Slow start to bookings means patience is a virtue for stallion farms

Cover image courtesy of Newgate

As the covering season marches ever closer, breeders across the country will be finalising this year’s mating plans. While there has been ripples of unease through some corners of the industry given a slower start being made to bookings, among some of the nation’s larger operations, it’s been business as usual.

This feeling of apprehension is not unique to Australasian breeders; Northern Hemisphere studs were particularly anxious ahead of the 2025 breeding season in the U.S., with many operations offering large discounts on less commercially popular stallions in an effort to keep the industry moving.

When speaking to Sue Finley at our sister publication Thoroughbred Daily News, many expressed fears that there would be a dramatic decrease in mares being covered, judging by pre-season interest.

However, the early fears smoothed over, with general consensus suggesting that bookings had caught up with previous seasons’ trends by the end of the Northern Hemisphere covering period.

Breeders have been slower to make decisions all over the globe, but positively, the numbers are still catching up.

Slow and steady

A building start to the breeding season doesn’t concern Bruce Slade, Newgate Farm’s director of bloodstock. The popular, proven, and exciting new stallions need little help filling their books, and everyone else is beholden to how well their progeny are doing on the track.

“There’s a lot of mares that are yet to be mated, or may or may not be mated at all,” Slade said. “There'll be a lot of phone calls and a lot of business to be done between now and the season.”

Nine of the 16 stallions on the Newgate roster are in the years of highest risk for breeders; four will have their first juveniles hit the trials this spring, and five have yet to have yearlings at the sales.

Traditionally, this is when many stallions experience a drop in numbers as everyone waits for results on the track or in the ring to place their bets, but Slade is confident in his group.

Six of the 20 busiest stallions in Australia last year were based at Newgate, with Stay Inside serving a bigger third book than he did the year before and Brutal (NZ) - just outside the top 20 - serving his second biggest book ever long before the Group 1 victory of his son Nepotism in the autumn.

Arrowfield Stud’s Bloodstock Manager Jon Freyer has observed a similar booking pattern.

“What we've found that's been a developing trend over the last four, five, six years is that people are booking later than ever,” he said. “Our busiest month for bookings 10 years ago was probably April, whereas now it's August, September, which is strange.

“But having said that, our new horse Vandeek is booked out. He's been very popular. And The Autumn Sun likewise has been, having missed last season. People are keen to get in to him, and there's a waiting list.”

A lot of breeders are waiting until after their winter holidays to make decisions, he said.

“The horses that people get a sniff might book out, they follow the trend and get in early. But the horses that may be good stallions, but they're not fresh on the scene perhaps, people will ring in August, September, October, and expect to be able to get a booking across the board.

“People are happy to sit and wait to see what happens with regard to early season racing.

“I think, all in all, we're well satisfied with where we sit at the present time.”

In Victoria, Yulong’s Sales And Nomination Harry King is feeling particularly optimistic about the progress of bookings for their 11-strong roster. In Yulong’s five years as a fully realised commercial operation, the optimism around the office has never been higher.

“We’ve got plenty of mares coming out from the Hunter, we’ve got support from Queensland that’s growing every year,” he said. “And I think what’s most exciting is the mares coming from Western Australia. The bookings come in waves, and it’s certainly an exciting period.”

Full books

Part of the reason people have come to trust and desire the Yulong product, King said, can be credited to the amount of home support their stallions have had.

“Breeders know for a fact they have had high quality mares go to them for three years,” he said.

“People know they're getting a product that we've backed and one that we will continue to market and support well into each stallion's careers, and they won't get left behind. They can enjoy it with us.”

Arrowfield has long established themselves and their stallions in the same fashion.

Freyer indicated that the roster’s youngest members, Hitotsu and Vandeek (GB), wouldn’t be getting left behind either.

Gallery: Youngest members of Arrowfield Stud's stallion roster

“We try to select a stallion that we think is going to be a big stallion, a successful stallion,” Freyer said. “We support them with our own mares, and we try to drag the market with us, whether they like it or not.

“Even stallions that did remarkably well like Snitzel and Not A Single Doubt, their second, third, fourth seasons were incredibly tough. In Snitzel’s third or fourth season, I think we sent him two thirds of the mares that went to him, and we bred some really good horses.

“But not everyone was on board, and had we not supported him, just by lack of opportunity he may have gone into a dip that he struggled to recover from. That's what's important with making stallions, is to make sure that in those formative years, they have some sort of continuity of numbers and quality.”

Future-proofing their own stallions with the right support at home is necessary for a stud’s success. If breeders are slow in their support this year, Yulong and Arrowfield are prepared to step up and fill the gaps.

“As long as the mares are of adequate quality and they're in adequate numbers, the good stallions will be able to cope with all that," Freyer said.

“Like I Am Invincible, he’s a good example. He didn't have the greatest mares, but they were mares of adequate quality, and he was a good enough stallion to make them - rather than needing them to make him. The same with Snitzel.”

“I think one of the biggest things is that we aren’t afraid to send these young mares from good, proven families to our more entry level stallions,” King said.

“He’s had incredible support for a horse who stands at his fee. Only Anamoe covered more Group 1 winners in his first season than Diatonic.”

King has seen the same ebb and flow of attention with who’s popular on the roster, and he confirmed that Pierata and Alabama Express are both on track to cover full books for the third year running.

“When stallions get busy and people are getting in early, it shows you've got a product that people are backing,” he said. “We’ve done our part for two years with Pierata, and now people can use him and benefit off what those mares produce.”

Gallery: Two of Yulong's sires that are on track to cover full books for the third year running

Breeding for the better

While the cost of production weighs heavier and heavier on breeders’ choices, Slade still thinks there are opportunities to succeed at the top end with the right decision-making.

