Question: If you had a champion filly ..........

[winds]

Would you keep her for yourself and breed her like you do your other mares? Within your stud fee budget?


Would you sell her as a broodmare prospect?


Would you breed her in a foal share to a high priced stallion just to be able to sell the foal as a yearling?

winds

[Gillies-Fillies]

Interesting hypothetical!

Sell: probably receive a nice sum which could be reinvested in a half-dozen mid-quality mares (plus a couple of years' worth of seasons and maintenance costs). Several times the opportunity to breed another great one.

Keep (breed to race): for most of us, this means continuing on with lean times. It's probably easy to find a super-reduced stud fee for a good breed-to-race stud (what stallion manager is going to turn down a champion filly?!?) but you're still talking a couple of years of foal-raising costs and regular maintenance fees, plus training and (maybe) extra insurance costs for your high-value bloodstock.

Keep (breed to sell): My choice. Breed one or two commercial foals and sell as yearlings. They'll sell well and bankroll your next few years. Plus, those foals will be sent to the best trainers and are at least marginally more likely to win at the higher levels of racing. That in turn increases the market value of the mare and her future foals. But... by that point, I'd be breeding to race (and to then retire back into my broodmare band...).

[FOS]

hi winds

If you had a champion filly ..........

Would you keep her for yourself and breed her like you do your other mares? Within your stud fee budget?

Would you sell her as a broodmare prospect?

Would you breed her in a foal share to a high priced stallion just to be able to sell the foal as a yearling?

Important to know (for starters)...

...1/ who's she by/pedigree?

...2/ how's she made/what does she look like physically (conformation, bone, feet etc etc etc)?

...3/ did she excell on turf or dirt?

...4/ what was/were her best distances?

...5/ did she press the pace or come from out of it?

...6/ in what category did she earn Championship honors?

You might agree, winds...so much to know when making such an important decision.

Best.

Respectfully

[Rokeby Forever]

One more question: What is Darley willing to pay?

[spex4me]

Breed her and try to smooze a partnership on the foal out of Darley!! She is a CHAMPIONSHIP mare right, like grade 1 not grade 2 or 3??????

[leveeguy]

Unless you're in dire financial straits - i.e., they're about to foreclose on the farm ...

Keep her! Keep her! Keep her!

If she's a champion, hopefully you won't have blown all her earnings from the Mother Goose and the Acorn and the Beldame and the B.C. on Cristol and crack.

So, you should still be able to afford to breed to a better than usual stallion, although not necessarily Storm Cat.

Instead, why not consider a proven and popular stallion -- say, Malibu Moon for $40,000? Then you should be able to either sell the resulting foal for $200,000 or race it. Well, that's the plan anyway.

If money's really an issue, try selling half of her. (The Jacksons have been doing a little mare shopping these days ...)

But try to hold on to a piece of her. Odds are you'll never have another horse quite as good, and with luck you'll get years of joy and satisfaction from breeding her and watching her foals grow up and race.

[winds]

Very interesting answers. Just something I've been wondering about, kind of like wishful thinking. I told my partner that if we ever had a mare produce a champion we'd have to sell her because we couldn't afford the stallions she would have to go to. Then I thought, why sell her? Why not just keep doing what we had been it worked once, why not again?

Probably wouldn't get as much for it if it wasn't by a fashionable stallion, but then again it would be a full sister or brother to a champion.........

Wouldn't it be nice to be in that prediciment???????????

winds

[bdw0617]

It really comes down to the pedigree. If I had a mare like (and I'm just taking my limited pedigree knoweldge so don't knock me on it) jewel princess, one how I wouldnt' have the first clue how to work with, I'd get what I could at sale for her and call it a day.


If she had a more fasionable pedigree like Hollywood Wildcat, assuming I had faith in her being a good dam and I had confidence in my ability to pick out the right mate for her, I'd keep her.

you'd have her, her daughters who would I would assume be good mares themselves once done racing and once in a while you would get a good colt like war chant

[Rokeby Forever]

If Darley called me and made an offer, I'd say, "Make out the check!"

[erins isle]

Rock, you forgot the ribbon round her tail!

[winds]

In years gone by she would be the farms foundation mare, especially if she could produce a few more really nice horses. In today's mind set, I wouldn't be able to financially support her with the stallion fees she'd be getting with the bigger outfits, but you know, I'd probably keep her breed her the way I had been and at stud fees I could support and sell the foals.

If they want her blood lines then they can buy them through her yearling fillies, but I would keep one to continue the line after she's gone.

Wow, that was easy enough.

winds

[Tesio]

I'd like to have this problem!

[winds]

Me too, this was just a hypothetical.

winds

[ZZTOPPERS]

I swear you've been bugging our kitchen and our truck with this thread!!!! We've batted this very subject about exactly as you have--here's what we came to:

It seems most of the hot young fillies coming off the track or hot producers end up in the same group of hands--the usual suspects with tons of cash--thus giving a few big operations a stranglehold on a part of this industry. As a relatively small farm, we'll keep her and make her our foundation mare. As for stud fees--if she's a champion filly, we've probably made enough to afford most stud fees, and not have to pay retail, but we wouldn't start throwing money around at stud fees just to get to the flavor of the month, we'll mate where it makes the most horse-sense and then financial sense.

But I have another interesting twist to your question---what if you also own the filly's dam?!?!?!?!?!

[Green Hills]

We were lucky enough to be in the situation of having to make a choice for an outstanding and extremely valuable filly. (Voodoo Dancer)

When we retired her we had a lot of discussion about the options and what we decided was that she didn't owe us anything, we owed her...so we kept her and she is not now nor do I anticipate that she will ever be for sale. We took the funds and bred her to the best there is and haven't regretted it for a moment. Next year we will be racing her Unbridled's Song colt and she has given us an outstanding Giant's Causeway colt that is absolutely stunning...so I don't know whether we will keep him or see what he brings and if we don't sell him then keep him or just outright sell him, as there is already interest. Then we took whatever was made along the way and we bred her to Storm Cat...hopefully it will be another beauty and we will be forced into the same delightful dilemna. Bottom line is...we still owe her...

When a similiar situation arose with Cassydora...we bred her and sold her. I guess the sentimentality of the first really top flight horse you have, is something that isn't repeated.