The Broodmare Influence

says Kuhl. The broodmare herd at the Brandenburg State Stud offers ideal conditions. A peculiarity of the stud is the large broodmare herd where breeding selection from distinct mare families maternal lineages takes place over many generations in a nearly invariable environment. The mare lineages have been recorded continuously from 1946 onwards and for some mares can be traced back until the foundation of the stud in 1788. Hence with the support of my supervisor Christine Aurich head of the Graf Lehndorff Institute for Equine Science and the staff at the Brandenburg State Stud we were able to retrieve and analyze records of 142 mares giving birth to 640 foals at the stud in a 20 year period.
The Brandenburg State Stud in Neustadt Dosse in Germany is one of the biggest in Europe and is at the centre of sustainable rural development. In addition to horse breeding activities include equestrian training in the FNapproved riding school riding with the Neustadt Secondary School where riding is part of the school curriculum and tourism which flourishes in the union of history and horses. To protect it from privatization the stud became a public foundation in 2001.
The facility is located on 400 hectares where its cultural and historic buildings were built during the reign of Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1788. The stud maintains a broodmare herd of about 40 animals with the aim of each producing a foal annually. Maiden mares are entered into the herd at age three. 
Data from 142 warmblood mares for the study spanned the breeding seasons from 1992 to 2011. In 1992 ultrasound examination of the genital tract was introduced into the facilitys breeding management program and that allowed the exact day of ovulation to be reliably determined.
Based on the historical data the mares in the study represented 13 mare families. Of the 640 foals born in the study period 48 percent were colts and 52 percent were fillies. A total of 786 cases were included in the study and from the 142 mares 119 were assigned to six maternal lineages with more than 10 mares per lineage and 23 mares belonged to smaller maternal lineages. 
The live foal rate was 83 5 percent. The mean gestation rate was 338 5 days with a considerable range of 313 to 370 days. The gestation length was calculated from the day of ovulation until the day of parturition