Which will just drive the market price down because the supply would be so large, unless they are a FANTASTIC specimen. I’d rather breed to a small book than a large book.
Vivace, that was the underlying basis of my poorly phrased question. What was the overall opinion here of paying a premium for a small book (Tapit) over a less expensive, albeit still a nice stallion, with an open book (Uncle Mo).
[QUOTE=Where’sMyWhite;8930917]
This I would agree… many of little Uncle Mo’s running around 
Which led me to an interesting thought (since there are people here who are in the business)…
Would you choose to spend a higher fee for a “better” (yes, subjective) stallion with an unlimited boor or a lower fee for perhaps not as quality stallion who has a limited book size?
i.e. pay big bucks for a Uncle Mo knowing there might be 150+ other Uncle Mo’s on the ground when your’s is or, I dunno, maybe a Tapit who costs more but you know that there will be 124 or less baby Tapit’s on the ground?
Yes, you might not like Tapit or whatever but more curious about if the choice was pricier/better/closed book vs less costly/not quite as nice/open book, how much would the closed/limited book influence your decision?[/QUOTE]
It depends what the plan for the resulting foal would be, in my answer to this. If I was going commercially, a limited book from a horse like Tapit would be more appealing (but not a limited book for a stallion lower quality. No matter what, at this point Tapit is more quality than Mo). If I was planning on racing and breeding the horse myself, I wouldn’t care about the number he bred from that standpoint.
Now if you were talking Mo vs. Flatter (another limited horse) or other stallions at his level or a little higher, I’d still take Mo because he’ll still probably sell better than others if you’re breeding a mare with a good page to him.
Don’t people care that Nyquist, like so many from the In Excess line, couldn’t even make it through his 3yo year? Why would buyers support horses from such a notoriously unsound line? Not only is unlimited breeding reducing genetic diversity, but the most heavily used stallion, while producing fast horses, also comes from a line that has been producing top class horses who can’t make it through their 3yo year for three generations.
Nyquist is new for 2017 so he’s the shiny new toy. He was a good racehorse, only one of two to win the BC Juvie and Derby and is well put together. People are breeding for a Derby horse, not a horse that can’t run at three but is good at four (different subject for a different day), and he’s proven that he is one. And is by a very hot sire who looks to be seriously talented so he’s a good package.
It should also be noted that Uncle Mo (Nyquist’s sire) is an outcross so breeding to him and his sons is actually good for genetic diversity. Just not 253 mares for one stallion good.
I have a question that is undoubtedly going to come out as kinda pervy. However, this seems the place to ask.
I’ve only ever been involved in AI, where I worked we stood a warmblood stallion, he got collected roughly 3 times a week for about 4 months. He was relatively gung-ho about it for the first month or so, but after that he was just done, like he would sometimes mount the phantom 6-7 times before making a contribution. And at least in that situation, each “contribution” would cover multiple mares.
So how the heck do these TBs do it? 3 times a day for 4 months? Don’t they ever just get sick of it? Or is it significantly more appealing because it’s live cover? I feel like they must be exhausted/do a number on their low back.
If Uncle Mo passes on the traits of the In Excess line, he’ll pass on brilliantly fast 2 yos that don’t race after three, in part because many of them are unsound. And he won’t live very long, either. Of course, the TB market doesn’t care about longevity on the track and only uses racing to produce new sires that can make millions in the shed and produce sales horses.
Honestly, I’ve come to the opinion that in America when horse sales and stud fees seem as outrageous as the salaries of CEOs, the whole economy is in a bubble and will soon burst. And when the horse sales and stud fees start picking up, recessions are over. Watch the behavior of the owners in the TB world, and I believe that it reflects the overall economy several months to a year early.
And it looks to me as if the current TB market is in another bubble and will burst very soon.
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8931914]
Don’t people care that Nyquist, like so many from the In Excess line, couldn’t even make it through his 3yo year? Why would buyers support horses from such a notoriously unsound line? Not only is unlimited breeding reducing genetic diversity, but the most heavily used stallion, while producing fast horses, also comes from a line that has been producing top class horses who can’t make it through their 3yo year for three generations.[/QUOTE]
By most people’s standards (if perhaps not yours) Nyquist did “make it” through his 3 year old year. Between February and September of 2016 he raced in 4 G1 and 2 G2 races in six different states all around the country. He ran in the San Vicente, the Florida Derby, the KY Derby, the Preakness, the Haskell and the PA Derby. That’s a grueling schedule. That he did not run in the BC was probably due to the fact that his connections did not think he would be as competitive as they wanted him to be. A “hard knocking” horse that sits at his home track and runs 20 times a year in claiming races is not working nearly as hard as Nyquist did this year.
