SIR Ratings explained.
Nowadays when you're trying to make a decision about which stallion you should send your mare to, the terms Life Time Earnings, or leading sire of money earners is pretty much your guide. It gives you a fair impression of how well the stallions progeny are going, a handy tool to use.

Something that is brought up a lot is the fact that some stallions attract more mares than others. In turn these stallions have more foals on the ground, which means there is a higher chance of the progeny finding their way into the cutting pen; therefore there is a higher chance of them winning more prize money. Or to put it another way, statistically they have a higher chance of producing money earners.

A few years ago I thought to myself, “self (that's me) if a stallion is the sire of about twenty per cent of the field in the NCHA futurity, then the chances of him siring a Futurity Finalist surely is greater than the other stallions.” I continued to myself, as there was no one else in the room with me at the time, “if a stallion then has twenty per cent of the field in the finals, he's done well.”

So I sat down and went back to a time when I had hair and was pretending to study Algebra at school and concocted a formula and then called it a SIR rating. Now I find myself in the embarrassing position where I have to explain how it works.

OK .. Lets say there are 100 horses competing in the event. Sire A has 20 entries, Sire B has 5. Sire A has 20% progeny in the contest, Sire B has 5%.progeny in the contest. So far so good.

Come final time that field of 100 has been whittled away to 20. Sire A has 3 in the finals or 15% of the final field and sire B also has 3 in the finals or 15% of the final field. Statistically Stallion B had a better result than Stallion A. So to simplify things I just did a bit of multiplication and division to come up with a number or rating. The resulting number with Sire A was 75, Sire B gets a higher rating of 333.

When I first presented this concept on justcuttin' I made it clear that I'm not trying to re invent the wheel here. All I am doing is presenting another option when it comes to assessing how well a horse is performing as a Sire. It's also important to note that these figures usually only represent the results from one show, it also dosn't take into account the riders abilities.

If all information was available you could extend the SIR rating to all shows over the period of a year and I'm sure as the internet progresses the information will be on-line spread over the various websites that are on offer at the moment.

So there you are, love it hate it that is the SIR rating explained. If you wish to make comment don't hesitate to contact me, I'd be interested in hearing your opinion.