The Female Line
Thoroughbred horses are traced through the "distaff" or female line, known as their "family", dating to the beginning of the General Stud Book (GSB). This was done because the mares produce far fewer foals than stallions. Thoroughbred Stud Books around the world cite pedigrees in tail female style - meaning that the ancestry is traced through the maternal, rather than paternal line.
Horses that come from “good’ families will usually command better prices than one with an inferior family, although they may not prove to be better as racehorses or sires/broodmares. However, modern genetic studies have revealed that there are some cases where the haplotype in the mtDNA of modern Thoroughbreds differs from the stated dam line, suggesting that some records contain errors.
Read more about this topic: Thoroughbred Breeding Theories
Famous quotes containing the words female and/or line:
“We have dancing ... from soon after sundown until a few minutes after nine o’clock.... Occasionally the boys who play the female partners in the dances exercise their ingenuity in dressing to look as girlish as possible. In the absence of lady duds they use leaves, and the leaf-clad beauties often look very pretty and always odd enough.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)