Lawsuit challenges limiting stallion books

[skydy]

@LaurieB

@skydy

Do you know if any mare owners have filed suit? I hope the stallion interests aren’t alone in objecting.

The only mare owners who have the money needed for a lawsuit like this one, are big enough not to be impacted by the cap.

Makes sense.[quote=“Pronzini, post:37, topic:756862, full:true”]

@Pronzini

The chips are stacked so high against breeders its a wonder that anyone does it.

You need to start with a whole bunch of luck–that the mare gets in foal, that the pregnancy is uneventful and the foaling routine, that there are no paddock accidents, sickness or other calamities that strike down either the baby or the mare or both.

Then the baby needs to have some quality–not too small or crooked or plain.

Then the stallion you perhaps took a flyer on needs to still have some commercial presence.

Then your luck needs to hold as the baby matures and again no paddock accident, sickness or other issues. (I suspect the uninitiated might be amazed at the X Rays of babies just coming out of a field where they were allowed to roughhouse and just be horses. A friend of mine getting bad news about his yearlings after routine pre sales prep X Rays exclaimed “Did they drop them from a helicopter?”)

Occasionally routine pre sales scans give you the worst of all news “unraceable”. These could include OCDs, cracks where you didn’t realize they existed and/or breathing issues. Sometimes this does not doom the horse–every one has a story of a horse pronounced by vets to be unraceable who turned into quite the racehorse. Chances are good they existed before the widespread use of X Rays when people just took it on faith they could buy, break and race the yearling in front of them.

The point is that stallion selection is one of the few things breeders can control. If you get a baby, the baby will be by X because you signed a contract for X. That’s why, I think, breeders flock to the same handful of stallions particularly if they are trying to be commercial. It’s a way to deal with rest of risk which can be overwhelming if you start to think about it

Then the stallion you perhaps took a flyer on needs to still have some commercial presence.

Then your luck needs to hold as the baby matures and again no paddock accident, sickness or other issues. (I suspect the uninitiated might be amazed at the X Rays of babies just coming out of a field where they were allowed to roughhouse and just be horses. A friend of mine getting bad news about his yearlings after routine pre sales prep X Rays exclaimed “Did they drop them from a helicopter?”)

Occasionally routine pre sales scans give you the worst of all news “unraceable”. These could include OCDs, cracks where you didn’t realize they existed and/or breathing issues.

That is why breeders that breed for the sales are usually fairly wealthy. Investment in very high class mares is required as well as the use of expensive stallions.

The breeder of a small broodmare band of non-race TB horses requires the same outlay of time and money and luck that small breeders of race TBs have to contend with except for the stud fees and what I am guessing are relatively high expenses of race training. I realize that’s an enormous “except”.

I’ve worked for a couple of “private” TB breeders in the past. For them, it was a labor of love developing their mare lines (as I believe it is for @LaurieB) and in one case standing their stallion as well. None of them bred racehorses though, and they didn’t sell yearlings, they were trained up and either shown or hunted.

(@Pronzini what do buyers want, yearlings that have been kept in a stall? Do you think that part of the problem is the purchase of racehorses by completely non-horsey people or the failure by trainers to educate them?)

Perhaps the day of the TB show horse will return but it obviously won’t come from TB race breeding model.

I was not privy to their books but the horses they did sell sold well. They were affluent though and not really expecting to make a profit ( I don’t see how they could have really) It was a lifelong interest.
The fact that race horses are bred for two purposes only, sale and or race as you mentioned, is tough.

It seems as if the Jockey Club is taking away any chance for small operations to have a go at the commercial market with the horses they don’t keep to race unless (as LaurieB mentioned) they are very wealthy and well connected. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s the case. [quote=“Simkie, post:14, topic:756514”]

[Pronzini]

@skydy

(@Pronzini what do buyers want, yearlings that have been kept in a stall? Do you think that part of the problem is the purchase of racehorses by completely non-horsey people or the failure by trainers to educate them?)

My impression is that the days of the hot house yearlings are in the past. Too many buyers got burned by good looking and non athletic horses. At the end of the day, a breeder has to raise race horses. Buyers have to buy them and sellers have to sell them. Otherwise families go stale and buyers go elsewhere. Oh sure, there are still some people out there–chiefly newbies–who look at the two year old sales as mini races and they want the one who won the race (the fastest works). But, as the industry contracts, it seems like the dumb money is being weeded out, at least at the elite levels.

Again a lot of these guys have advisers who have seen everything twice. They don’t want a hot house horse which might have endless problems later on. So commercial breeders need to suck it up and let half a million on four hooves run around, rough house and play and keep their fingers crossed that nobody bounces off a fence or gets kicked in the head. It’s nerve wracking but you need to produce athletes.

[skydy]

@Pronzini

@skydy

(@Pronzini what do buyers want, yearlings that have been kept in a stall? Do you think that part of the problem is the purchase of racehorses by completely non-horsey people or the failure by trainers to educate them?)

My impression is that the days of the hot house yearlings are in the past. Too many buyers got burned by good looking and non athletic horses. At the end of the day, a breeder has to raise race horses. Buyers have to buy them and sellers have to sell them. Otherwise families go stale and buyers go elsewhere. Oh sure, there are still some people out there–chiefly newbies–who look at the two year old sales as mini races and they want the one who won the race (the fastest works). But, as the industry contracts, it seems like the dumb money is being weeded out, at least at the elite levels.

