What is ACE Assessment?

ACE Assessment is an opportunity to receive feedback, an instrument of quality control against a breeding goal, and a chance to benchmark against other breeders/owners nationally as well as internationally.

ACE Group Inc. has successfully offered Assessment by an independent expert from overseas for ACE registered and unregistered Performance Horses for over twenty years providing the Australian Equestrian industry with valuable feedback regarding their breeding decisions.

When looking at the meaning of the word Assessment there are numerous synonyms: Evaluation, Estimation, Measurement, Judgment, Review, Consideration and Opinion.

All of these words with their particular meaning play an important role during the assessment. However, the assessment also implies that there is a state of perfection, a dream to achieve an overall breeding goal, which has been outlined below.

Without this goal – assessment and all of its functionalities will fade.

Estimation – Breeding or not breeding – keep him as a colt or geld him – keep or sell

Neither the assessor nor ACE Group Inc. will be able to answer these questions fully, but with the assessment, you will get a snapshot of where your horse is at that particular point in time. It may give you a tool to make a decision.

Measurement – depending on what type of Performance Horse you would like to breed, there is clear rules e.g. height.

Do you intend to breed a pony, small performance horse or Warmblood? 

Especially important for the assessment of older horses – mares that are considered to enter the breeding program as well as stallions.

Judgment – nobody likes to be judged – but to improve we need to be aware of possible faults and be open to constructive criticism.

The ACE Group Inc. expert has seen thousands of horses in his career as a judge and will give you an honest impression of where you are according to the breeding goal and its implication.

Marks = words: 10 excellent 9 very good 8 good 7 fairly good 6 satisfactory 5 sufficient 4 deficient 3 quite poor 2 poor 1 very poor 0 not evaluated   Review – you might have set your own goal within the overall breeding goal.

The assessment gives you an outstanding opportunity to review this goal by receiving your own assessments but also be able to compare and review the assessments around you, e.g. the foal next door always seems to score 0.5% higher … why … the answers may be visible in your assessment sheet.

  Consideration – keep in mind, the assessment is a snapshot of one day a few minutes out of your horse’s life.

A foal might have had a growth spurt the week before and turning from an extraordinary confirmation to a rather average confirmation. Or your 2.5-year-old stallion is so excited about the environment around him, that he just would not walk at the time of assessment.

However, the assessment has to represent those minutes and can only estimate, measure and judge what the horse is presenting then and there.

If in doubt, please never hesitate to re-present your horse at a later date.

Opinion – how does that horse perform against the breeding goal out of the expert’s perspective?

There is no right or wrong – there may be praise and happy faces but there may also be some constructive criticism to what you may improve to enable you to achieve your dream.