Breeding

You have to shake out a lot of grit from the riverbed before you glimpse that glint of gold. John Ropes started panning just about 40 years ago. He had a girl working for him at the time whose father, Andy Smithers, trained in Canada. When Ropes told her that he'd decided to buy a racehorse, she tried to save him. "No," she implored. "I'm telling you, don't do it." Ropes was adamant. He had always loved horses. His parents took him racing as a kid in Miami and, though...

The Jockey Club is estimating that the 2021 North American Foal crop will be 19,200, which would mark the first time since 1965 that the number has been below 20,000. The Jockey Club released the projections Wednesday, some three weeks later than normal. The delay was to allow farms that have been affected by the coronavirus more time to submit their reports of mares bred. The North American foal crop hit an all-time high in 1986 when 51,296 horses were born. By 2006, it was down to 38,104 and with...

Starting with horses born in 2020, the number of mares a stallion can be bred to in a season will be limited to 140, The Jockey Club announced Thursday. "The rule reflects The Jockey Club's goal to preserve the health of the Thoroughbred breed for the long term..." Thursday's press release read. When reached by the TDN, Jockey Club President and COO Jim Gagliano declined to comment further. "I think this is great for the sustainability of our industry going forward," said Claiborne President Walker Hancock. "It's really going to...

   Chris McGrath's Value Sires series in the TDN has frequently touched on the difficulty in selling nominations to stallions in their third-year at stud, as well as to solid, established stallions standing for a moderate fee. We asked stallion managers and nominations teams as well as bloodstock agents what changes could be made, if any, to help the situation.   Lucas Marquardt, Thorostride This has been a great, informative series often approached as a supply-side issue. That is, viewed from the perspective of breeders and stallion farms, mostly through...

Ontario Racing's Mare Purchase Program (MPP), designed to bolster the province's breeding and racing industry through its Thoroughbred Horse Improvement Program (TIP), has concluded with a total of 123 new broodmares added to the breeding program and 76 of those pledged to breed back to Ontario stallions. Through the end of the OBS Winter Mixed sale Jan. 29, a total of 24 in-foal broodmares were purchased at various public auctions with 16 expected to be bred back to a registered Ontario sire during the 2020-21 breedingseason and eligible for the...

We've all got a shot. But only Bill Nicholls has a Shotski (Blame). Not strictly true, of course. The son of Blame, who makes his sophomore bow in the GIII Withers S. Saturday, is banking his racetrack purses for a partnership comprised of Adam Wachtel, Gary Barber, Pantofel Stable and Mike Karty; and raised no more than $25,000 when sold as a yearling by Springland Farm and Prime Bloodstock LLC. But if that's a fairly minimal reward, for breeding a GII Remsen S. winner, then Nicholls can comfort himself that...

Country Life Farm in Fallston, Maryland, is hosting an open house Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be a heated tent, featuring crab soup, and stallions will be shown in the breeding shed. Among the stallions on display will be Mosler, Divining Rod, Friesan Fire and Super Ninety-Nine.

Bucking a nationwide trend, the number of mares bred in Pennsylvania in 2019 was 686, an increase of 12.5% over 2018.  It was the third straight year that the number of horses bred in Pennsylvania has increased. Overall, the number of mares bred in 2019 in the U.S. declined by 3.5%. The growing popularity of the Pennsylvania program is a direct result of the establishment of the Racehorse Development Fund Trust in 2017. The trust guaranteed that the government could no longer raid the Horse Racing Development Fund, which funneled...

Lane's End will host an open house next week in conjunction with the Keeneland January Sale. The event will run Jan. 13 through Jan. 17 with stallions available for inspection from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. In addition to stalwarts like Candy Ride (Arg) and Quality Road, the farm's new addition for 2020 Catalina Cruiser will be available for viewing.

A native of a small farming community in South Africa, Lere Visagie grew up a long way from the U.S. Thoroughbred industry. Today, he sits at the helm of one of New York State's leading stud farms, as the owner/operator of Rockridge Stud in Hudson, New York, which was established just seven years ago. While his is still a relatively new farm, Visagie said his goal is to improve the stallion market in New York through the growth of Rockridge's stallion division. This year, Rockridge welcomes two new Grade I...

When Joe Murphy purchased the 350-acre Stoneleigh Farm 13 years ago, the Lexington businessman admitted the land was mostly for "relaxation," but the operation hit the big time as the breeder of multiple Grade I winner Exaggerator (Curlin) and again when selling that star's half-sister by Medaglia d'Oro for $1.3 million at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale last August. Murphy returns to Saratoga next week with a yearling full-sister to Exaggerator who sells as hip 206 through the Warrendale Sales consignment during Tuesday's second session of the auction. Murphy, who owns...