Again a lot of these guys have advisers who have seen everything twice. They don’t want a hot house horse which might have endless problems later on. So commercial breeders need to suck it up and let half a million on four hooves run around, rough house and play and keep their fingers crossed that nobody bounces off a fence or gets kicked in the head. It’s nerve wracking but you need to produce athletes.

That’s good to hear.

[Ponycatraz]

Sorry for the delay. I hate searching the USTA website from my phone.
http://members.ustrotting.com/breeding.cfm
Is there a limit to how many mares my stallion can breed?
Yes, effective with the breeding season of 2011, any new stallion cannot breed more than 140 mares in North America. For stallions that had been breeding prior to 2011, limits are as follows:

Breeding Season	2008 & before	2009	2010	2011 & thereafter
Trotting Stallions	no limit	140	140	140
Pacing Stallions	no limit	160	150	140

ET Rules:

USTARuleBook.pdf

Section 26.23 - Mare must be at least 2 and only the first born foal of the year can be registered. Donor mare can’t be raced or exported during recip mare gestation.

[EventerAJ]

Maybe I am looking at this the wrong way, but I see a way the 140 cap will help the breed. Right now there are a few farms (like Winstar) who play the Hot New Sire game…retire 3 or 4 new horses every year, generate a lot of buzz and get 180 mares at 20-30k. Those stallions stay for 2 or 3 seasons, when “the flop year” happens and the book numbers decline, the stud fee drops accordingly, and instead of riding out the storm Winstar cashes out and dumps the stallion to a foreign country… fine for the stallion syndicate to get a big paycheck…but a huge hit for breeders who took a chance that final season (that they didn’t KNOW was final season). Now resulting foal is commercially tanked because Stallion was sent away and buyers automatically think he’s no good. Which perpetuates the cycle…average Winstar stallion’s books decline year 3 because breeders are gunshy to commit to a horse who may end up in Korea/Saudi before their foal hits the ground. (Yeah, I’m talking about the lovely Commissioner colt in my paddock right now). Then occasionally one of the stallions hits big (Take Charge Indy, Daredevil) and someone has to go buy him back…but not before a loss was taken.

Maybe if books were capped, Winstar wouldn’t breed the snot out of their new arrivals, and there could me more mares to trickle down into those 3rd year books and support a stallion well enough to keep him here and give him a chance to see his 3yos hit the track.

Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

As for the late-retiring G1 mare looking to get to a War Front, Tapit, or MDO…that won’t be too much of a problem. Many top stallions (aside from Spendthrift and Ashford) already have limited books under 150, some under 100. There will be room for that exceptional mare, even if the farm has to bump one of their own (who will still get bred to somebody…and maybe gives a chance to a less popular stallion).

As a smaller breeder, I won’t shop at Winstar, because I don’t want to feed their assembly line scheme and I don’t trust them to support a stallion in year 3.

And, yeah, maybe a small time breeder just won’t breed their good mare if they can’t get their first choice…but maybe they’ll make a few phone calls, get an exceptional deal to #2 choice, and still have a way to (at least) break even on that eventual yearling. Maybe that one good mare will be the one that gives this lesser stallion his Big Runner, and the tide turns him into a popular stallion with better mares.

[LaurieB]

@EventerAJ

Maybe I am looking at this the wrong way, but I see a way the 140 cap will help the breed. Right now there are a few farms (like Winstar) who play the Hot New Sire game…retire 3 or 4 new horses every year, generate a lot of buzz and get 180 mares at 20-30k. Those stallions stay for 2 or 3 seasons, when “the flop year” happens and the book numbers decline, the stud fee drops accordingly, and instead of riding out the storm Winstar cashes out and dumps the stallion to a foreign country… fine for the stallion syndicate to get a big paycheck…but a huge hit for breeders who took a chance that final season (that they didn’t KNOW was final season). Now resulting foal is commercially tanked because Stallion was sent away and buyers automatically think he’s no good. Which perpetuates the cycle…average Winstar stallion’s books decline year 3 because breeders are gunshy to commit to a horse who may end up in Korea/Saudi before their foal hits the ground. (Yeah, I’m talking about the lovely Commissioner colt in my paddock right now). Then occasionally one of the stallions hits big (Take Charge Indy, Daredevil) and someone has to go buy him back…but not before a loss was taken.

Maybe if books were capped, Winstar wouldn’t breed the snot out of their new arrivals, and there could me more mares to trickle down into those 3rd year books and support a stallion well enough to keep him here and give him a chance to see his 3yos hit the track.

Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

The hot new sire game is only important to commercial breeders. And while it may be hard to profitably sell a yearling whose sire has been shipped out of the country, it’s equally hard to sell the offspring of a third year sire who has 3yos running that aren’t lighting up the track. The first and second years are pretty much bulletproof (particularly if you sell weanlings) but third year and beyond is always problematic until a stallion proves himself. Imo, it doesn’t make a significant difference whether the horse has been relocated or simply hasn’t produced the goods. The stallion would tank commercially either way.

I don’t see how having a mare cap is going to change what the market is willing to buy. It will, however, change what small breeders are able to breed.

[ASB_Stars]

Interesting position to take- the breeders have “no standing”, and therefore their filing is no bueno!

The Jockey Club Details Motion to Dismiss Farms' Suit