Bloodstock News

Working for me - on Lot 100 (160k and still going).

Edit: just the video is working, the catalogue site is down for me also.
 
same thing happened with me last year was looking to buy a mare in foal and Hugo Merry was buying them all funny though
 
Jim and Fitri Hay could do with either some new buyers or trainers. I think the results they get for the money they invest are pretty poor.
 
BLOODSTOCK SALES GOFFS ORBY SALE: WITH SO many millions being spent on so many dreams at Goffs, it might seem like lowering the tone to throw a laxative into the mix. But Ireland’s most valuable yearling sale is currently the most visible expression of a bloodstock industry taking a grip and letting go.
What that industry is primarily letting go of is numbers. Not the six-figure financial sums that were routinely being flung around for yesterday’s sales-toppers but instead the raw materials for both racing and breeding.
“The foal crop in this country is going to fall from 12,000 to seven and a half thousand over the next few years. It has to,” Dermot Cantillon, a prominent vendor under the Tinnakill House banner, said yesterday.
“Mares are just not going to be bred because the supply is currently well ahead of demand. It is market forces, plain and simple,” he added.
Such a drop in fundamental supply would have been unthinkable at the height of the Celtic Tiger years. Then there seemed to be no limits to the numbers of horses being bred, bought and bundled up into ostentatious symbols of Tiger affluence. But as everyone keeps saying at the Kill Sales ring, we are in very different circumstances now. The system is being well and truly cleansed.
“There will be casualties but I think the core Irish breeder will be alright. There were a lot of what I could call hobby breeders that came into the game when things were good but a lot of them are gone already. Things need to get back in balance,” Cantillon remarked.
That balance always pivots on the fundamental ingredient which is the horses – and their cost – and there was a steady, if slightly unspectacular flow to the sales yesterday that fitted in perfectly with the “steady-as-she-goes” philosophy being adopted all round.
Certainly the scene in the pre-parade ring before the yearlings enter the ring would be instantly recognisable to any horseman from any previous generation with trainers poring intently over the cream of the 2009 yearling crop.
That included yesterday’s Lot 282, a colt by Pivotal supplied by the Moyglare Stud from one of its most famous families which looks like ending up among Sheikh Mohammed’s vast empire after Joe Osborne had the last bid at €320,000.
“He is a very good colt and we have been lucky with Moyglare before. We’re very fond of the sire who gets lots of good winners over a variety of distances. He has been bought on behalf of John Ferguson,” Osborne said.
Ferguson is the chief buyer for Sheikh Mohammed and his name also ended up next to a Dalakhani filly that fetched €220,000.
Denis Brosnan’s Croom House Stud sold a Galileo filly to the BBA agent Adrian Nicoll for €310,000 and Nicoll commented: “I thought she was reasonable value. She’s out of a very good racemare by a top-class stallion. I bought her on behalf of a syndicate being put together by Ben Sangster and she will go into training with David Wachman.”
The 2009 Orby Sale finishes today with another 240 lots on offer although there is general agreement the cream of the crop have already been seen. Yesterday’s average prices hovered around the €60,000 which everyone agreed was perfectly acceptable “in the circumstances”. And now the entire yearling sale circus folds up and goes to test the circumstances in Newmarket next week for the Tattersalls Sale.
Click to expand...
 
“There will be casualties but I think the core Irish breeder will be alright. There were a lot of what I could call hobby breeders that came into the game when things were good but a lot of them are gone already. Things need to get back in balance,” Cantillon remarked
Click to expand...

Because they're going out of business doesn't make them 'hobby breeders' it makes them small breeders who are broke.If they are 'hobby breeders' than he is a battery breeder.
 
Condescending git (Cantillon - not you Sheikh! :lol:). I'm no more a 'hobby breeder' with three mares now than I was fifteen years ago - they have to pay their way and are just one part of my (hopefully) income stream, in the same way the pedigree cattle are. Just because I don't have 20 plus five/six figure plus broodmares doesn't make me either less or more knowledgeable. Or successful, come to that! I didn't notice any of the stallion stations less inclinded to take my money rather than any other breeder over the past fiteen plus years!

In fact, smaller breeder are far more likey able to ride out this recession than most, as they will have other sources of income!
 
