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Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin
Your math is a little bit off. There are many horses being born right now that are 6th generation descendants of horses that were retired as recently as 1980. Many of the great horses retire after their 3 year old year. That means they begin standing at stud when they are 4 years old. That means that a horse who retired in 1980 may have some great, great, great, great grandchildren being born right now. When you have many horses breeding by the age of 4, that means that you have new generations every 5 years. Huge changes can take place over 40 years. Right now you have some horses being born that are 8 generations later from the horses of 40 years ago. It's not surprising that things are different now. There can be huge changes over 8 generations.
How old is the average human when they beging having kids, maybe 25? That's 6x as long of most stallions who beging at 4 . When you look at horses from 40 years ago, that's like looking at humans from 240 years ago. There have been huge changes when you go back 10 generations like that. I think they said the average height of the guys on the Mayflower was about 5"4.
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While thoroughbreds can and do have foals on the ground at age 5, it would be incorrect to imply that all, or even most, foals are the products of such youthful parents. In truth, at present, the average age of a thoroughbred's parents when he is born is about 11-12 years.
Of the thoroughbred foals of 2000 who raced at least once by 2005, on average, their sires were born in 1988 and their dams in 1990. On average, their sire's sires were born in 1977 and their dam's sires in 1978. I lose a small percentage of horses going back to the third generation, but on average, the sire's grandsires were born in 1966 and the damsire's sires were born in 1967. That's three generations. In fact, among foals of 2000, more than 10 percent of them have sire's sires and dam's sires - 2nd generation sires - born in the 1960s. That's not even considering the percentage of these horses whose 2nd generation dams were born in the 1960s.
You're making an assumption that because there can be a five-year span from birth of a horse to birth of his or her offsping that this is a norm, representing the majority of thoroughbred births, generation after generation. That's simply not true. There are not many prominent examples, at least in the sire-son relationships that necessarily account for the most resulting offspring, of several successive five- or six-year generations. I welcome you to produce a significant number of horses - enough to be worth a few percentage points in foal crops of 30,000+ - who are sixth-generation descendants of horses retired in 1980.