Perhaps a better example of an open studbook can be found today in the various Warmblood registries. In most, one parent must be registered as a Warmblood, the other should preferably be from a recognized breed, but if the horse meets the confirmation and performance standards it can be registered.
Some of the color breeds, such as Paint Horse, allow almost any animal displaying the appropriate color to be registered. It is preferred that an animal have parents registered in one of the recognized breeds, but not strictly necessary. With the concentration being on color one finds a wide range of conformation in these breeds.
Open or Closed Studbooks do have breed standards. Even when both the parents were registered members of the breed, if the offspring does not exhibit the desired traits it can not be registered. I offer an example of one such here: A very well known and respected Arabian breeder had set up a mating that should have resulted in a dream horse. The foal was a nightmare. While not deformed, it certainly did not meet the breed standards and was an embarrassment to the breeder. Some foals do grow out of their problems, so the breeder stuck this one in a far pasture and let him mature. At two years of age, the colt looked no better. The breeder called his vet and told him to destroy the colt. Instead the vet convinced the breeder to give him the colt and he would find it a home where no one would know his bloodlines. Many people learned to ride on the back of this gelding, little guessing what Arabian blue blood ran in its ugly body. He was never registered and the record for his dam the year of his birth lists “foal died.”
Except for a couple of breeds there were no studbooks prior to the 1800s. The idea of studbooks seems to have developed late and it is only in the latter part of the 19th century that the idea of closed studbooks appear. This does not mean there were no records, only that what records existed were kept by the individual breeders. The early studbooks consisted of careful notes by the breeders of matings and the results. There was no central registry, no control over what could or could not be called by a breed name. Even these early versions of studbooks were striving to breed a type of horse.
There is a specific meaning for the term “type.” A type is a collection of desired traits including conformation, abilities, coloration, personality, and such that are determined by the breeder or breeders to be what they want in their animals. There is no dependence on the sire or dam being listed in a studbook, only on what the actual animal is like. Today there are many grade horses (unregistered) that meet the physical standards for various breeds. Because one or both of their parents were not registered they cannot be registered and none of their offspring can be registered. In the past this would not have mattered in considering them for breeding.
What does the above have to do with Grantville? After all, by the 17th century horse breeders in Europe have been breeding types of horses literally for millennium. In breeding, the guideline has always been: “Breed the best to the best and hope for the best and cull the rest.” This was well understood by the horse breeders of the time.
The Impact of Up-time Horses
I’ve consulted with Cheryl Daetwyler, who lives in and is familiar with the area upon which Grantville was modeled (the real town of Mannington and its immediate surroundings), and we’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of up-time horses came through the RoF. While we do not have an actual nose count, of course, it should be at least 1,000 and perhaps as many as 1,700. Many people have a horse or three tucked away on the odd acre of grass. The heaviest breed concentrations seem to be Quarterhorse and Appaloosa with smatterings of every other breed found in the U.S.
If we start with the low end of the number of horses in the RoF, we have a thousand horses. How does this break down into mares, geldings, and stallions? Still, with all these horses, I could identify only three stallions within the ROF area, one Quarterhorse, one Appaloosa, and one Belgian. That leaves us with 997 horses to account for. At a guess based on my horse experiences, the majority are geldings. Geldings are the most popular for just plain general riding. Assuming that 600 of the remaining horses are geldings, that leaves us with 367 mares and foals. There are people in the Mannington area breeding horses, so we have to assume a percentage of the remaining horses are foals. Arbitrarily, let’s say that 67 of the 367 are foals between newborn and two years old. This leaves us with 300 mares.