Early Voting gets first mare in foal in restarted stallion career

Preakness Stakes winner Early Voting, who has resumed his stud career after treatment for anejaculatory syndrome, has passed the next hurdle of his comeback, with his first mare to test in foal.

According to a weekend press release issued by the Early Voting Consortium and Taylor Made Farm, Early Voting has had 40 mares booked to him since the announcement in early January that he would resume his career at Taylor Made. He has covered five of those since breeding sheds around Kentucky opened earlier this month. In an early scan on one of those mares, Dr. Padraig “Paddy” O’Casiagh, a New Zealand-based research scientist who has led Early Voting’s treatment, described “spot-on embryonic development.”

Early Voting, winner of the 2022 Preakness, began his stud career in 2023 at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Kentucky. The son of Gun Runner covered 191 mares, according to The Jockey Club’s Report of Mares Bred; it was later reported that 120 had gotten in foal, and several members of his first crop have already arrived this year. However, in October, Coolmore said that Early Voting had been removed from service due to an inability to breed. His condition was anejaculatory syndrome, or an inability to ejaculate despite otherwise-normal behavior.

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O’Casiagh began working with Early Voting and Taylor Made late last year. O’Casiagh’s primary area of work has dealt with fertility enhancement for the kakapo, a native New Zealand bird that was nearing extinction three decades ago. Males from that species, notoriously shy breeders, also have been afflicted with anejaculatory syndrome. He and the late Sir Graham “Mont” Collingwood Liggins formed the Mont Liggins Trust to further fertility research for species survival strategy.

Early Voting is standing for an advertised fee of $20,000 at Taylor Made.

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