NEWS
State of the art
Posted: Saturday, July 08, 2000
Preparing a yearling for auction has undergone dramatic changes over the last 50 years
Preparing a yearling for sale, particularly for a sale in July, has always been as much an art as a science. Yearling-prep specialists must develop the knack of bringing an animal that just wants to play and eat to a physical peak, with its coat gleaming, for a two-week period in July heat and dust. At the same time, they must teach the yearling to present its best qualities to buyers, standing with all four feet in a perfect conformation pose in the midst of chaos and even when they are dog-tired.
While there is no doubt that years of experience are required to develop yearling-prep skills, it is also an art that has changed considerably over the last 50 years.
"One thing that we don't do now that we used to is we used to get these yearlings hog fat," says veteran horseman Henry White, owner of Plum Lane Farm near Lexington. "My grandfather was an artist at it. He gave them fresh crushed corn every day, and he gave them milk every day."
White was raised on his father Cy White's Elmsmeade Farm near Lexington and has prepared yearlings for sale for more than 50 years.
"Now you try to make them a show horse. When they walk up in front of the buyers they have to hit their marks."
Another hardboot veteran with more than 40 years of experience, Ted Bates, owner of Bates Farm, agrees. "People nowadays don't take them to the sales mud fat like they used to," Bates said. "Now you want a smooth covering on a horse that looks like he has potential as an athlete.
"The preparation has gone from the endless walking we used to do to treadmills and aquatreads, which I'm not sure is a good thing. Automatic walkers are okay. Walking is the best exercise you can give them."
Changes in feeding
Changes in feeding practices have evolved as feed companies and pharmaceutical firms developed more sophisticated nutritional products. "Nutrition in horses in general has become pretty sophisticated," White said. "I started feeding pellets four or five years after I took over the farm. I like it because the help can't mess it up.
"My father (Cy White) told me years ago that Deerwood Crunch, which was a big pellet he got from Maryland, was the best thing he'd ever fed. There was quite a bit of molasses in them, and horses just loved them. That's what got me started on pellets. He raised all those good Phipps horses in the 1940s and '50s on them."
"I've found that people are feeding more selectively now and using the supplements a great deal," Bates said. "That's partly because of the merchandising by the pharmaceutical companies. They've made you self-conscious that they can help you to keep from making a mistake. Some yearlings need that (supplements), but not right down the line."
Yearling preparation also now includes far more manmade alterations to the natural, physical horse than were possible 50 years ago.
Corrective measures
"We're all doing a lot more correction to horses' feet, and more surgery because it's turned into a beauty contest," said Robert E. Courtney Sr., whose Crestfield Farm has sold horses for four decades.
"What we have to do now to a yearling to get them sold is not good. You have to try to come up with the perfect horse, but you know that the perfect horses don't win all the races. All you have to do is go stand by the winner's circle at Keeneland to see that. But if you're going to sell a horse, you've got to make him as near perfect as you can make him. If you don't, they don't make the summer sale, and buyers won't touch them."
"That's one change that's not for the better. One English trainer told me that the first thing he did when he got them to England was pull the shoes off and let them go back to where nature had them.
"I know some people are doing growth hormones," Courtney added, "because all you have to do is look at some of these weanlings that go through the ring and you can tell it. You don't really need it for a horse that's going to sell in September. That's one of the advantages of selling there."
"Years ago, we never even put plates on yearlings," said Nuckols Farm owner Charlie Nuckols, another hardboot who has been selling yearlings virtually all of his 70-plus years. "We'd round their feet up every few weeks and leave them barefooted. Now, I think it's better with the plates on.
"We don't do the heavy correction or the surgeries here. We try to trim all of our horses flat. I think they're stronger and sounder if you trim them flat than if you do a lot of correction on them."
The Eaton touch
One person credited with many of the positive innovations in yearling sales preparation is retired agent, owner, and breeder Lee Eaton, who came to Kentucky from West Virginia in the 1960s.
