, a foundation mare is one with wide-reaching influence on breeding in a large Thoroughbred population (e.g., “La Troienne was a twentieth-century foundation mare in American Thoroughbred breeding.”). A foundation mare can also be the mare standing at the head of a Bruce Lowe, American, Colonial, Argentine, or Half-Bred family (or a major branch thereof), to which all animals belonging to that family are believed to trace in tail-female. More narrowly, it can indicate a mare whose produce and family were particularly important to and associated with a specific breeding operation, thus being foundational to the success of that operation.
Matriarch
Like “foundation mare,” “matriarch” is not a hard-and-fast designation. It is most commonly used of a mare who is represented by several good producing daughters who, in turn, are producing good broodmare daughters of their own and creating distinct branches of the original mare’s family. La Troienne, Bourtai, and Best in Show are excellent examples of mares that would be regarded as matriarchs by almost any student of the Thoroughbred.
Reines-de-Course
Reines-de-Course are designations awarded by the late pedigree analyst Ellen Parker to mares that she believed to be of particular influence in Thoroughbred breeding over several generations through their descendants. While most Reines-de-Course were good producers during their own breeding careers, some were not particularly distinguished as dams of winners and received the designation based on the produce of their daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters.
Sire of sires
This term is not a fixed designation but is used to refer to a stallion perceived as having an unusually high number of successful stallion sons, especially sons that have successful sons of their own. Examples of horses commonly hailed as “sires of sires” include St. Simon, Hyperion, Northern Dancer, and Mr. Prospector. While meaningful when applied from a historical perspective, “sire of sires” can be used a bit overenthusiastically by stallion managers trying to market a new stallion whose sire has had a couple of sons that have managed to sire one or two outstanding runners but have not necessarily proven to be consistent stallions.
Tail-male or tail-female
These terms are simply shorthand for direct descent from sire to sire (tail-male) or from dam to dam (tail-female).