‘If the horse is not ready to serve this year, he won’t’: Little Avondale taking it slow with Per Incanto

Cover image courtesy of Little Avondale Stud

Earlier this week, Little Avondale Stud announced that Per Incanto (USA), its 19-year-old superstar, could be sidelined from the upcoming breeding season. The son of Street Cry (Ire) injured himself in a paddock accident last Saturday.

It was big news for the New Zealand breeding industry, which has since been shuffling the deck with only weeks to go to September 1. Per Incanto has consistently been one of the top, most popular stallions in the country, keeping company with the likes of Savabeel and Proisir.

As it stands, Per Incanto is inside the top 10 in all categories on the New Zealand General Sires’ table. He is second to Deep Field in Hong Kong by winners, a category he won last season.

His seven stakes winners this racing year have included the star sprinters Roch ‘N’ Horse (NZ) and Lost And Running (NZ), the Blue Diamond winner Little Brose and the Group 1 winner Belclare (NZ), and, on the yearling scene, he has punched well-above his service fee.

With an average of $322,500, Per Incanto was second to Savabeel as the best-averaging New Zealand-based sire at the 2023 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale (Savabeel was less than $10,000 ahead), and his Karaka yearlings averaged a tick over NZ$200,000.

Currently, he’s punching a winners-to-runners percentage above 65 per cent, and a stakes winners-to-runners figure of close to 5.4 per cent. He’s a top stallion, so it was a big deal to learn this week that he could be sitting out the season.

Little Avondale studmaster Sam Williams has for days been fielding calls from all over Australasia about the welfare of his star. Per Incanto is currently at Waikato Veterinary Centre in the good care of its team, which includes Dr Jack O’Brien, a shareholder in the stallion.

“He’s in very capable hands,” Williams said. “Jack is keeping me fully informed and we won’t be rushing the horse back to the farm. He’s been a very good stallion to us so his welfare will come first.”

Per Incanto has an injury to one of his hindlegs. Williams said as long as all goes to plan with the healing, the outcome is promising.

“If the horse is not ready to serve this year, he won’t,” Williams said. “We’ll save him for next year. He’s just been so good to Little Avondale, the shareholder syndicate and the whole of the New Zealand breeding industry. And, funnily enough, every time I talk to the clinic they are gobsmacked with how he’s handling it all.

“He’s built like a stallion and he looks like a stallion, but at the clinic he just stands there with a world of patience. So we’ll bide our time with him and hopefully he heals well and nothing goes wrong.”

As far as time of year goes for such an incident, it’s unfortunate with the breeding season around the corner.

However, at the moment Williams has had to just make phonecalls to shareholders and breeders. There are no outside mares lining up at the farm just yet, which would have been the case in less than two months.

“As we all know with horses, it can happen at any time,” Williams said. “Any injury to a horse is devastating, no matter what. But I was always taught by my first boss, Patrick Hogan, that 95 per cent of all horse accidents are manmade, and what he meant by that was that if it was a fence or a box or truck, who put that fence or box or truck there? It’s certainly one way of looking at it.”

Upside for Time Test

So where to for Little Avondale this spring? Without Per Incanto, the farm has just Time Test (GB) on its roster, a stallion who is kicking goals in his own right.

The son of Dubawi (Ire) will shuttle into New Zealand in the coming weeks and stand the Southern Hemisphere season at NZ$10,000 (plus GST), and he could benefit considerably from the benching of Per Incanto.

“First and foremost, we notified the ownership group in Per Incanto,” Williams said. “He had a full book so we had to notify all the owners so that they, in turn, could book their mares into other stallions. There were a number of mares about to jump on planes from Australia, so we certainly got in contact with those breeders when it all happened on Saturday.

“As far as the stud is concerned, we’re very fortunate that we have shares in other stallions. We have Time Test about to arrive from England and it looks like he’s going to end up with a lovely book of mares now.”

The oldest of Time Test’s progeny in New Zealand are 3-year-olds, and on the 3-year-old sires’ table right now, he is currently tied with Proisir and Belardo (Ire) by winners (14). Only Savabeel is ahead of them (17 winners).

“Time Test is currently sitting equal second on the New Zealand 3-year-old sires’ premiership,” Williams said. “If he gets a couple of Group winners and I send all my mares to Time Test, I might be looking like I’ve pulled all the right moves here.”

Williams has been tactically buying commercial mares for Per Incanto in recent years, which might be Time Test’s good fortune. The studmaster said many will suit the shuttler should it eventuate that Per Incanto doesn’t serve at all this spring.

“If it means that I need to leave some of my November foaling mares to next year, I will do so,” he said. “If I have to serve a smaller group of my own mares this year, I will do so.”

In a few years, the dearth in numbers will be noticeable for Little Avondale. There will be an absence of Per Incanto stock at the yearling sales in 2026, but Williams isn’t concerned about that right now because he’s been limiting the stallion’s book to about 110. In other words, the numbers haven’t been massive in the first place.

“If he doesn’t get to serve this year, there’ll be a dent in the yearling sales later on,” Williams said. “His Hong Kong market is more a tried-horse market, so it won’t have much affect up there.

“But if Per Incanto does get to serve and he only serves shareholder mares, the scarcity value will go through the roof, especially for those colts in the Asian market where he’s running at 72 per cent runners-to-winners.”

Besties in breeding

For Williams this week, finding the positives has been important, and one of those has been the overwhelming support from fellow stallion masters.

The New Zealand industry is known for this. It’s not cut-throat among competing studs and, very often, stallion masters will share ownership in each other’s stallions.

Among the invested parties in Per Incanto, for example, are Mark Chitty of Haunui Farm, Mark Chittick of Waikato Stud and Tony Ryder of Milan Park. There are many others.

Gallery: Fellow New Zealand stallion masters who are shareholders in Per incanto (USA)

“These guys all came into the horse when we asked them,” Williams said. “As studs, we’ve all got behind one another for support, and it’s been a good thing for New Zealand. If you go around the studmasters down here, we’re all a similar age and we’re all good mates.

“When one of us gets a stallion and calls around for the cheque books, everyone is forthcoming. That’s the way the New Zealand industry has operated for a long time and it’s a good thing because I think, this year, the foal crop will be less than 2500 foals. It’s not a big broodmare pool that we’re dealing with.”

As such, the genuine concern for Per Incanto has been widespread across the New Zealand industry.

“Everyone has been so forthcoming,” Williams said. “No one likes to see a successful horse go amiss when he’s right at the height of his game and in the twilight of his years.”