So the breeding season is over. All the foals have arrived safely, the mares are standing guard over their precious charges and the stallions are resting up ready for the next season.
And, for many players, the next breeding seasons starts as soon as they have submitted their pairings to the Steward. Whilst for others, the breeding season comes around way to too quickly and results in hours spent pouring over the Breeding Lists, and asking the same questions as last season “which stallion do I use”!!!
For the smaller stables, its not too much hassle to find the right stallion for their mare, especially if they only have the one! At the other end of the spectrum are those stables who have what could be considered a “breeding empire” and have to find upwards of 10 different stallions.
So – where do you start looking for your next stallion? The breeding lists, the forum, your own stable? All are good places to look and the clever stallion owners will be advertising from mid racing season and this initiative has paid off for some stables, for example Golden Acres who stand the very consistent stallion Missy’s Bridle for a reasonable fee of $30,000 and has managed to have a full book in each of his seasons at stud. This season is the first year for his runners and it will be interesting to see how well they do. The other extreme is War Machine from Otsego Farms who only has 5 mares per season but at the slightly higher price of $300,000 and his book is usually full two seasons ahead! But don’t panic – there are horses that are free, medium priced or some players will even offer deals, discounts or other incentives.
Some stables are happy to just pick names they recognize whilst others spend a lot of time carrying out indepth research – both systems work well. Others will post on the forum asking for help in finding a suitable mate for their mare.
Whilst all the players will agree that the breeding list is a good start, it is a little short on information. This is no discredit to Laurie, our Racing Steward as the list is very big but as the game progresses and evolves, perhaps it is time that a new Stud Book is produced. I have heard from sources I am at present not at liberty to divulge that some serious thought and work has been put into this project and that in the not too distant future, a new Stud Book will be available to all players to access and download.
I have had a sneak preview and so far it looks very informative. The creators have taken the original Stallion list as published in previous years and expanded it to a size that would do the Thoroughbred Times proud! It consists of a general stud page, listing All the horses, then page by page sorts the stallions down by player owed, dirt or turf preferences, then finally onto the biggies – distances and that includes all four major distances of sprinter, miler, classic and endurance.
Has this whetted your appetite? Are you excited yet? Have you already contributed and want to see what it looks like? Well according to my sources, it should be ready soon and most defiantly before next breeding season. This is the hard part, the ground work if you like. Nothing like this has been undertaken before and whilst time consuming to start with, once up and running will take very little maintenance.
So next season will be the easiest and most efficient breeding season yet – no more worrying about what stallion is a dirt miler, or which turf endurance stallion is cheapest – all this information will be there at a touch of a button (and some basic knowledge of excel!).
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