The Inglis Great Southern Sale has been moved to July 4^th – 5^th because of the Covis situation in Victoria. This will give buyers and sellers more time to scan the catalogue. I have selected two weanlings of interest, Lots 82 and 208. In my next post (Part 3) I will address the pedigrees of two broodmares in foal, Lots 463 and 499. Firstly, a word about the two broad strategies of breeding racehorses – breeding to sell or race.

Breeding to sell

If you want to breed a horse to make money the strategy is very simple. Go and buy a G1 SW mare off the track and put her to a top stallion. Remember these mares are not cheap. Nor are service fees for top stallions. You don’t need to know much about horses or breeding-just plenty about money management and return on investment.  When put in a Sale as a yearling, buyers will pay big money for the progeny especially if it looks strong and healthy.  If you have followed my posts, you will understand that this type of mating approach rarely produces a horse that will recover its purchase price in earnings. However, once the purchase has taken place that is no longer the breeder’s concern. From a buyer’s point of view there have been some catastrophic failures.

Eight Carat: Super broodmare of five G1 winners

If the breeder is very lucky, he could purchase a mare who turns out to be a great producer. There aren’t too many of these around

• Helsinge’s (Black Caviar, All Too Hard)
• Eight Carat (Diamond Lover, Kaapstad, Marquise, Mouawad, Octagonal)
• Urban Sea (Melika, Galileo, My Typhoon, Sea the Stars)

Breeding to Race

If, however you want to breed a horse that will win races you need to examine the pedigree of the mare and consider access to a stallion with compatible blood lines.  This should be done before purchase. Good planning will considerably improve your chance of success. Things to look for in the mare are the strength of the pedigree, history of racetrack performance of the mare and her immediate family, and breeding performance if any. Any genetic problems that may be passed to the offspring should also be looked for.

When buying a mare, you should ask yourself why is this mare in foal?  Is it the result of a carefully crafted breeding plan? Or is it an opportunistic event where the seller hopes that a pregnant mare will sell for a higher price more than a barren one. The real cost of the offspring to you will be a minimum of $20,000 before the hammer falls at the auction. Will the sale recover this money?  Purchasing a mare in foal requires considerable investigation. You need to decide if the foal is either going to sell well if you take that option. Or the foal’s pedigree suggests it should be a winner. A PRI score will help you there.

To provide additional information to answer the question is the pregnancy an opportunistic event we can look at the covering sires in the Inglis Great Southern Sale. There are 47 sires and 29 of them have never sired a SW.  Eight have sired less than 10 SW.  It can be said that only 10 stallions are established sires. You can draw your own conclusions.