NEWS

Weekly Feature

Industry News

Most Popular Stories

Most E-mailed Stories

Building a better broodmare band

Posted: Saturday, November 04, 2000

Commercial and private broodmare bands follow slightly different routes to success

Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, the late Joe Estes, then editor of The Blood-Horse magazine and later of The Thoroughbred Record, published a long series of articles extolling the superiority of racing class over pedigree as a predictor of the future success of prospective broodmares.

Using statistical methods that were then revolutionary in the Thoroughbred industry, Estes proved unequivocally that, on average, the best racemares made the best broodmares.

While that statement hardly seems a revolutionary concept these days, Estes was both correct and ahead of his time. Although high-class racemares have always been perceived as good prospects, the many successes of breeders August Belmont II and his protege, William Woodward, had led to an increasing belief in the importance of pedigree regardless of racing class.

Anecdotally, of course, it is always easy to come up with many examples of top racemares who fail to reproduce themselves at stud. But the relative importance of pedigree, race record, conformation, and other factors is critical when it comes time to build a broodmare band. A prospective breeder starting out to develop a broodmare band must decide which factors are most important to meet his or her goals in the industry.

Perhaps the first and most important decision is whether the breeding operation will be expected to produce commercial weanlings or yearlings, racehorses for a private home-breeding operation, or a mixture of the two.

Historically, breeders of all persuasions have come up with differing formulas to try to attain the same ultimate goals.

Hunt buys stakes winners

Estes found an apt pupil in the 1960s when Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt entered the breeding industry with the aim of breeding his own racehorses. With Estes as an adviser, Hunt started building his broodmare band by buying stakes-winning racemares, almost regardless of pedigree and regardless of where they had achieved racing success.

"Joe Estes was the first one that I know of that applied mathematics and mathematical figures on horse probabilities," Hunt said. "And he was very helpful to me. I used a lot of his ideas early on. He was a wonderful fellow and a real visionary."

Over the next 25 years or so, Hunt achieved spectacular success with the offspring of those top racemares. Virtually all of Hunt's top horses among the more than 100 stakes winners he bred were out of stakes-winning racemares, including French Horse of the Year Youth, Epsom Derby (Eng-G1) winner Empery, and multiple European and American champion Dahlia. He was voted an Eclipse Award as outstanding breeder three times. Hunt's Bluegrass Farm broodmare band was so successful at breeding racehorses that his 1988 dispersal set a record for total dispersal proceeds that still stands.

Even for private breeding operations, however, racing class cannot be the sole criterion. Bill O'Neill, now owner of Circle O Farm near Winchester, Kentucky, helped develop the late Millard Waldheim's Bwamazon Farm as a private breeding operation in the 1950s.

"Firstly, conformation was the thing," O'Neill said. "We always wanted to have a mare that looked like something. We went mostly on race record and conformation rather than pedigree because we were interested in racing horses.

"But when we started out in the early '50s, we paid top dollar. We paid $55,000, I think, for Judy Rae and maybe $50,000 for Your Hostess, two of our foundation mares. We were breeding to race, so we emphasized race record and conformation."

Two main strategies

There are at least two routes to buying mares with good race records, of course. The most obvious is to buy stakes-winning fillies out of training or young in-foal mares with good race records. Alternatively, one can buy yearling fillies and try to prove their ability on the racetrack.

Ted Carr, now manager of Gerald Ford's Diamond A Farm near Versailles, Kentucky, helped the late Allen Paulson build the broodmare band of his Brookside Farm, which occupied the site of the current Diamond A, by purchasing well-bred, well-made yearling fillies in the 1980s.

"We bought yearling fillies," Carr said, "so you try to buy a lot of pedigree and pretty good conformation. Then you've got to hope some of them run. And of course some of them that couldn't run produced some of our best racehorses."

"He (Paulson) was sure that the only way we were going to have a future was to have numbers. It's a numbers game. A lot of it's luck, and it takes a lot of money. It's scary trying to buy right now because it's so high. Of course, Mr. Paulson jumped in right at the height of the 1980s, and if you sicced him on one, he'd make the Arabs pay for it if he didn't buy it."

It is, indeed, a numbers game. One of Estes's most famous illustrations showed that about six times as many broodmares of average racing ability were required to produce the same number of high-class runners annually as would be produced on average by a smaller number of top racemares.

