Answering Breeding Questions

Since the Thoroughbred breeding season is almost upon us, a few folks have asked about where to breed and if we are still breeding. 

First, we are still breeding and purchased some nice stallion seasons recently. For example, we are taking a couple Minnesota mares to Kentucky in early February and breeding Crimson Socks to Bayern at Hill N Dale, as well as BJ's Angel to Mr. Z. at Calumet Farm. Crimson Socks is a well proven stakes producing mare while BJ's Angel is young but ran triple digit speed ratings in her racing career, and has a very nice yearling by Sidney's Candy who stood at Winstar Farm when we bred to him.

Both stallion seasons were purchased from the Iowa Stallion Auction because Iowa smartly holds their auction early. This allows breeders to quickly sign service contracts and fill out mare information forms, thus getting an early booking for highly demand stallions such as Bayern. The earlier the booking, the earlier the foal is born, thus the higher the appreciated sales ring value. Iowa also has 3 restricted stallion auction stakes races which total near $220,000 in purses, with 2 of the 3 being Black Type. Black Type is another important sales ring issue to breeders who understand value.

We are partnering with good friends and great horse people Joyce and Rick Osborne on these two mares, and we look forward to visiting Calumet and Hill N Dale when we head to Kentucky in the near future.

As to the question of where to breed, the better question is where do people breed. There are always underlying reasons consumers, gravitate to or from certain products. Breeders, as consumers of jurisdictional breeding systems, also gravitate to and from certain jurisdictions. I wrote a couple of published articles on that subject recently. Following is the link to those articles, and some other information on breeding.

Breeding Articles     

---