My Caro mare is in-foal to Diesis on a May 7th cover-- Due date is April 14 I believe and i'm very set in sending her to Saarland albeit she was headed to him next year. I would love to capitalize on being in his first crop for a sales foal though so should I try sending to him during her foal heat and hope for the best?
The only reservation I have is that my Caro mare is a big, roomy mare and Saarland is a big guy himself who looks like his get will need time to develop just like most Unbridled's. Do I risk a sales foal late in the season or just wait?
What would you do??? Need some advice.
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What kind of history do you have with your Caro mare? Has she been bred on a foal heat before and conceived? Have you ever tried short-cycling her? Does she conceive easily if you simply wait for her to come back in heat?
In my opinion an April 14th foaling date isn't particularly late. If your mare foals on time and is simply allowed to come back into heat and bred--assuming she takes on the first try--her due date for 2006 will be approx. April 21st. I see plenty of sales foals with birthdays later than that, even ones that come from late developing lines.
Last year I sold a colt born on 4/11 out of book one of the Keeneland Sept. sale; his birth date wasn't an issue at all. And for what it's worth, I have a mare due on May 1st this year who's booked to go to Vindication. I really don't see any reason why you should try to breed on a foal heat or take a year off this year, unless you want to.
In my opinion an April 14th foaling date isn't particularly late. If your mare foals on time and is simply allowed to come back into heat and bred--assuming she takes on the first try--her due date for 2006 will be approx. April 21st. I see plenty of sales foals with birthdays later than that, even ones that come from late developing lines.
Last year I sold a colt born on 4/11 out of book one of the Keeneland Sept. sale; his birth date wasn't an issue at all. And for what it's worth, I have a mare due on May 1st this year who's booked to go to Vindication. I really don't see any reason why you should try to breed on a foal heat or take a year off this year, unless you want to.
She's such a big mare and so stoutly made that coupled with Saarland, I just imagine a very slow developing foal. She's a new acquisition to me but i've seen her Belong to Me 3yo filly and she's huge and looks like a 12f horse even with the Belong to Me brilliance on top. And this subject just became moot since Saarland's book has been declared full. Any other suggestions?
bcassidy wrote:try her with a son of unbridled, don't worry about the size, you will probably get a late maturing horse, so I wouldn't worry too much about the month the foal is born. Look at the pedigree of Unbridled's Song.
I also had Unbridled's Song in mind when I came up with the Saarland breeding with the Unbridled over Caro not to mention the real nice inbreeding RF style to both Busanda and Exclusive.
Your Caro mare
We have a good friend who uses a simple concept for matching potential mates: size. He's been extremely successful. So even though your Caro mare is big, as are Saarland and Unbridled's Song, as long as the dam and sire are within about "two sizes" (hands?) of each other, it's like the Garanimals system of mating. 
The Unbridled/Caro nick is much desired. Have you thought about Broken Vow at all? Also, our mare, by Cozzene, nicks well with sons of Danzig and Deputy Minister.
Good luck with her. I LOVE Caro mares for their "starch."
The Unbridled/Caro nick is much desired. Have you thought about Broken Vow at all? Also, our mare, by Cozzene, nicks well with sons of Danzig and Deputy Minister.
Good luck with her. I LOVE Caro mares for their "starch."
May I suggest Perfect Soul? He is a first year sire standing at Darby Dan Farm for $15,000. He matches up extremely well on paper with your mare. Perfect Soul is by Sadler's Wells - the world's leading sire of sires, out of a mare by Secretariat. He's a G1 winning champion millionaire and holds the one mile track record at Keeneland. He is a very beautiful, balanced horse who stands 16.1. I would expect that he should do very well at the sales too.
You could also consider a stallion with Buckpasser blood close up for your mare...wouldn't necessarily be commercial unless the foal was a first-class individual, but alas that Silver Charm is off to Japan. With Approval was Caro over Buckpasser, and with your mare tracng to Busanda besides, seems like the reverse cross or a reasonable facsimile thereof might be worth trying.
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher...You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse." C. S. Lewis
As I mentioned on another incarnation of this thread; the Unbridled / Caro nick is a continuation of the strong In Reality / Caro nick. Partly for this reason I recommended a stallion named Halo's Image.
Another advantage of Halo's Image is that his sire Halo has combined with Caro in 7 GIWS out of about 490 in the database. This comes to a 1.42% of GI Winners; which is much better than the breed average of 0.2%.
-llbean
Another advantage of Halo's Image is that his sire Halo has combined with Caro in 7 GIWS out of about 490 in the database. This comes to a 1.42% of GI Winners; which is much better than the breed average of 0.2%.
-llbean
hi llbean
The cross you recommend may be nice...and granted Halo's Image sired a good one (in Southern Image)...but it appears he's accomplished little else of note (at least so far)...although it seems he's had plenty of opportunity.