Commercial pedigrees

Even today, however, a breeder aiming to produce horses for the commercial yearling or weanling market must pay much more attention to pedigree than would someone who is breeding strictly to race.

Robert Courtney Sr. of Crestfield Farm has carried on a highly successful commercial breeding operation for more than 50 years and has advised both commercial and private breeders over that period.

"I look at pedigrees," Courtney said, "but if I'm buying to produce sales horses, I look to see if there's some champions or genuine quality black type in the immediate family. Then I look at the individual and go from there. You have to weight a little higher on pedigree than conformation and race record if you're going to sell. But there are certain things I won't accept in a mare.

"I look for a mare with a good, straight hind leg, and I'll accept a few more faults up front, but I still don't want to buy a mare that's real back in her knees. You have to worry about what the mare has (her foals), not what she is."

As often happens, though, Courtney bought his best mare almost in spite of himself.

"I went out at one November sale and found a mare I wanted to buy very, very badly, and the owner said there was a reserve of $15,000. I couldn't give that kind of money. The next January there was a half sister to the mare, in foal to a better sire, and I bought the mare for $11,000, even though I didn't especially like her. She wasn't really my type of mare. That was Hasty Queen II, and I sold a million dollars worth of yearlings out of her."

Hasty Queen II produced six stakes winners for Courtney and partners, topped by handicap triple crown winner Fit to Fight.

Emphasis on pedigree

Lee Eaton developed a highly successful commercial operation with his Red Bull Stable partners by placing the emphasis on pedigree.

"I couldn't afford to buy race record," Eaton said, "so what I always bought was female family, without much regard to sire or conformation. If you looked at Comely Nell (dam of Eaton-bred Kentucky Derby [G1] winner Bold Forbes), she was by Commodore M and hardly looked like a Thoroughbred horse. If the mare had a strong female family and had a fashionable sire, we couldn't buy them.

"If I had to do it over again and didn't have unlimited money, I'd go to strong female families and not even look at them."

Rob Whiteley, general manager of Carl Icahn's Foxfield, a highly successful commercial operation, uses a somewhat different approach.

"I want it all (conformation, pedigree, and race record)," Whiteley said. "My goal is to produce the best physical individual and athlete I can while still appealing to the commercial marketplace. Therefore, I start with conformation. I can easily forgive minor faults if I love the way the frame is put together and the way the horse moves and can see quality in the demeanor and presence of the horse.

"But since I want it all, I have to be satisfied also with the quality of the pedigree, which is a representation of the racing success of the family members. I also consider record important and will dig into the actual charts and look at the quality of the horses she raced against. Any evidence in the past performances of a tendency toward a competitive nature is a plus. If the race record is not there, I would value a filly being a full sister to a major winner."

Whiteley tries to remain alert to opportunities even in the currently difficult marketplace: "One of the favorable features of the market for a commercial breeder is the inefficiency of the mechanism. I find myself often to be a contrarian, because I believe a stallion who is an important stallion with a lot of quality individuals already, it's just a matter of time until they gain increased appeal again."

Culling from the bottom

One of the most crucial aspects of developing a broodmare band is knowing how and when to cull.

"Waldheim didn't ever want to have over 15 mares," Bill O'Neill said, "so when we brought a good race filly home like Bundler (a Raise a Native filly who won the Frizette Stakes [G1] and earned $$224,085), the low one on the totem pole went out of there. A good example is Book of Verse (a foundation mare for Christiana Stable), who was parrot mouthed and not much of a racemare."

Obviously, even the most astute farm manager cannot always foresee when a modest racemare may suddenly blossom into a Broodmare of the Year, but it is impossible to keep everything unless the owner is willing to feed an unlimited number of broodmares and foals.

"When I have a mare that's given me a succession of foals that in my perception lack quality, I'll sell her," said Whiteley. "This business is all about athletes and quality. If I have a mare that hasn't produced athletic horses, I'd just as soon send her down the road.

"On the other hand, I love to buy other people's culls when I see a lot of quality in the mare and have an idea about how to breed that particular mare differently from the pattern she's been on. Most people give up on mares by the time they're middle-aged. Sometimes I see that as a special opportunity. I purchased Blush with Pride and Rokeby Rose and Companionship when their previous owners had given up on them, and bred them differently and they produced Better than Honour, Silverbulletday, and Crafty Friend."

