b4breeding

It’s Alabar NZ stallion parade this Sunday 15 September at 1.30pm. I attend every year because it is a huge opportunity to look more closely and judge more accurately some of the factors you may want to put into the mix when you decide on a match for your mare. And how different they are. As the parade unfolds you see the tall and the smaller, the stocky and the slim, the handsome and the plain. You know each one has fantastic credentials as a racehorse and often already as a sire. Success comes in many different packages!

My interest this time will centre on seeing Big Jim (for the second time), Majestic Son in the flesh, and also to see Auckland Reactor for the first time since I was amongst the crowd cheering him at Cambridge races.  I always had the impression of him being quite a big lanky horse, but my understanding is that he is medium sized at 15.2h.  One of the best looking horses I’ve ever seen is his sire, Mach Three, who will also be parading.  He’s stamped his length of body and great gait on a lot of his foals, but many of them don’t inherit his good looks when they are young and initially that counted against him at the yearling sales. But his record has turned that around.

Talking of Auckland Reactor, how much money has gone into that advertising campaign to jog memories of his “x factor” and his speed and help us overlook the failures in his career management and the niggling doubts many people have had about his mental toughness? It shows just how much a sire’s career can be helped by owners with a wad of money to back their investment!  In a previous blog I talked about the “fashionable” new sires, and how that is a hype created just as much by the need for studs and owners to get a return and grab a niche in a competitive market, as any innate ability of the sire or even their ability to capture imaginations as a racehorse. The marketing of a sire is aiming at future buyers as well as current breeders. The foals will sell if the hype about a sire catches on. If buyers don’t buy, the breeder support can quickly fall away.

Like most of advertising, is it all about creating perceived needs rather than having a product that will meet those needs.

So breeders, it is up to us to pretty much disregard the hype and look at what is best for your mare and your aims in breeding.  Sift the advertising and the advertising for the real information you need.

That is why the opportunity to see these horses in the flesh is one to grab if you can. See these horses for yourself and talk to the people at Alabar who are closest to these wonderful sires. Graeme and his team at Alabar are refreshingly upfront about sharing insights and information.