[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Phalaris1913

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.

I'm not saying that most horses current yearlings are 8th generation descendants from 40 years ago. I'm just saying that some of them are. If a sire even has 1 stakes horse from his first crop that stands at stud, and then this horse has 1 stakes horse from his first crop that stans at stand, and so on, then you would have 8th generation descendants as soon as 40 years later. This may not be the norm, but every decent stallion will produce plenty of stakes horses that will stand at stud, and many of thse horses will be produced in the stallion's first few years standing, so there will be some new generations created every 5 years and certainly a lot of generation turn over every 5-8 years.