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The MTRA racing registry is for Thoroughbreds only. All horses owned by members of MTRA should be registered, including both racing and breeding stock. The purpose of the registry is to prevent the duplication of future names and to provide a record of reference in the form of Studbooks. Registration is free and available by e-mail or regular mail.
If your horses were previously registered with the Model Racing Forum (MRF), the North American Model Thoroughbred Breeders Association (NAMTOBA), and/or the Express group, they may also be registered with MTRA. NOTE: In the case of duplicate names among horses from the three different registries, each horse with a duplicate name will have a letter added to its TNR# to indicate that it was previously registered with one of those groups.

For example, if three horses named “Georgia” were to be submitted for MTRA registration and all three were previously registered with the MRF, NAMTOBA, or the Express, then they would be registered as follows, with a letter following their registration number to indicate which group they came from:

                     Georgia TNR# M101 (The M means it was previously registered with the MRF.)

                     Georgia TNR# N102 (The N means it was previously registered with NAMTOBA.)

                     Georgia TNR# X103 (The X means it was previously registered with the Express.)

Each horse submitted for registration will be issued a unique MTRA registration number starting with TNR (TNR means Thoroughbred Name Registry). Duplicate names will be allowed ONLY if the horse is being grandfathered in and was previously registered with one of the other three registries, as shown above.

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Using Real Horses as Parents

It is perfectly acceptable to use real Thoroughbreds as the parents of your horses. We do encourage members to try and use other members’ horses as parents if possible, but we realize that people often like to create their original breeding stock or original set of runners from their favorite real Thoroughbreds. If you wish to use real TBs, then we do have a few rules that need to be followed.

1. Any time you use a real horse as a parent, the foal must be born during the years that the real horse was actually siring or producing foals. For example, Smarty Jones’ first year at stud was in 2005 and his first foals were yearlings in 2007. So if you wanted to use Smarty Jones as a sire, the foal would have to be born 2006 or later. (Remember that the year a stallion or mare enters the stud is the first year they can be bred, so no foals will be born until the following year.) If real horses are used as parents, you must use real life time constraints for the foaling date of your foal. This means you cannot use a sire/dam BEFORE he/she entered stud, while he/she was still racing, after a horse was pensioned (retired from breeding), nor can you use a horse after it has died. For example, you cannot breed Man O’War to Ruffian because a) he died before she was born, and b) she died before she had any foals at all. You can create older breeding stock from deceased or retired race horses provided the foal you create was born while the real horses were still producing foals. Real horses in a model horse / simulated racing pedigree are ALWAYS indicated by ® or –r after their names.

2. If you wish to use a real mare as a dam for one of your horses, a request to use the real mare as a dam must be submitted before your horse can be registered. You need to email Daralyn Wallace (RaunFalcon@aol.com) for RMR #, and she will send back an RMR # for your horse. Once the horse has its RMR #, you can then send it in for actual registration. NOTE: Horses out of real mares are NOT allowed to race until they have received their RMR#. Please see the section on the Real Mare Registry for complete instructions on how to send in an RMR request.

3. You cannot use a real horse for a sire/dam if it was sterile in real life (i.e. Cigar) or if it died before they had a chance to produce a real foal (i.e. Ruffian, Go For Wand, Swale, etc.).

4. If you are using live parents you cannot take it upon yourself to import or export them from their home countries to be bred to horses in another country. For example, you cannot "import" Sadler's Wells from England to the U.S.A. to breed to a real or model mare in the U.S. A. if he never actually left England.

5. The Jockey Club prohibits AI and ET in the breeding of purebred Thoroughbreds so you must make sure that it is theoretically possible for the two horses to be in the same location to be bred (i.e. is it realistic for you to take X mare to Y stallion).

6. For MTRA purposes, you may not use any real horse for producing foals until that horse has been officially retired from racing and has entered the stud. Except in RARE cases, real horses do not race and produce foals at the same time. A stallion might cover 1-2 mares late in his race career to test his fertility and then still run a few races, but mares are almost always retired from racing before being bred. This is because it is usually harder to get a mare in foal if she is in racing condition. Because the Jockey Club does not at this time recognize embryo transfer, you cannot use this method to produce TB foals from a TB mare.

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Real Mare Registry

In order to keep from having multiple foals from real mares, MTRA uses a Real Mare Registry to keep track of all real mares that the members request to use as dams for their foals.
1. If you are requesting to use a real mare, you must send in the request to the Registrar, along with documentation to prove the year you are requesting is open. Note: It is YOUR responsibility to furnish the RMR/Registrar with the real mare’s foaling record via your own research! You can ask anyone who is a MTRA member to help you with research, but it isn’t the job of the Registrar to do it for you.

