Ok, here’s one for the pedigree fans out there!

What’s a pedigree?  It’s the paper/tabulated version of your horse’s breeding.  That is, who mum and dad are, and their parents, and so on!

Yes, it is possible to turn your interest in horse genealogy into a career!  Often this is done as a bloodstock agent or perhaps in the form of a Stallions Nomination staff member at a particular stud.

Many people that are interested in breeding horses (particularly racehorses) are keen to know what their future foal will look like on paper.

Consequently, they analyse stallion pedigrees to see which one or ones would best suit their broodmare. There are many online pedigree analysts who offer such services, at times for free!  Consider the likes of ‘eNicks’ at Werk Thoroughbred Consultants Inc.

Of course, checking out the stud books of your favourite breed in your country is worth looking into, also.  For those who are interested in horse pedigrees and pursuing potential work along this line, start your research now:

• Learn about the top stallions and mares in the breed/s of your choice
• Which stallions are producing foals that perform well?
• Which stallions had a brilliant performance career?
• Which is the most expensive stallion standing at stud?
• Does the stallion shuttle overseas or is frozen semen offered for artificial insemination?

It’s never to early to learn more about your future profession and there is a lot of information online that can help you at only the cost of your time.

“Breed the best to the best and hope for the best.” – Breeder’s axiom

It’s that time of year where students are putting in applications for TAFEs and Universities.  And let’s face it, there are a lot of mature age people out there also considering potential study for the next year.  Are you?

For those of you that will be in the Melbourne, Victoria vicinity for Equitana (Thursday the 15th of November – Sunday the 18th of November), I encourage you to check out education and course options on display here! It’s a great chance to check out what qualifications and short courses are on offer to horse enthusiasts 🙂

I was hoping to be at Equitana this year with the other National Centre for Equine Education staff to talk with potential students about what courses we have on offer.  Unfortunately my head injury wouldn’t be so pleased with such activity and so much talking!

However, I encourage you to pop on over and check out our stall!  We will be in the John Deere Pavilion at stand number 135.  You can find us on the exhibitor’s list.

Why should you check out the National Centre for Equine Education stand?  Courses are offered from Certificate II – Diploma level. We offer courses in:

• Racing (stablehand, track rider, racehorses trainer)
• Agriculture (horse breeding)
• Performance
• Equine Industry
• Stud Management

Come and have a chat with the staff and see what previous students have achieved through these courses!

“All I need to know in life I learned from my horse: You’ve got horse sense. Use it!”

So a few of you may know that I write horse based articles over at Suite101.com.  Suite is currently going through some changes and are to shortly launch a new writing system/model.

I’m still getting my head around what these changes will look like but they’re opening up the opportunity for writers/contributors to run or be in charge of different channels (topics).

The idea is that you set up a channel and manage it, contributing informative articles to this channel and encourage others to write for it if this is an area that they’re passionate about and knowledgeable of.

So whilst working out this new system once it’s in publish mode, I’m keen to focus a channel on horse breeding.  For those of you who are passionate about horses and writing and like the idea of earning a little for it, consider whether you’ve the time and energy to invest in writing for a site like Suite101.

I won’t say that at this point I’ve earnt a lot from writing equine articles since having started in late 2009.

What I will say is that I have been consistently receiving a small sum each month and even when I stopped writing new articles when I acquired my head injury, I was still earning from previously posted articles.  As someone who’s a huge fan of building residual income, this is very appealing to me!

So perhaps now’s the time to prompt those interested, to thinking about putting into action a plan to write horses, and earn from writing horses.  You might like to consider the idea of contributing to the horse breeding channel I set up or create one of your own!  When it comes to writing horses, the only limit is your imagination.  You could write about:

• nutrition
• competitions
• products
• equine clothing
• the list goes on

“That hoss wasn’t built to tread the earth, He took natural to the air, And every time he went aloft, He tried to leave me there.” – Tribute to an Unmanageable Horse

tag: equine writing, residual income, horse education