Recently i re-read an article (which i will give you the direct link to later) which raised my always thinking, breeding part of my brain.
Do NICKS work or is it just a marketing PLOY?
I've long been a user of these Nicks as part of my breeding philosophy but always combined with many other facets. It has always been a great starting point to know that this sireline over this dams sireline has produced stakes horses. Note please i said starting point!
More and more I see this type of marketing attached to Syndicators advertisements. This horse (we have just purchased, mind you) has a mating rating of A++ a score of over 700? What does this mean? I can only imagine a horse standing there for hours stomping his hoof 700 plus times to get his A++ rating!
I mean really if it was that simple would we all not buy these ratings sheets and try to outbid each other at the sales to get the best horses?
Why should i study my catalogue for six plus weeks and then spend at least a week looking over 500 plus horses some of them two or three times. I can sit back and wait for the lot numbers to come through the ring surely with my A++ rating sheet in hand and bid gleefully away.
Example please.
The mare owner finds that when his mare is crossed with stallion A, the resulting nick is an A++, while the cross with stallion Z results in an A, convincing the mare owner to book his mare to stallion A.
But what if the mare owner had information about the pool size used for each rating and learned that the A++ rating had been formulated by using three runners, while the A rating was based on dozens of runners? The mare owner in this situation would have based his final decision on ratings being purported as equally derived.
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The main problem here is that we’re dealing with a very dynamic question: What is involved in a successful mating? Nicking theory tries to answer this question with an all too simple letter grade, which is terribly insufficient to answer such a complex question.
Nicking theorists are often quick to point out how their theory applies to the upper levels of horse racing i.e. listed and group stakes winners, but they never mention whether or not the same phenomenon exists in the lower percentiles of racing. After all, if this were the case, and we saw the same dispersal of nick ratings in the bottom tiers, the theory would have no practical use.
Perhaps the most obvious flaw in the nicking theory is the omission of the female factor. If nicking pundits are able to point to certain statistical probabilities based on the sire line, they should be able to point to similar probabilities based on certain female families and blue hen type mares.
An indirect result of the nicking craze is the effect it has on the behavior of mare owners. Too many breeders (and yearling buyers for that matter) are allowing this over-simplified method of planning matings to take up the bulk of their planning process.
Many will simply make a phone call and pay a fee to get the latest ratings before booking their mares. Less and less time is being spent on researching full detailed genetics, progeny results, conformation, market trends, etc. Where as this should be viewed as a starting point at best, it is all too often being used as a start and finishing point.
Please view the full article here - http://www.thoroughbredreview.com/nicksthefinalnail.htm
We thank the ThoroughbredReview.com for such a detailed expose' on Nicks and No Chicks.
Best Regards
DDT Racing
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