2. Any real mare used as a dam must have an open year available before she can be used. An open year is defined as one in which no foal was recorded for the dam (either she was barren, not bred, or slipped a foal).

3. You are required to show proof to the Registrar that the real mare you are requesting to use as a dam has an open year by providing the registrar with the official foaling record of the mare, and where you found the information. This type of information can be found in sales catalogues, by using the Breeders Cup Verification Nomination form online, and/or by going to www.equineline.com and ordering a foaling record report from them. Copies of this information must be supplied to the Registrar with your request to use the real mare. This information can be scanned or copied, then either sent to the Registrar via the Post Office or in an email. NOTE: The Del Mar Pedigree Query is not a reliable source for foaling record information as it often does not list the entire progeny record of a mare. It is a good place to start, but should be cross-referenced with one of the other methods.

4. Let’s say that you wanted to create a foal out of the real mare I’ll Get Along (the dam of Smarty Jones). You can start to research the open years for I’ll Get Along by going first to the Del Mar Pedigree site and pulling up her pedigree, then checking her progeny record. You will find she has some foals listed, but that it does not list foals for every year she has been used as a broodmare.

info below taken from Del Mare site

Horse	Color	Sex	Year	Sire	BM Sire	Record	Earnings	Family
BE HAPPY MY LOVE (USA)	b	M	2000	FORMAL GOLD	SMILE	8-1-1-1	$15,435	1-x
SMARTY JONES (USA)	ch	C	2001	ELUSIVE QUALITY	SMILE	9-8-1-0	$7,613,155	1-x
SIPPIN BOURBON (USA)	b	C	2003	HENNESSY2	SMILE	?-?-?-?	Unraced	1-x
SPEEDY JONES (USA)	b	C	2004	ORIENTATE2	SMILE	2-M-0-0	$800	1-x
ELUSIVE MOMENT2 (IRE)	b	F	2005	ELUSIVE QUALITY	SMILE	?-?-?-?	?	1-x

Next, you could go to the Breeders Cup Nomination Verification web page and cross reference the open years for 2002, 2006, and 2007. You do this by putting the mare’s name in and the foaling year you want to check, and if there is a foal for that year, it will pull up a page that shows the information. (Click on the mare’s name to get to it.) In this case, you would find that there is no recorded foal for I’ll Get Along for 2002, but that she does have unnamed foals sired by Sadlers Wells in 2006 and 2007. You’ll also note that she was sold and moved to Ireland sometime between the birth of her 2004 and 2005 foals, because her foals born in 2005, 2006, and 2007 have (IRE) listed after their names.

Once you have gathered all this information, you can then submit it to the Registrar for your RMR request. (Please note another MTRA member has already used I’ll Get Along for a foal born in her open year of 2002 and registered it, so she is not actually available to be used. I have used her just as an example.)

5. To submit the request for using the real mare, send the Registrar copies of all the information backing up the research you did, PLUS the following information:

Pending Name of Foal, gender, and color
Date Foaled for the Foal
Name of the Real Mare
Sire of the Foal (His Sire X His Dam, by Her Sire)
Owner of the Real Mare (farm or person, location)

6. RMR requests can be sent in via email OR via the Post Office. If you are mailing the RMR information to the Registrar via the post office, please mail the information to: Daralyn Wallace, 6545 Olympia Buddy Rd., College Station, TX 77845. If you want the RMR # mailed back to you, then be sure to provide a self-addressed, stamped envelope to return it to you. Otherwise, be sure to include your email address and she will email the RMR # to you.

7. If you are registering a horse that has been registered previously with the MRF, NAMTOBA, or the Express, and it turns out that there is duplication in using a real mare as a dam, the person who registered his or her horse first has the right to keep the real dam. The Registrar will work with the second person in an attempt to find another open year that will work, or another real mare that is a full or half sister to the original mare, or another mare of similar breeding. In *rare* cases, both people might be allowed to keep the same year with the real mare if both horses that are being registered have already produced a lot of offspring. This will need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Hopefully we won’t run into this problem much. [up]

How to Name Your Horses

1. MTRA follows a modified form of the Jockey Club naming rules. Names must be no longer than 18 letters including spaces and punctuation (unless the horse has already been registered with a name longer than that in the MRF or NAMTOBA, or in Express as a Paint horse which allows 21 letters).

2. Names may not consist of initials such as C.O.D., F. O. B., etc. Names cannot end in filly, colt, stud, mare, stallion, or any other horse-related term.

3. Names cannot consist entirely of numbers. Numbers above thirty may be used if spelled out (example: Forty Niner). Names can’t end in 2nd, 3rd, etc. (i.e. no Man O’War 2nd).