"I think the most expensive mare we ever bought was a Phipps mare," Eaton said, "and she never had a decent foal in her life. She had a beautiful pedigree and was a beautiful mare, but we looked at a couple of foals and didn't like them at all and sold her on."

Perhaps the best strategy for most breeders would be to try to buy an eclectic group of mares with a core group of good racemares and a solid mixture of mares not quite so successful on the racetrack but with more fashionable pedigrees, while maintaining the highest standard of conformation you can afford.

During the author's 13 years as general manager of William duPont III's Pillar Stud, we followed essentially that plan while breeding more than 45 stakes winners, culminating with 1994 Kentucky Derby (G1) winner Go for Gin. There are many roads to the same goal. The key is finding the route that works for you.

Priced out of the market, some pinhookers are looking at breeding more of their own horses

Pinhookers, by the nature of their high-risk game, must be pretty quick on their feet to adjust to the ebb and flow of markets in the bang-bang world of the sales arena.

With the soaring markets for weanlings and yearlings sharply raising the prices of virtually all the horses they most wanted to buy over the last few years, pinhookers in general have found themselves painted into a very uncomfortable corner of the marketplace.

Pinhookers must have inventory to sell, but if they pay too much-especially for the wrong horse-the retail market will make them pay dearly.

Pinhookers endured exactly that scenario at juvenile and yearling sales in 2000. Both weanling-to-yearling and yearling-to-juvenile pinhookers as a group suffered seven-figure losses in the public arena on horses they bought for resale in 1999.

With yearling prices soaring again in 2000 and weanling prices expected to do the same, some pinhookers have moved to supply more of their own future inventory by expanding or initiating breeding ventures.

While perennial leading juvenile consignor Jerry Bailey has long been involved in breeding with principal partner Ken Ellenberg, one of his prime competitors, Becky Thomas (Montgomery) of Sequel Bloodstock, has moved aggressively and visibly into the breeding arena over the last two years.

Thomas and partners Lewis and Brenda Lakin established Lakland Farm near Lexington in 1998 as a breeding farm, and this year they have purchased farms in New York and Florida.

More than one basket

"That is why we bought Lakland North in New York," Thomas said. "We want to spread our eggs in more than one basket. It was bought to take advantage of the New York programs. The program will help us with the equity position. Our general overall plan is to start with one stallion there this year, Precise End. "It will be a pinhook stallion program similar to what Mockingbird (Farm) did with End Sweep (sire of Precise End)."

"In the overall picture for me, as a yearling-to-juvenile pinhooker, you may pay $250,000 for a beautiful yearling, and you get him to the two-year-old sale, and there's something wrong, and he's worth zero. With the mare operation, you have another opportunity. You don't live and die with the one horse.

"You don't know the right horse in this market because you don't know who's going to be sound and who's going to be fast. If you buy the wrong horse, it's worth nothing, and you're faced with going to the track with a horse that you know can't run. It's more spreading the risk."

Master of spreading the risk among pinhookers over the last decade or so has been Mark Casse, Mockingbird's general manager. He acquired End Sweep as a three-year-old for Harry T. Mangurian from Christiana Stables and selected most of the mares that helped make the son of Forty Niner a record-setting freshman sire in 1998.

"Obviously, the breeding part can be a lot more dangerous," Casse said. "As pinhookers, we're used to being able to go out and buy the horse we want, within monetary limits. The problem with breeding is you have to take what you get.

"I see a lot of new faces going into breeding operations, seeing it as another alternative. I'm not sure how long they'll last in the breeding business. They tend to look at the bright spots, but it's not that easy. It takes a lot of horses.

"The way we did it with Mockingbird is different. We bred large numbers and took advantage of the percentages. When you're playing with those numbers, it evens out the risk. Someone breeding five or ten mares, luck is going to play a much bigger part."

With prices so high, however, more and more pinhookers are certain to take that risk.

"Everyone's in the same dilemma," Thomas said. "I still want to go to the sales with the same number of horses, but I don't want to have $300,000 in all of them."

"No matter what part of this business you're in," Casse said, "never make the mistake of thinking it's easy. They all have their difficulties."

-John P. Sparkman