how does Foxwedge at £7.5k interest you PotM? Showcasing at 4.5k has put me off phoning.

truehoncho, I would imagine there must be movement aplenty in Showcasing's fee - unless ofcourse there are about to be 20 odd beauties skipping around Park Paddocks shortly, which somehow I doubt.
Any horse standing under 10k interests me!
It is hard to place the 3 times raced crock against a proven Gp1 horse who raced often and consistently but I suppose that is what we get to do as at least we are starting with the same fee. My F.R. reservations are pitted agaist plenty of Harbour Watch ones. My guess is that Foxwedge could do a Really commercial looker.
I think if you are happy with Fastnet and a reverse shuttler and a slightly 'workmanlike' pedigree then there is room for a punt with Foxy.

Oops pressed reply a bit quick!!

was going to say that having 230+ foals in 2 seasons must give him a chance.

I was tickled by the fee asessment for Foxwedge from your Aussie chum. Is he particularly well qualified to be followed when it comes to evaluating the fee structures of our stallion industry up here?
I know I am not remotely qualified when it comes to the prices they chose to levy in the Antipodes

Was just trying to start a first draft of matings for my mares and wondered if anyone has kept a list of all the new 2013 sires going to stud and their newly released fees?

There are some that spark my interest...(BBreath, Power, Foxwdege)

And there are some that dont float my boat...(Dragon Pulse, Sir Pracelott, Elzaam)

But if anyone has a fairly complete list for GB and IRE it would be a big help! Thanks

Thanks JohnnyM, that's a help. Is it me, or does Excelebration seem really good value at that? especially since they've put Exceed and Excel up in price.

Just had a look at the Foxwedge video clip. Looks interesting.

yeap seen a few in newmarket

mayson -liked him alot
harbour watch - leggy and all over the place.very poor conformation not a great example .
nathanial- light condition ,nice horse ,taller than u would think
frankel - super star -looks the business ,again like nathanial taller than you think
b breath -again bad walker and poor conformation -disappointing

PM, can you elaborate Distant View knees please, you may or may not guess why, ta

So where does all this leave us with the firstseasoners for next year? Will anybody be getting involved at all?

Has anybody had the chance to see Delegator or Foxwedge yet?

perry, i think you talk a lot of sense. It is getting more and more likely that Foxwedge is the way forward.

Does his fee move atall?

Thanks PM, sounds like legs the opposite different direction to the 'Was there really nothing else that may have held your foal back' out of a distant view mare

perry, ofcourse I didn't want you to discuss figures on here. I get our drift though

I wonder how he is going.

so truehonch, do you give no thought to your mares conformation or the stallions' for that matter?

It makes you sound as if you just trust all of that to luck?

imo we should all be trying to breed racehorses first and hope they are good sales horses in the long run if we breed perfect sale toppers that cannot run the market will swerve us

I am not the greatest judge truehoncho. Let's get that out of the way straight away!
I don't have a fabulously retentive mind - I think Prima Donna aces that one - and whilst I think being around long enough has taught me plenty, I know several people who are just 'naturals' which I don't think I ever will be.

If I have a mare with a specific problem - and let's face it this is a position of weakness to start out from - then I will give plenty of thought to try not to repeat the fault with the stallion.
What I really try to do when I am viewing a stallion though is to try and highlight the glaring faults but mainly to assess 'type' and quality. If you turn up at the sales with a truely smart horse then contrary to popular belief, faults will be overlooked.

I don't know which Kheleyf foal was yours truehonch so I don't know who you consigned with. Did no one give you feedback on your 'bit narrow chested'? as I must say that on the face of it, if it was just 'a bit' then I wouldn't expect too many problems.
I would hope really that if my mare wasn't mighty nice then she would throw pretty much comprehensively to the stallion. Tweaking
individual faults perhaps isn't necessarily a reliable recipe for success.

Kheleyf is quite a smart looking horse, he might be a bit narrow, I don't know, but I would think that your mare has in effect pulled him down so perhaps just looking for a stallion that can really stamp over her is the point to start. Please don't take offence there, most mares (and stallions) don't do what we really want of them!

Perfect sales toppers always get a bad rap because they have monster high profiles which simply builds them up for a spectacular fall. Of course a well put together and balanced horse is going to stand most chance of fulfilling both the job in the sale ring and on the track. The paddock before The Derby will have a lot more to admire than the one before a twilight seller on a saturday night at Wolves.

Hi PM,

It took me 25 years to afford to have a horse in training, it will be an accident if I do so again so will be looking to sell what low grade stock I may produce. You were correct about the badly written last post of mine; 'weak of knee' was a description for him and I was wondering if this had come thru the mare to the offspring I bought in utero so I could be wary of it in the future.

The other mare whose third strike was to have a Bushranger which barely broke even, has now been moved on. Nice enough pedigree but I became obsessed rather than objective about her conformational faults yet still couldn't avoid them. I would love to breed to the positives but at my level I need to avoid the negatives.

It would be great to be able to be full time (a risk I shouldn't take, yet...), and spend as much time as possible compiling a mental database of who throws what, as it must reduce the chances of a poor result. I need to become as good a judge of foals as I can since this is the likely selling point for me,(though its not the age I've been used to in the past). This is why some of us must pick the brains of the likes of yourself, I hate making mistakes, I hate being wrong. I hope I still learn quicker than I forget.

As a nerd stats give me chance to focus on a smaller pool of stallions, that's my starting point as I can spend plenty of time on that stage. I can then hopefully be more thorough with the conformation faults and potential commerciality of them, while feeling there was a logic to it. I suspect it will take 5-10 years to know if that is wrong for me, hopefully the funds wont have run out by then.

Don't disagree with any of the above.

As you will have worked out I haven't served the apprenticeship of pinhooking, don't want to be a dealer of mares and would like to see the benefits of long term continuity. I've seen 2 of the mares 4 offspring as foals and a third as a yearling, they were all different. The knee issue might be due to a lateish, overdue yet immature foal, that I needed to sell as a foal; who wasn't pushed but didn't make it anyway.

I didn't want to overlook any inherited element while taking most of the blame myself, (covered on foal heat to compound it). I'd be happy to send her to many stallions but nothing too light long necked or with quirks ie Montjeus need not apply. This is an example of me avoiding the negatives rather than breeding to the positives. Without satisfactory racecourse representation I've still got to go with proven sires of which Compton Place does come on the radar.

Back to thread subject, as regards new sires I've seen none of them but have a view on most of them. In previous years I've liked Bushranger and Hellvelyn (before hearing what anyone else thought) so can't believe I'm swimming against the tide. At some point in the future I may even get to use a first seasoner.

I am fascinated to see what happens this year. It will be interesting to see how thinly mares will be spread and who will miss out on a 'full' book. Will scarcity value then come in to play or will large books still outweigh?

It's all gone a bit post Dec sales on here hasn't it proxy.

I'd like to add Born to Sea to the 'Anyone seen him?' column.

thanks Wily, I can take Mayson off my list.

How do people think Hellvelyns first lot will do?

PD or others, have you seen Power yet?  He looks a sizeable sort but someone on the team gave me reason to query. Thanks