horsenuts wrote:Storm Cat seems to have held up pretty well despite the 80-90 plus mares he has received. So the verdict is still out but it appears when the mega-crops and dual season breeding commences the quality really suffers/drops off.... WAY OFF.
Storm Cat doesn't shuttle, and with top-class broodmare management (which you better bet Overbrook puts out the moola for), most of his mares probably conceive on one cover, meaning that the horse can cover more mares for the same amount of work than if he were covering under conditions in which most mares required two or three covers to catch. When Storm Cat covers his 110-120 mares per season, that's it; no trips to Australia or South America for him to add to his workload. Probably one reason he's still going strong at age 22.
I met one stallion manager last year who felt that the big thing is the number of covers a horse has to make rather than the number of mares; if the horse can keep it under about 120-150 for the season (depending on the horse) he'll usually come out of it in pretty good shape, but start exceeding that and you risk problems with sperm quality and/or the horse's libido.