In fairness, he does say 'came into the game when things were good' - meaning opportunists, rather than people with decades of stud knowledge, Songy. Of course, there were lots of small-time owners with one or two mares who decided to breed from them, rather than let them go into other work, hoping to grab a couple of good hits. I guess they're letting those mares now go or shooting them. Be interesting, in a horrible way, to know what the euthanasia rate's been for last year's unsold foals and what will be this year's unsold yearlings. Seriously - wtf are breeders going to do with unsaleable yearlings? They aren't going to want to keep them 'til two, that's for sure.

This month's Owner & Breeder shows a pretty serious downturn globally, the US market severely depressed. I'm just glad we got a home for our ICEMAN filly, let alone try and show a profit! I think that's going to be the case for many - just trying to find anyone to take a number off their hands, since agents can now virtually name their price. Horses once likely to have fetched around £100K now going for a third of that won't be uncommon. Horses which might've fetched around the mid to low-end can probably be given away with a box of chocolates.

The stats so far:

Doncaster Festival: aggregate -32.8%, clearance rate 69.8%, average £8,198 or -29.9%, median £6,000 or -40%.
Doncaster St Leger: aggregate -28.8%, clearance 79.4%, average -22.6%, median -30%
Ocala Breeders Society August: aggregate -36.6%, clearance rate 66.6%, average $11,463 or -29.1%, median $5,000 or -28.6%.
Baden-Baden: aggregate -14%, clearance rate 85.7% (pretty darn good), average Euros 23,245 or -23.7%, median Euros 22,527
or -21.6%.
Arqana Deauville: aggregate only -1.5%, 74.7% clearance rate, average +3.4%, median +7% (the only market going up, with a very international clientele. Away from the Coolmore and Maktoum teams, Agence FIPS was the leading buyer with 20 lots for Euros 2,798,000).

Thus, figures down all round bar Deauville, with only one lot at Doncaster making more than £30,000 this year, compared to four in 2008 and 13 at the inaugural event in 2007. It's been a question of trying to take home empty headcollars rather than put up reserves which would never be reached.
 
Last edited:
It's obvious that there are too many people breeding and some of them either have the wrong kind of mares, or sires, or are indeed hobby breeders who came into it in the same way that they may have had antiques, art, and a nice sportscar. It was just something for their portfolio.

It's happened before and will happen again.

But I'd hate to see the small breeders all give up. I know they will not, and it's a good thing as some of them love the game more than some of the big players who are just doing it for money.

Many of the horses who have given me great pleasure over the years were bred by small breeders. The one who immediately springs to mind is See More Business. And then there is always Fareer! :)
 
Imagine there will be plenty of the commercial, big books sires coming off the big studs rosters in the next couple of years if the cut in foal numbers is correct.
 
With many, many mares remaining empty this year and probably next, it'll be interesting to see what knock-on effect this has on the quality and quantity of horses for 2013. At a time when Flat racing in the UK is, according to John Gosden in this month's O&B mag, in 'terminal decline', we may not have to worry too much about 'Racing For Change' ever getting implemented, as the changes will be forced through by dwindling numbers anyway. The idea mooted of Premiership-styled tiered racing may well be the way to go in order to cater for fewer runners, especially when there will be many retirements, one suspects, from the sires you mention, Gal.

What I'm concerned about is that the really rubbish sires, with fees under £2,000, might not be retired and will be kept creaking on, producing duff animals, because they'll be the ones that small breeders will gravitate to for their poor mares. I've always advocated a shake-out of sires whose stats show they're not contributing to winning progeny, but as all ownership is very subjective, it is no good relying on their owners to let them go. They have to be disincentivised (! sorry!) to keep them on active duty, as do the lousy mare owners. Perhaps sales houses could be less greedy in accepting anything that's entered, and play a part in reducing rubbish through the ring.
 
Sir Harry Lewis was advertised for £1500 this year [before he died], Nomadic Way £700, Mind Games £1500, Tamure £1500, as well as plenty of others standing at less than £2000. They're hardly 'really rubbish sires' churning out 'duff animals', are they?!
 
they are if you want to breed and sell commercially, but no problem with any if you can afford to race the offspring.
 
I'm not quite sure I understand your post, crazyhorse - was that directed at my post? Are the stallions I named (along with others) really rubbish and churning out duff animals? I'm not arguing the point as to whether or not there is money to be made out of selling them; that's a different topic altogether. I'm saying that I fail to see why stallions who stand for under £2000 should be automatically pigeonholed as 'really rubbish' and insist they only churn out 'duff animals' and as such, they shouldn't be allowed to stand.
 
Back
Top