A Bullet and Some Breeding Truth

Since a few folks messaged me questions about this today, here’s the honest insight you asked for ...... and the answer is yes. A J’s Angel, the 2 year old who ran the bullet 3 furlong work (1st of 24) at Canterbury this morning, is the full brother to B J’s Angel. That bullet really doesn’t mean much of anything but here’s the scoop on him anyway.

We put him up for sale in the MTA yearling auction last year. We didn’t get a bid on him even though his conformation was solid, his air passage scoping was clean, his dam was a stakes winner who also produced a full sister who was a $120,000 stakes winner, and the multiple triple digit speed rated sire is also the top sire of Minnesota bred horses based on number of winners and earnings over the last three years.

Considering the mentioned items, and that no other yearling in the sale had a stakes winning dam that produced a $100K stakes winner with the exact same breeding as that stakes winner, I thought he was worth near $20K. I also knew however that all of us breeders over value our horses, so I only had an $8K reserve on him. Nevertheless, no one seemed interested in him and we didn’t get a bid. As a result, we took him home, named him after our newest grandchild and we will be racing him ourselves. He, is now categorized as a home bred which is like 65% of last year’s top earning Minnesota breds, which some of the more insightful followers of this blog brought to my attention related to my previous blog post.

And one more honest answer is yes, we have more Minnesota bred and conceived yearlings on the ground this year that are eligible for the very generous maiden breaking $2,000 bred and conceived bonus the MTA has announced. However, considering last year’s poor buyer and bidder turnout, we are waiting to see if prospects for a much more favorable “Minnesota breeder” auction environment will exist this year before consigning our yearlings.  

So there's the straight scoop, and please feel free to contact Joyce Osborne at the Osborne Farm at 763-689-3661 if you are interested in inspecting the yearlings.

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