Flashback to March 2005 and the Birdstone fee:
Of the tens of millions of dollars that Ms. Whitney has donated to or raised for charity, much has been directed toward horse hospitals, equine research and efforts to save used-up racehorses from the slaughterhouse. She treats breeders and owners of more modest means as equals. She courts everyday racetrack patrons with playful banter, and for her highly anticipated entrances at her annual summer gala in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Ms. Whitney has arrived in everything from a Model T to a hot-air balloon.
Ms. Whitney stayed true to her populist form when an ankle injury forced her beloved Birdstone into early retirement in the days after the Breeders’ Cup. She turned down multimillion-dollar offers from commercial breeders and decided to stand Birdstone as a stallion herself, just up the road from the C. V. Whitney Farm. She set a modest stud fee of $10,000 for each coupling with Birdstone.
“We don’t need the money,” she said. “And we wanted to make him affordable to breeders at all levels of the game.”
This June 8th Bloomberg article suggests the stud fee would “soar” - although its based upon nothing more then his recognition (and success) level going off the charts.
Birdstone’s $10,000 mating fee is now poised to jump at least four-fold next year, a surge that throws into question the industry’s preference for tall, powerful sires, according to Jim Squires, a Versailles, Kentucky-based breeder.
Michael Hernon, the director of sales at Lexington, Kentucky-based Gainesway Farm, which manages Birdstone’s stud career for Whitney, didn’t return a telephone call made to his office yesterday.
Hernon had declined to comment on a possible fee increase a day after the Kentucky Derby, saying in a telephone interview he didn’t want “rush into any numbers decisions.” The front page of Gainesway’s Web site says Birdstone is “booked full” for the 2009 breeding season. A stallion can be bred with 100 mares or more in a year.
Bill Oppenheim, a columnist for the Thoroughbred Daily News, estimates a $40,000-sire fee would push Birdstone’s value up to about $20 million. He said in an e-mail that the horse was probably worth about $2 million before the Derby.
Squires said he had tried to convince at least 10 friends and clients in recent years to breed a mare to Birdstone. Each time, he said, the answer was the same: “He’s too little.”
[Birdstone is 15.3]
That’ll change this September, when broodmare owners begin looking at stallions in Kentucky as they plan their 2010 season, Chace said. Birdstone will be the “premier stallion breeders will look at,” he said.
The stud has caught the eye of trainer Bob Baffert, who was denied a fourth Kentucky Derby victory when Mine That Bird ran down his horse, Pioneerof the Nile, on a sloppy Churchill Downs track on May 2.
Baffert said yesterday that he told his wife seconds after Summer Bird crossed the finish line in the Belmont Stakes that “we got to go buy some Birdstones.”
Another thing about Marylou and her unwavering love for Birdstone:
As a gelding, Mine That Bird can’t follow Birdstone’s success to the breeding shed, although Whitney and Hendrickson consider every achievement on the racetrack a tribute to their stallion. At midnight after the Derby, they left a dozen roses at Birdstone’s stall to salute him for the accomplishment.