Can HI's $10k stud fee be justified (at least based on what he's done thus far)? Isn't it fair to say that HI might best be described as an underachiever?
Respectfully
The cross you recommend may be nice...and granted Halo's Image sired a good one (in Southern Image)...but it appears he's accomplished little else of note (at least so far)...although it seems he's had plenty of opportunity.
Can HI's $10k stud fee be justified (at least based on what he's done thus far)? Isn't it fair to say that HI might best be described as an underachiever?
Respectfully
Hi FOS,
Good question.
I can't remember what it was when he first retired; but Halo's Image's stud fee in '02 was $5,000.
The Bloodhorse stallion registry gives him a CI of 1.38 and I never thought of him as a stallion that got very many good mares; granted he's gotten a fair number of them, but the foals of the somewhat better mares he probably started getting because of Southern Image haven't had enough time to race.
If someone saw Southern Image win the 2003 GI Malibu in December, the Sunshine Millions in January, and (perhaps) the 2004 Santa Anita in March and decided to breed to his sire on account of it; the result of this union would have just turned One Year of age on Jan. 01, 2005.
For this reason it's interesting that in spite of this Equineline (which is counting the foals of 2003 as of racing age even though most of them haven't had time to race) shows Halo's Image's CI as 1.47; which is more than the 1.38 given by the Bloodhorse stallion register.
For one crop to jack up the CI like that indicates at least some people were impressed by Halo's Image's get before Sourthern Image starting winning GIs.
There's no telling whether or not he'll get another big one or not or if his get will get that extra something to start winning stakes at a better rate; but being by Halo (a very good sire) and out of a Valid Appeal (very good sire) mare I doubt better mares will hurt him.
Besides Southern Image, he got a nice (albeit unsound as a 3YO) 2YO named Sir Oscar (who made some good money running in restricted races). Beyond that I agree there's nothing of particular importance (especially in the way of Stakes Winners). But even if you minus Southern Image and Sir Oscar's earnings out of the pot, you still have $4.8 Million in earnings left over from 204 foals of actual racing age (so they must be earning some money even if they aren't winning many stakes so far).
Even though $10,000 is rather steep (especially for Florida); they do seem to sell pretty well and with a CI of 1.38 for the vast majority of his foals to race some improvent can be expected (though it is by no means a sure thing).
And as of now, he seems to be doing pretty good to me with the exception of the percentage of Stakes Winners.
-llbean
Good question.
I can't remember what it was when he first retired; but Halo's Image's stud fee in '02 was $5,000.
The Bloodhorse stallion registry gives him a CI of 1.38 and I never thought of him as a stallion that got very many good mares; granted he's gotten a fair number of them, but the foals of the somewhat better mares he probably started getting because of Southern Image haven't had enough time to race.
If someone saw Southern Image win the 2003 GI Malibu in December, the Sunshine Millions in January, and (perhaps) the 2004 Santa Anita in March and decided to breed to his sire on account of it; the result of this union would have just turned One Year of age on Jan. 01, 2005.
For this reason it's interesting that in spite of this Equineline (which is counting the foals of 2003 as of racing age even though most of them haven't had time to race) shows Halo's Image's CI as 1.47; which is more than the 1.38 given by the Bloodhorse stallion register.
For one crop to jack up the CI like that indicates at least some people were impressed by Halo's Image's get before Sourthern Image starting winning GIs.
There's no telling whether or not he'll get another big one or not or if his get will get that extra something to start winning stakes at a better rate; but being by Halo (a very good sire) and out of a Valid Appeal (very good sire) mare I doubt better mares will hurt him.
Besides Southern Image, he got a nice (albeit unsound as a 3YO) 2YO named Sir Oscar (who made some good money running in restricted races). Beyond that I agree there's nothing of particular importance (especially in the way of Stakes Winners). But even if you minus Southern Image and Sir Oscar's earnings out of the pot, you still have $4.8 Million in earnings left over from 204 foals of actual racing age (so they must be earning some money even if they aren't winning many stakes so far).
Even though $10,000 is rather steep (especially for Florida); they do seem to sell pretty well and with a CI of 1.38 for the vast majority of his foals to race some improvent can be expected (though it is by no means a sure thing).
And as of now, he seems to be doing pretty good to me with the exception of the percentage of Stakes Winners.
-llbean
Both Southern Image and Sir Oscar return Northern Dancer on the dam's side of their pedigrees, so this may be important to Halo's Image. (It would make sense; the famous Almahmoud play at work again.) With all the Storm Cat sons flooding down here, this is likely to change, but I don't think there was quite as much ND floating around down here as Mr. Prospector and In Reality for quite a while, so Halo's Image may simply not have seen all that many mares carrying ND reasonably close up.
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher...You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse." C. S. Lewis