LEXINGTON, Ky. – Weanlings came to the fore Tuesday at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale’s ninth session. Prices were far lower than the seven-figure blockbusters seen in week one of the 11-day auction, but the sale continued to run well ahead of last year’s figures overall.
MIAMI – Owner-breeder Harold Queen has sent his recently retired 2010 Breeders’ Cup Sprint and Eclipse Award champion Big Drama to the Stonewall Farm in Ocala, Fla., where he’ll begin his breeding career in 2012. Big Drama’s stud fee has been set at $10,000.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Keeneland's November breeding stock sale continued to ring up remarkable gains in all financial categories when its eighth of 11 sessions ended Monday with gross receipts up 35 percent, the average price up 27 percent, and the median up 25 percent.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Taylor Made will drop the stud fees for all but two of its sires, including its most expensive stallion, Unbridled's Song, for 2012.
The Nicholasville, Ky., farm has trimmed the stands-and-nurses fee for Unbridled's Song from $100,000 to $85,000. Breeders opting to pay by Nov. 1, 2012, will get a discounted price of $76,500, down from the 2011 discounted price of $85,000. An early-payment discount applies to all of Taylor Made's stallions.
GoldMark Farm’s two-time graded winner Backtalk has retired from the racetrack and will begin his stud career at Vinery’s Florida farm. The 4-year-old Smarty Jones colt will stand for $3,500.
Backtalk won the Grade 2 Sanford and Grade 3 Bashford Manor Stakes in 2009, taking the latter after stumbling at the start. He also won the Sportsman’s Paradise Stakes in 2010 and placed in five other stakes, most notably running third in the Grade 3 Illinois Derby in 2010. Backtalk retires with $405,051 from a record of four wins, four seconds, and three thirds in 15 lifetime starts.
B. Wayne Hughes’s Spendthrift Farm, which adds seven new stallions to its roster this year, has raised the fee for its signature stallion, Malibu Moon, from $60,000 to $70,000.
It is the only fee hike at Spendthrift, which also is lowering its price for Into Mischief from $8,500 to $7,500 in 2012.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Keeneland’s 11-day November breeding stock sale continued its strong upward trend Sunday at its seventh session, with more hefty gains in all categories and a $190,000 racing or broodmare prospect the day’s high point.
Castleton Lyons purchased the session-topper, the 3-year-old Unbridled’s Song filly Sanadaat, a half-sister to stakes winners Super Frolic and Stormy Frolic. Shadwell Farm consigned the daughter of graded winner Lindsay Frolic, by Mt. Livermore. Shadwell offered Sanadaat as a racing or broodmare prospect.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - After five consecutive days of large gains, Keeneland’s 11-day November mixed sale continued that trend at its sixth session on Saturday.
A weanling Street Sense colt, a half-brother to graded winner Richbabe, brought the session’s top price of $250,000 in the last minutes of the auction Saturday. Vail Equine bought the April 4 foal, a bay colt, from Dapple Stud’s agency.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – WinStar Farm is holding the line on all but one of its stud fees for the 2012 breeding season. Ken Troutt’s breeding farm near Versailles, Ky., will double Bellamy Road’s stud fee from $10,000 to $20,000, but it will keep the fees the same for the other stallions it acquired earlier this year from Ben Walden’s Pauls Mill Farm and stand all of its previous WinStar sires for the same fees they had in 2011.
