Tinnakill House team at Goffs
The Tuesday Take is our new weekly piece to peel back the curtain of horse racing and show you behinds the scenes on questions you’ve always wanted to ask. Our first Tuesday Take comes from a request from our owner Micheal Mitchell who wanted to know “How do we select our matings”
It’s a familiar ritual. Stallion masters announce stallion fees. Breeders say they can’t believe stallions are so expensive. Stallion masters tell you they can’t fit you in as they’re too full. It’s a bizarre dance when you think about it.
When picking a mare for a stallion, it’s not as simple of what is the best value – you might want to make as big a profit as possible, you might be trying to get your mare off to a winning start or you might own a breeding right in a stallion and you’re helping that stallion succeed so you can reap the rewards in a few years.
How do we plan our matings? Slowly, then all at once. Throughout the year we would say “oh that stallion deserves support next year” or “he might suit her”. We have a Google Sheet and we update that with our picks. Normally, I’ll pick a stallion for every mare we have. Dermot will pick a stallion for every mare. Ian will also jump in with a list. We then sit down and we reveal our lists. It’s then a debate between us all on what we should use. Traditionally this is at the Arqana December Sales but I was there on my own this year so I would have won every argument if the meeting was convened (which would have been nice). Even when the list is finalised it is only ever in pencil – stallions can be out of action, stallion can blow you away with some early winners and sometimes you just simply change your mind – it’s a movable decision right until the end of the breeding season.
It’s isn’t as simple as “this mare would suit him”. We have shares and breeding rights we need to use up. We don’t always like to travel mares with foals at foot so if a mare is barren she’s more likely to go to England or France. We might be able to get a foal share to something nice – but that’s normally the stallion farms pick so we might submit a few, those that remain unpicked need new mates. I normally, at some point, will then start shouting we should breed them all to Fifty Stars, Bouttemont or Far Above. This is usually ignored but I do always get a blast over the line.
A few principles we would have (all of which we have broken on multiple occasions):
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Spend about 1/3 of the value of a mare on the nomination.
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If it’s all speed or all stamina, lean into that or perhaps blend but no extremes. We wouldn’t be fans of breeding a slower page to a really quick stallion or vice versa. For example, we have the dam of Wicklow Brave – we would never consider breeding her to Far Above.
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Proven mares to unproven sires. Unproven mares to proven sires. This helps you identify which of the pair isn’t working.
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We like to lean on breeding to proven sires to the majority of our mares.
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The most important aspect to a mating from a physical perspective is size. You want to avoid breeding a small mare to small stallion. That said perhaps a sneaky way to avoid a horse being deemed “too small” at the sales when you already have a very small mare is perhaps to breed to a small stallion that is accepted by the market. They’ll just say “he’s all X stallion” like it’s a good thing!
Fifty stars our of cabaret queen at Tinnakill
A commercial stud farm needs to make the equation of MARE + STALLIONS + UPKEEP COSTS to equal profit. That isn’t easy, especially in a world of rising production costs. It’s hardest at the lower end as upkeep costs remain constant no matter what the horse cost. That’s perhaps why it’s best to invest together when buying horses. Accessing a higher quality animal allows you avoid the worst aspects of that equation while maintaining your opportunity for a profit. It’s part of the magic of why syndicates work so well.
We’ve seen this in sharp focus at the breeding stock sales this year with lower end mares being deemed been more undesirable than usual. Does this worry me? It worries me in the sense I would like to see every breeder receive a nice return on their foal. An important aspect to keep in mind is you are responsible for the horses in your farm so if you buy well, breed smartly and prepare the horses professionally you can still make a return but you don’t want to miss on any of those aspects to be in with a chance.
It’s a very rewarding journey when you get it right and it’s an experience we love to share with others. We’ll be running an intimate breeding syndicate this year. If you’re interested, just send us an email by clicking here. We’d also be delighted to give you some free mating advice if you’re in search of some answers and tearing your hair out, just drop me a WhatsApp with your mare(s).
Jack’s Pick of the Week
It’s been class to see the reaction from owners far and wide to the Class of 2024 since our launch so it had to be my pick of the week. We’ve now just 10% left in our special Class of 2024 package.
€2,000 now and three instalments of €1,000 across the year can see you with a 1% equity share across six yearlings racing in Ireland, England and France and there’s even better value when taking a larger chunk. We’ve had great luck every year selling horses privately for multiple six figure sums and winning lucrative races (especially so with horses eligible for the Arqana and Goffs Sales races in our team) so I’m optimistic we can get a great return for everyone that’s buys in after we worked through thousands of horses at every major European sale for hand picked value to form this team.
Here’s my introduction to the team for your viewing please and you can request your own share by filling in the form below.
Request your share in the Class of 2024