"When I started, there was only one person that I thought knew how to prep a yearling for a sale, and that was Arch Graham," Eaton said. "He was an old show-horse trainer who was really fastidious, and his horses always looked good.
"He would take his yearlings to Saratoga, and they would just stand out. So, when I started doing it with my saddle-horse background, even though I couldn't get a good position in the sale or yearlings by good sires, I felt like I could still beat them because they didn't know how to prepare a yearling.
"They were sunburned, their manes would be on the wrong side, bridle paths cut back four or five inches. They'd be thin, or fat, or pot-bellied, and they would be barefoot and their feet out of shape. They just brought them out of the field for a little while and took them to the horse sale. My daddy taught me from selling used cars, you shine them up.
"Earl Teater at Castleton had the best saddle horse grooms money could buy, so I would have them come over and do the final prepping on horses. They'd do things like the whiskers and the ears. They could even take a jaw and refine it with electric clippers or take a candle and singe the hair. They could clean up a fetlock joint and you'd never know they'd been clipped.
"The buyers couldn't figure it out. They just knew they looked good.
"Then we got into some pretty good corrective trimming, which was a learning process, but for 15 years or so it was like stealing candy."
Eaton also deserves much of the credit for hiring specialist showmen (instead of the horse's groom) to present yearlings to buyers at sales.
"I was letting my grooms show them, and some of them were better than others," Eaton said. "By the end of Saratoga, I'd just be exhausted, because you'd get four or five horses out and there'd be one groom just destroying the horse, and you'd run around trying to correct them.
"But Clay Camp was the one who showed me how to do it. He deserves the credit. He'd stand back talking that Virginia talk, and he'd have all these guys in neckties showing his horses to perfection, so I sat down for an hour or two and watched. Bayne Welker and Bobby Powell were working for him, and when it was over, I went to Clay and asked him about his showmen. He said he paid them $100 per day, and I couldn't see how he could afford that. He said he couldn't afford not to.
"I hired Bobby Powell to come to the September sale, and we had 51 horses-a bunch of yearlings from Dash Goff raised in Florida, including a full brother to Nodouble called Break Up the Game. He was the star on paper, which was more important then, but he was real small and turned out pretty bad in front. Bobby found the highest spot on the ring to show him where everybody had to look up at him. No matter where you were, Bobby could get you to come to his high spot where he was showing him. We wouldn't let anybody else but Bobby show him. I think he brought $50,000 or so, which was a big price for him.
"We went to one showman for ten horses, and I think now Reiley (McDonald, who purchased Eaton's sales agency and farm) uses one for four. Once you saw it, you realized that $100 a day was worth it."
Today, of course, every major consignor uses professionals to show their horses.
Positives and negatives
Inevitably, many veteran horsemen do not see all the changes in sales preparation or the sales scene as healthy.
"One thing is that the young people coming into this business have decided that the name of the game is selling, not racing," said White. "There's too much emphasis on selling. People want the quick fix today.
"And we had to start getting them ready earlier because the buyers start hitting the farms earlier. (Humphrey) Finney used to come by early, but nobody else did.
"Now, you have to have these horses ready two weeks before the sale because that's when the buyers hit. It's a whole lot easier to get them there on time than to get them there too early."
"You don't see many owners selecting horses themselves," said Nuckols. "They all have vets and agents. You don't see near the amount of trainers now. You see (Nick) Zito, (Bob) Baffert every now and then, and (D. Wayne) Lukas, but not many. Most all of the selection is by agents.
"They used to pick by farms with a good track record. Now, you don't know who raises them. They're all sold by agents, and God knows where they came from."
Wherever summer yearlings come from, almost all of them look spectacular under the July sunshine. "Today you won't find many people that can't prep a yearling well," said Eaton.
In an intensely competitive market, there is little doubt that an otherwise physically superior yearling transported by time machine from 40 years ago could not compete at a horse sale with today's professionally prepared yearlings.
Get them on a racetrack, on the other hand, and all bets are off.
John P. Sparkman is bloodstock/sales editor of Thoroughbred Times.
