Half the stallion profiles you read carry a line of abbreviations: licensed, performance tested, breeding value of such-and-such. To a mare owner, stallion licensing looks like a ranking. To the stallion's owner it is an invoice and a winter of work.
Both are reading the same document and meaning different things by it. Stallion licensing and performance testing measure two genuinely different things, and neither measures what most people assume.
Stallion licensing and a performance test are not the same document
They get used interchangeably in conversation, which is where most of the confusion starts.
A licence — the German Körung is the strictest version, but most studbooks run an equivalent — is an eligibility decision. A studbook assesses the stallion on conformation, movement and pedigree, and decides whether he may breed within that book. It is a judgement about the stallion as presented on the day, measured against what that studbook is trying to produce.
A stallion performance test measures something else: trained performance, over a defined period, under a fixed protocol. It says something about rideability, gaits, jumping ability and temperament in the horse being tested.
The point that matters to both sides: a performance test assesses that stallion. It is not a statement about the foal. Heritability is a statistical claim across many offspring, and the only figure that speaks to it is a breeding value — which cannot exist until enough offspring have been assessed themselves.
The breeding value is the only number about inheritance
If you want to know what a stallion passes on, you are not looking for a test score. You are looking for a breeding value, estimated from the results of his offspring.
Two things follow. A young stallion's breeding value is inherently uncertain — there are no offspring to compute it from yet, which is why it is published with a reliability figure, and that figure matters more than the value. And a breeding value is always relative to a population: it says where this stallion sits within the assessed group, not how good he is in absolute terms.
So a young, newly licensed stallion with a strong test result is not worse than an established one. You simply know less about him. That is a legitimate choice as long as it is made deliberately and the fee reflects it.
Which studbook issued it is part of the information
"Licensed" on its own is incomplete. Studbooks run their own breeding programmes with their own requirements and their own priorities, and the rules are revised. A stallion can be licensed with one book and not entered with another without anything being wrong — the breeding goals simply differ.
Three questions worth asking of any profile:
- Which studbook, and for which breeding programme
- When — a licensing is a snapshot, and requirements move
- Whether the entry still stands, or came with conditions attached
The binding answer comes from the studbook, not the advertisement. In Germany the Deutsche Reiterliche Vereinigung keeps sport and breeding under one roof and is the right starting point when it is unclear which body governs a breed. Two hours on the phone to a registry settles more than any amount of watching videos.
What it buys the stallion's owner
Commercially the answer is unromantic: it makes the horse comparable. A mare owner choosing between two stallions of similar breeding has, without a result, only photographs and assertions. With one, they have a figure produced under the same conditions as every other tested stallion that year.
That alone does not justify a higher stud fee. What justifies it is the combination of result, pedigree and — later — what the offspring actually do. An owner weighing up stallion licensing and a test entry in November is doing plain arithmetic: what the entry costs and months of training against the mares who would not otherwise come.
We quote no figures for it. Fees are set by the body running the test, differ by format and are revised regularly — a number printed in an article is wrong the following year. The body that runs it will tell you on request.
What a test does not cover
- Offspring health. Radiographic findings and genetic markers are separate examinations with separate results. A passed test does not replace a genetic panel
- Fit with your mare. A highly graded stallion can be the wrong choice for a particular mare. Matching is a decision about two animals, not one
- Fertility. A performance test measures performance, not semen quality
- Whether it still holds. A result from ten years ago describes a horse from ten years ago
None of that makes testing worthless. It means it answers one question rather than four.
Winter is when this gets decided
Stallion licensing and test dates fall in the winter half of the year, and both sides decide in the same weeks — the stallion owner enters or does not, the mare owner assembles a shortlist for spring. Start researching in March and you choose from whatever is left.
For a mare owner that means asking for the paperwork in November, not April. A studbook confirming an entry takes days, not minutes, and the answer arrives in time to change your mind.
How we handle it
On Hoofine the licensing, test results and covering terms sit on the stallion profile rather than being sent on request — making them comparable is the entire point. What is written there is the stallion owner's declaration, though. Our verification marks cover identity and documents; they do not confirm a breeding approval, and we do not present them as doing so. The binding word on a licensing belongs to the studbook that issued it.
What the covering contracts settle is a different question, and just as worth reading: what happens if the mare does not hold.
