Breeding Dilemma Explained

So many people are hurting as a result of the EI outbreak and some are getting a little annoyed that all the attention is on the Racing and Thoroughbred industry. But the fact is those industries play such a big part in the economic well being of the country. However, the breeding dilemma is the same for all trying to produce foals this season.

Horse Deals spoke to Vinery Stud Bloodstock Manager, Adam White (pictured) to get some perspective on the size of the Thoroughbred breeding industry and the size of the loss caused by this EI outbreak by using Vinery as an example.

“Vinery is about ten minutes from Scone and is one of the oldest Thoroughbred studs in the country. The area was first settled in the early 1800’s and has pretty much been a breeding farm since than. The Stud used to be called Segenhoe until it was bought by Tom Simon in 1999. He changed the name to Vinery after a farm he had in Kentucky.

“We had eight stallions on the roster for this season and two are shuttle stallions. Red Ransome (pictured) that came from England is still stuck in quarantine and More Than Ready came in from the USA about three weeks before the outbreak. We hope to get Red Ransome out of quarantine by mid October, but even if we do he will miss the early mares.

“We have about 250 mares on the property here, some resident and some which have arrived to be covered. But we have between 800 and 900 booked in this season. Many of them are at what we call “walk on” farms in the area where they are foaled and then “walk on” to us to be served. (They do not literally walk to the farm.) And of course these outside mare are at the moment subject to the lockdown.

“We start covering mares on the 1st September and go pretty much up until Christmas time, with the serving tapering off in November, as normally the late foals do not sell so well. But in a situation like this when the country wide foal crop will be down, we just need to breed as many horses as we can, so there is a market for them as yearlings. The buying bench at the yearling sales are just going to have to buy the odd latish foal, as there is going to be a limited supply of horses.

“Once they do lift the ban and we can move mares there is going to be a back log as the stallions can only serve up to four mares a day. The Thoroughbred Breeders Association of NSW is lobbying to get the movement restriction lifted here in the Hunter Valley so we can all cover some mares. The likelihood of that is pretty good and we will know more later in the week.

“At the moment we do not have EI on the property. We introduced strict bio-security as soon as we heard, but so did all the studs. The virus is on a couple off farms just two to three kilometers away. It is all around us and we are expecting to get it the way it is spreading.

“There are the big studs losing a lot of money, but there are also a lot of small breeders who are losing here too. We are not the only industry that relies on horses for an income and just because they may not be losing as much money does not mean that they are any less important.

“The DPI have done the best at containment, but they just seem to be slowing the spread of the virus. It will cost a lot of money to implement a vaccination programme, but as time goes by the virus is costing us more money. You speak to anyone overseas and they say our only hope now is to vaccinate. People will have to take it upon themselves to make sure their horses are vaccinated and then we can move on”.

Read more about Vinery Stud