4. You cannot use the names of famous people or famous horses (fictional or otherwise) or of race tracks, graded stakes, or real stables, etc. It is also not allowed to alter the spelling of a famous real horse (i.e., no Mann O War).

5. Trade names such as Coca Cola, Dr Pepper, or other commercial brand names are not allowed.

6. Names that are suggestive or have a vulgar or obscene meaning; names considered in poor taste; or names that may be offensive to religious, political or ethnic groups, are not allowed. At this time, the Registrar is allowed to determine what is considered offensive. However, if the Registrar and the member trying to register a horse disagree, then the member may petition the members of MTRA and a majority vote will determine if the name is or is not offensive.

7. You may not use the names of horses in racing’s Hall of Fame, HOTY, Eclipse, Sovereign Award, or annual leading sires or broodmares, or horses that have won $2 million or more, winners of major stakes races, or horses on the International List of Protected Names.

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Color Genetics

The following colors are recognized by The Jockey Club. MTRA recognizes the same designations, but encourages its members to be realistic when listing a horse’s color. You do not have to put “bay/brown.” You may be specific and put bay, brown, or buckskin, whichever is the most correct. Whenever you register a horse as grey, please be sure to put down its birth color in parentheses following the word grey. Bay: The entire coat of the horse may vary from a yellow-tan to a bright auburn. The mane, tail and lower portion of the legs are always black, unless white markings are present.

1. Black: The entire coat of the horse is black, including the muzzle, the flanks, the mane, tail and legs, unless white markings are present.

2. Chestnut: The entire coat of the horse may vary from a red-yellow to a golden-yellow. The mane, tail and legs are usually variations of the coat color, unless white markings are present.

3. Dark Bay/Brown: The entire coat of the horse will vary from a brown, with areas of tan on the shoulders, head and flanks, to a dark brown, with tan areas seen only in the flanks and/or muzzle. The mane, tail and lower portion of the legs are always black, unless white markings are present. (Buckskin horses are usually registered this way in real life, but MTRA prefers that you state buckskin if they are buckskin.)

4. Grey/Roan: The Jockey Club has combined these colors into one color category. However, this does not change the fact that grey and roan are NOT related to each other. MTRA prefers that you use the correct color, either grey or roan.

5. Grey: The majority of the coat of the horse is a mixture of black and white hairs. The mane, tail and legs may be either black or grey, unless white markings are present.

6. Roan: The majority of the coat of the horse is a mixture of red and white hairs or brown and white hairs. The mane, tail and legs may be black, chestnut or roan, unless white markings are present.

7. Palomino: The entire coat of the horse is golden-yellow, unless white markings are present. The mane and tail are usually flaxen.

8. White: A rare color not to be confused with the colors grey or roan. The entire coat, including the mane, tail and legs, is white and no other color should be present.

MTRA members do try to use realistic color genetics for their horses, so please try to follow color genetics rules. Keep in mind that the majority of racing Thoroughbreds are plain colors, though we are finding more sabinos being raced, both in MTRA and in the real world. If you have any questions about color genetics, just ask on the email list and there will be plenty of members who can help you. When deciding on the color of your horse, please remember the following genetics rules.

1. A palomino or buckskin horse must have at least one parent carrying the crème gene. Thoroughbreds do have the crème gene, which can result in palominos, buckskins, cremellos, perlinos, smokey blacks, and smokey crèmes. Although the majority of real bloodlines that carry the cream gene tend to be from non-racing sport horse lines, these lines can be crossed with racing lines to get the color. This is how the color has been brought into the simulated racing groups.

2. TBs do *not* have the dun gene, so there cannot be any type of dun.

3. The only type of pinto that occurs in TBs is the sabino overo gene, so there are no tobianos, splash, etc. A sabino TB can have so much white on it that it appears to be totally white, but there will be at least one spot of color somewhere on the horse. There are some TBs with the sabino gene that are similar to frame overo, but so far it hasn’t been proven that true frame overo exists.

4. The only type of roan that actually occurs in Thoroughbreds is the rabicano roan gene, which results in scattered roaning over the horse, but which does not produce a true dark headed roan such as is seen in Quarter Horses.

5. There a couple of other extremely rare coat patterns seen in the Thoroughbred. There have been a few brindle TBs, and there are horses with “birdcatcher” spots. However, if you pedigree a horse with one of the unusual colors, it should most likely have a parent or grandparent which carried the brindle or birdcatcher spots. Here is a web site that shows unusual TB colors: http://www.angelfire.com/on3/TrueColoursFarm/Cool_and_Unusual_Thoroughbreds.html. This site is also very helpful when it comes to color genetics: http://www.equinecolor.com/charts.html.