Still wondering if you can afford to breed again this year? If you are looking to race yourself or bring a foal up to race and sell, here is something to think about.
Studs these days are increasingly offering a range of deals for breeders, and far more openly than the mates rates deals of earlier times. There are plenty of options for paying early for a good discount or paying more later on a live foal.
However goStallions has gone a step further with the sire Prodigal Seelster. There is an option for a service fee of NZ$3250 + gst or you can opt for a pay-on-delivery-at-racetrack option which means you will only be charged when your foal qualifies later in life… that’s when a bill of $3000 + GST becomes payable; then once your horse runs its first placing at the races, the final payment of $1000 + GST is due. So all up that is $4600 (including gst) if you successfully take that option. I assume it is a breeding contract and therefore the breeder is responsible for those payments regardless of who owns the horse when it starts to perform.
It is an interesting option, and it places the risk of going to an unproven sire who is less known here, with the rewards of getting financial pain relief until the horse proves he can earn his way.
In the pricing, he is more or less the equal of Macca Lodge’s Net Ten EOM and Panspacificflight.
So what credentials does he have?
Canadian horse Prodigal Seelster, Camluck x Platinum Seelster (Western Hanover) stands in New Zealand with an interesting pay on success fee option
Prodigal Seelster (Camluck x Platinum Seelster – Western Hanover) is a reasonable sire prospect in his own right, although in the competitive market here I would place him probably more at $2200 than $3250. However the shared-risk deal adds an appealing sweetener, particularly when the attributes of the stallion in terms of pedigree and racing CV make him worth much more than a passing thought. If your mare (and your pocket) suits, this could be quite a tempting option to lower your risks. He was a decent winning racehorse from a solid family, with good looks.
The stud will have built some of their risks into the pricing structure too. And the deal doesn’t take into consideration the costs you will have incurred getting the foal to that stage of qualifying and racing, so even a 1st at his first start won’t cover all your obligations unless you are really lucky. But if it suits you, and you have the sense to either save or put aside the rest of the service fee (or make sure you sell with that margin built in), the deal is definitely worth a look.
Prodigal Seelster was raced solely in Canada and through the rich stakes series there, so it is really hard to get a line on his actual ability at the very top level – but he has decent credentials.
As a sire, he has several things really working for him, if you have a mare that clicks with these:
- By Camluck from a Western Hanover mare, he’s bordering on being an outcross to almost every broodmare we have here, apart from recent daughters of Western Hanover or one of his earlier sons (such as Badlands Hanover). Having said that, he’s the only sire I can find that has Western Hanover himself as an immediate damsire in his maternal line. So if you are looking to hook up directly to that factor or duplicate it, he’s a nice option as it comes direct through his dam, rather than through a sire of a damsire.
- He has a solid maternal pedigree, with his second dam Parcel having left, amongst others, a Camluck filly called Paula Seelster ($600k+) who has bred on well to sires Artiscape, Real Desire and Life Sign.
- He traces back to Barbara Eden, which is a nice modern family in the making (see below).
- He is a nice individual, although like so many colts who are retired with injury after taxing racing as youngsters, his soundness is a question mark. But that is not a genetic thing usually, unless it is about bone density or an inherited conformation issue or distinctive racing action.
- His very few foals look like nice types, but way too early to tell from such small numbers.
So, he is a very interesting option and not to be dismissed lightly.
Noel Kennard is behind this initiative and I give a big tip o’ the hat to him and goHarness for putting different breeding and racing options out there for people to choose from. At least they are trying something different!
Find out more on their website here or contact Johnny Robinson on 021 883 713. I have no financial interest in the sire and this is not an advert, but I am interested in promoting different options that may suit some breeders, particularly financially.
For me the main thing would be to NOT regard it as a free service and to ensure you have saved the potential service fee payments early on, in expectation of a good result.
PS Another interesting and inexpensive breeding option this year comes from the same maternal Barbara Eden (U44) family as Prodigal Seelster – Shadyshark Hanover standing at Barra Equine for $2500 + gst. Again the cross is with a sire from the Cam Fella sire line, in this case Cam’s Card Shark, and with a No Nukes damsire. It is a family that has got some momentum going in recent years, particularly on the branch of her daughter Barbret (which is the branch Prodigal Seelster belongs too). Included in the Barbret branch is the wonderful filly Sassa Hanover born 2012 by Rock N Roll Heaven – 1:49.4US $1,008,469.
Barbara Eden was an American actress well known on Tv in the later 1950s and 1960s, best known title role as the blond genie in a bottle in the 1960s TV show I Dream of Jeannie opposite Larry Hagman. The mare Barbara Eden was born in 1966.
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