“Those mares that can operate at the top half of the market have seen good, strong yearling sale results across the board again this year,” he said. “Therein lies the opportunity. Off of the back of that, I think breeders are carefully assessing what mares should or shouldn’t be bred this year.

“The hardest part in the whole game is trying to have enough scale of the quality that's required to keep yourself in that top half or top 25% in any sale. And that's where I can see people are working together a bit more to make that achievable for themselves.”

Slade has noticed a change in how breeders approach mare ownership as part of their own goals.

“Most breeders love breeding,” he said. “They love the challenge of it. Breeding horses is not for the faint hearted and the people that bred for the last decade in Australia were all fully aware of the challenges involved.

“The top of the market may be leveling off now, but it's (yearling sale results) still an enormous pie to try and get yourself a piece of.

“I think people are being more calculated in what manners they pursue their commercial goals, and that might look like it's less mares, but it might be smaller percentages in more mares to maintain the same level of quality, but have enough scale to overcome the things that do happen.”

“I can see people partnering on mares a lot more than before, and so therefore, I'd say we most likely will have a number of the same breeders stay in the game, but they just don't own the mare outright. They’ll own her in partnership with one or two others, including the stud manager of the farm or the stallion owner, or whatever it might be.”

The top of the market, of course, still carries plenty of risk.

“There's still an element of breed to race amongst even those playing in the top half of the commercial model,” Slade said. “You still might end up keeping horses with bad x-rays or leasing horses out that don’t sell, even in a highly efficient commercial model. It’s all about calculating the risk, what it’s going to cost and what you’re trying to protect.”

Slade pointed out that sometimes a breeder has to put their faith in the mare’s progeny on the table and retain offspring in order to produce results for her on the track. In some ways, this can be a cheaper option than purchasing an equivalent yearling at the sales.

“I think people that do breed to race are largely looking for horses that are proven at getting winners, like Maurice and Castelvecchio and The Autumn Sun,” Freyer said. “If you go to the yearling sales and you want to find a nice Dundeel or a Maurice or a Snitzel, you're paying good money for those, whereas the service fee in comparison for those horses is not so significant.

“Prizemoney is tax free, it’s a great hobby to have if you get a good one.”

Changing ownership

“The pool of breeders is certainly narrowing, and it's been a consistent trend over the last 10 or 15 years where the number of breeders, particularly the breeders that breed one or two mares, is dropping off, probably significantly,” Freyer said.

“I think the industry on the whole is getting more polarised. If you look at the number of stallions at stud 25 years ago compared to today, there's a lot less, and generally there were a lot more individual studs that were standing one or two stallions than there are today. There's fewer studs with more stallions, and likewise with broodmares, there's fewer broodmare owners, but with more mares.”

“Probably some people are replacing mares, but plenty aren’t. I think the number of individual breeders that we deal with has diminished over the last 10 years, almost consistently each year.”

King has seen less sweeping changes in ownership, but instead a growing familiarisation and trust of the Yulong brand.

“Naturally, things are getting expensive, but for us, we offer very, very competitive fees for the stallions that we've got, and people are very positive about using them,” he said.

“I'm not seeing a downturn in booking; we are actually up from this time last year, which is probably more of a credit to the stallions and what they're doing.

“But I understand that bookings are down for most people, and the people that may have used us for five mares, now they've got three mares that they use, and I feel that's just natural progression.”

This is an opportunity for renewal for breeders; with large volumes of mares headed through the virtual sales ring on the regular at the moment, there are plenty of chances to bring in fresh blood.

Yulong themselves have been participating, recently spending $1.625 million to secure Group 1-winning juvenile Velocious (Written Tycoon), whilst parting with mares at the lower tiers of their broodmare band.

“People go and buy stallions for millions and millions of dollars privately,” King said. “What we've done with our business model is we've bought millions and millions of dollars of broodmares to support our stallions publicly. So with what we've spent annually on broodmares, some farms are spending similar to that on one stallion.”

In this fashion, they can continue to heavily support the full spectrum of their roster.

“We're in a very fortunate position to do that as an operation, but it's also basically just the reverse Uno of what other farms might be doing, and I think probably in the long run we'll be a lot cheaper.”

Look to the future

Slade said that Newgate is perfectly poised this year to offer results for breeders choosing this season to invest.

“Horses have a bit of recency bias going on with them, and yet breeders have to plan for two and a half years down the track. I think across the last two seasons combined, one in 10 mares in New South Wales and Victoria were covered by a Newgate stallion.

“Down the track, we could have Newgate-sired horses being one runner in every 10-horse field for 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds in two and a half years’ time.

“So there’s a lot of opportunity to be had; we have a lot of young horses on the roster who will be very well set up to make their mark on the racetrack around sales time.

“That’s where I see our angle this year. We’ve got a lot of stallions that are very affordable for breeders, and they’ve got big numbers coming through, so now it’s just about getting on the right train.”

King was equally positive about the similarly young Yulong roster; “People are making breeding decisions now for 2028. You have to be realistic about where the market is and what's happening, but I think, with our roster, you could throw a dart at any of them and there's so much upside. Where they will be in 2028 is just so exciting.”

That isn’t to say everything is entirely rosy; if those breeders are already gone, it may be difficult to get them back.

“It's not easy (breeding to sell), and I think the people that are interested in doing that may shy away from maybe breeding something for themselves, or otherwise participating in the industry by taking shares in racehorses,” Freyer said.

“It's going to come down to a smaller number of big breeders, like Arrowfield and Coolmore and the like, to maintain that supply chain of quality horses. Will they (small breeders) come back? Maybe not. We’ll just have to wait and see.”