Stallions Entering Stud Between 1994 And 1997: Where Are They Now?

Intuitively, most breeders know that the odds are stacked against a stallion ever becoming a long term success. If asked, most of us can rattle of a long list of failures that were quickly exported from central Kentucky, usually landing in regional markets or foreign countries.

The irony then occurs when we look at the enormous support first year stallions receive both in the breeding shed and the sales ring. Each year, the list of most heavily bred stallions is littered with first and second year horses despite the knowledge that most of these horses will fail. Case in point, during the 2004 breeding season, no horse bred more mares than first year stallion Hold That Tiger, who covered an astronomical 199 mares. And as most can predict, the resulting foals will be well received during the 2006 yearling sales.

So exactly how self-defeating is the practice of paying inflated fees for unproven commodities? For the commercial breeder, it is anything but self-defeating. Yearling buyers line up in droves to pay outrageous amounts for a first year stallion’s yearlings, and commercial breeders know this.

But from the buyer’s perspective, the willingness to go along with the hype of unproven stallions goes against common sense and the laws of averages. As we already know, most of these horses are ghastly failures, leaving buyers who bought into the hype holding the bag.

To quantify this phenomenon, we looked at stallions entering stud between 1994 and 1997. According to the 1997 Thoroughbred Times Stallion Directory, 107 stallions entered stud in central Kentucky during these 4 breeding seasons, with fees ranging from $1,000 to Thunder Gulch’s $40,000. The 107 includes all advertised stallions with a specified fee. Stallions not advertised in the register or whose fee was listed as ‘private’ were not included. Below is a complete list of stallions used for this analysis: