Bloodstock Pitfalls:

The Stallion Manager

      When I first started in this business several years ago, I was what one might call overly naive and trusting.  As I narrowed down my lists of prospective stallions for the upcoming breeding seasons, I would often make a phone call to the stallion manager to inquire about the specifics of the stallion, usually about conformation strengths and weaknesses.  Assuming that they would prefer breeding mares that were more compatible and less likely to bring out the stallion's weaknesses, I seldom doubted the truthfulness of what I was being told.

     Through a couple of breeding mishaps and resulting money pits, I quickly learned that stallion managers have an agenda, and that agenda often gets in the way of them offering up correct information.  I concluded that if I wanted to avoid doubling up on a conformation problem, it was my responsibility to do my homework.  Relying on the word of a stallion manager was no longer an option.

     But just out of curiosity, we thought it would be interesting to quantify things a bit and see how badly newcomers are being treated.

     A few weeks ago, we sent emails to six different central Kentucky farms inquiring about 2005 seasons for nine different stallions.  In compiling our Stallion Conformation Profiles, we had inspected all nine stallions, which were chosen for this story because they had at least one glaring conformation fault that would be hard to dispute, such as a club foot, grossly offset knees, pigeon-toed, etc.  We also inquired about the fertility of two horses after being told by a stallion groom of their sub-fertility.

     As expected, stallion managers were anything but willing to divulge these problems.  Of the six farms contacted, five withheld information or outright lied to us.  The only farm that was honest with us had little choice, as the stallion was being considered for pensioned status due to severe infertility.  Realizing that a press release could sent out by the farm any day, there wasn't much upside to covering up the stallion's problems.

     One farm in particular, Crestwood Farm, gave us a very troubling response.  We had inquired about two of their stallions, one who had the worst knees we had ever seen, and the other had a very upright, clubbed foot.  Of the nine stallions that we inquired on, these two stallions had perhaps the most glaring faults. 

     At first, the farm representative wanted us to call him before he would discuss the two stallions.  When we pushed a little and asked him to simply jot down a few strengths and weaknesses for each of the stallions, this is what we got:

     "Our stallions don't have any weaknesses, and both (Stallion A) and (Stallion B) are good sized, and have plenty of bone. They are both excellent in every way. Both have beautiful toplines - They wouldn’t be here unless they were exceptional, as we breed our own mares to them. We don't stand a stallion we don't believe in - That’s it!" 

     We can't say for absolute certainty, but the "our stallions don't have any weaknesses" seems to imply that none of the nine Crestwood stallions have a weakness, which any reasonable horseman knows is extremely unlikely.  And to say that the two stallions in question are "both excellent in every way" is a clear indicator that this representative either doesn't familiarize himself with the stallion's conformation, or he lacks integrity.  Perhaps he acted out of frustration, as evidenced by his exclamation at the end, but frustration should never be an excuse for dishonesty.

     Looking to find out if we could persuade a more honest response, we replied with the following:

     "So you're saying that between (Stallion A) and (Stallion B), there are absolutely no weaknesses?  I find that very hard to believe.  I was told that (Stallion A) is terribly off-set in the knees and (Stallion B) is upright/clubby in one or both front feet."

     No such luck.  The representative replied:

     "Thank you for your interest in our stallions. To further discuss your mating plans, please contact me at 859-252-****. Good luck with all of your breeding and racing endeavors."

     Apparently, integrity can be substituted with pleasantries. 

     So the next time you pick up that phone to call a stallion manager about a stallion, keep in mind that their agenda might not coincide with yours.  In the same way that we keep our guard up when we walk onto a used car lot, a similar approach may be helpful when dealing with stallion managers.