Grueling Schedule? Maybe by contemporary standards, but certainly not by historical ones. He was undefeated through the KY Derby, and didn’t win a race afterwards. Not even the PA Derby where he finished sixth. Each of his three races after the Derby, he finished lower in the results. He never ran against older horses, so he only compared to the other horses of his breeding year.
Very often very successful two years win because they are precocious, but as other horses of their birth year mature to catch up with them, they are less successful. Whether that is why Nyquist began to be less successful or whether it is because he started having soundness issues is one of those unknowns. But declining performance as a horse’s cohort matures seems to be one of the In Excess line traits.
Compare a horse like Nyquist to a horse like, oh say, Zenyatta or Beholder who were able to race for much longer than a year and six months. But the other two were mares, so the pressure to cash in on stud fees wasn’t there.
Compare to a horse like Arrogate who didn’t run at two, didn’t run in the TC races, and set a new track record at Saratoga in the Travers. It was faster than the KY Derby Track record which NYquist missed by almost 2 seconds. Even Arrogate’s BC Classic was over a second faster than Nyquist’s Derby. You’d think people would be salivating for Arrogate to retire to the shed.
[QUOTE=Dutchmare433;8931960]
I have a question that is undoubtedly going to come out as kinda pervy. However, this seems the place to ask.
I’ve only ever been involved in AI, where I worked we stood a warmblood stallion, he got collected roughly 3 times a week for about 4 months. He was relatively gung-ho about it for the first month or so, but after that he was just done, like he would sometimes mount the phantom 6-7 times before making a contribution. And at least in that situation, each “contribution” would cover multiple mares.
So how the heck do these TBs do it? 3 times a day for 4 months? Don’t they ever just get sick of it? Or is it significantly more appealing because it’s live cover? I feel like they must be exhausted/do a number on their low back.[/QUOTE]
Some stallions I’ve went to actually get better as the season goes on. Some really don’t care about breeding even when the season starts and it gets no better (and in some cases) no worse throughout the season and some make us wait around for a while the farther into the season we get. It’s one of those things that depends on each horse but there are some who have back issues from the track (or breeding for years on end) flip you the bird and make you wait for a long time (those are the ones that you know you don’t have to get to the shed early because they’re going to put you last even if they have two shed).
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8932264]
Grueling Schedule? Maybe by contemporary standards, but certainly not by historical ones. [/QUOTE]
You just hit on a major pet peeve of mine. You can’t compare the schedules of horses running today to horses running even 30 years ago. Training schedules have changed among numerous other things. It’s not fair to the horse to say “oh, he’s not that good because he didn’t make 566 starts like xyz did in 1945” because the horse can only run as many times as his trainer enters him and again, other things have changed since then.
How about we let Uncle Mo actually get a crop or two of 4-year-olds on the track before we start saying he’s helping ruin the breed.
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8932264]
Grueling Schedule? Maybe by contemporary standards, but certainly not by historical ones. He was undefeated through the KY Derby, and didn’t win a race afterwards.[/QUOTE]
But did Nyquist overall do as well in his 3 year old year vs his 2 year old year because he was unsound or not as talented at the longer distances?
I would agree that he didn’t run in the BC because he wouldn’t have been competitive, not because he was not sound.
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8932264]
Grueling Schedule? Maybe by contemporary standards, but certainly not by historical ones. He was undefeated through the KY Derby, and didn’t win a race afterwards. Not even the PA Derby where he finished sixth. Each of his three races after the Derby, he finished lower in the results. He never ran against older horses . . .Compare to a horse like Arrogate who didn’t run at two, didn’t run in the TC races, and set a new track record at Saratoga in the Travers. It was faster than the KY Derby Track record which NYquist missed by almost 2 seconds. Even Arrogate’s BC Classic was over a second faster than Nyquist’s Derby. You’d think people would be salivating for Arrogate to retire to the shed.[/QUOTE]
Could not agree more.
Some may have read this TDN 2010 article but for those who haven’t it is very thought provoking. The pdf can be Googled also and might be better as it is lengthy.
http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/do-we-need-a-sturdier-racehorse/
[QUOTE=LaurieB;8932124]
By most people’s standards (if perhaps not yours) Nyquist did “make it” through his 3 year old year. Between February and September of 2016 he raced in 4 G1 and 2 G2 races in six different states all around the country. He ran in the San Vicente, the Florida Derby, the KY Derby, the Preakness, the Haskell and the PA Derby. That’s a grueling schedule. That he did not run in the BC was probably due to the fact that his connections did not think he would be as competitive as they wanted him to be. A “hard knocking” horse that sits at his home track and runs 20 times a year in claiming races is not working nearly as hard as Nyquist did this year.[/QUOTE]
The other thing I try to keep in mind before coming to sweeping judgments about bloodlines etc is that these top horses are usually examples of one–I don’t think you can compare the management, training, and financial implications of say a Nyquist with the average $12,500 claimer. As Laurie said, there are other things going on that drive the decision making process besides just relative soundness.
FWIW, I lived in the land where In Excess reigned. They did tend to be precocious, speedy and unsound but it wasn’t some magical voodoo in their genes. A lot of them were terribly offset–combine that with the hard California tracks and the types of trainers they generally ended up with --Baffert loved him some In Excess and really made the stallion–and you get the In Excess pattern that is being alluded to.
But Uncle Mo is not In Excess. He’s being bred to different types of mares and the offspring is going to trainers all over the country. They are running freaks and that is unusual. Mo’s popularity is deserved and I think Nyquist will be pretty popular too.
We’ll just have to wait and see. Indian Charlie had only five races and retired unsound in the early part of his three year old year.
How successful has Uncle Mo’s 2 yo crop been this year so far?
If “terribly offset” is a common trait of siblings, then seems to me that it has to be genetic.
I’ve seen a lot of Uncle Mos and can’t say he’s passing on the “terribly offset” trait. Some are a little crooked but it’s not an across the board, every Mo is messed up thing I’ve noticed.
As for horses not making it through their 3yo year, Uncle Mo was second in a G1 in his return from an illness and won the Kelso so he most definitely wasn’t an early one-and-done type.
Uncle Mo is currently third in the nation behind Tapit and Curlin on the general sire list and is destroying the horses on the second crop list. He has nine winners from 31 runners this year on a not-so-great book of mares (his third year mares are also fairly week). He also has two stakes placed horses in the crop. But even with those stats, I’m not willing to throw him out with the bath water in only his second year of having horses on the track.
[QUOTE=Pronzini;8932484]
The other thing I try to keep in mind before coming to sweeping judgments about bloodlines etc is that these top horses are usually examples of one–I don’t think you can compare the management, training, and financial implications of say a Nyquist with the average $12,500 claimer. As Laurie said, there are other things going on that drive the decision making process besides just relative soundness.
FWIW, I lived in the land where In Excess reigned. They did tend to be precocious, speedy and unsound but it wasn’t some magical voodoo in their genes. A lot of them were terribly offset–combine that with the hard California tracks and the types of trainers they generally ended up with --Baffert loved him some In Excess and really made the stallion–and you get the In Excess pattern that is being alluded to.
But Uncle Mo is not In Excess. He’s being bred to different types of mares and the offspring is going to trainers all over the country. They are running freaks and that is unusual. Mo’s popularity is deserved and I think Nyquist will be pretty popular too.[/QUOTE]
This times 1000!
Ironically, Arrogate is from a line in Kentucky that is known to be fragile (and who was/is fragile himself).
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8932264]
Grueling Schedule? Maybe by contemporary standards, but certainly not by historical ones. He was undefeated through the KY Derby, and didn’t win a race afterwards. Not even the PA Derby where he finished sixth. Each of his three races after the Derby, he finished lower in the results. He never ran against older horses, so he only compared to the other horses of his breeding year.
Very often very successful two years win because they are precocious, but as other horses of their birth year mature to catch up with them, they are less successful. Whether that is why Nyquist began to be less successful or whether it is because he started having soundness issues is one of those unknowns. But declining performance as a horse’s cohort matures seems to be one of the In Excess line traits.
Compare a horse like Nyquist to a horse like, oh say, Zenyatta or Beholder who were able to race for much longer than a year and six months. But the other two were mares, so the pressure to cash in on stud fees wasn’t there.
Compare to a horse like Arrogate who didn’t run at two, didn’t run in the TC races, and set a new track record at Saratoga in the Travers. It was faster than the KY Derby Track record which NYquist missed by almost 2 seconds. Even Arrogate’s BC Classic was over a second faster than Nyquist’s Derby. You’d think people would be salivating for Arrogate to retire to the shed.[/QUOTE]
I am having a hard time understanding an argument which complains that Nyquist is unsound because he “only” raced 11 times at 2 & 3 and proposes Arrogate as a better alternative because he has had 6 starts at age 3. If the race records were reversed you would be complaining about perceived unsoundness in Arrogate because he didn’t race at 2.
People are salivating to breed to Arrogate. But that’s a moot point until he retires. He’s not available and Nyquist is.
