Like numerous other major Kentucky nurseries, Hill 'n' Dale Farms in Lexington will keep its 2008 stud fees level with last year's.

Hill 'n' Dale's most expensive sire remains Vindication, who will stand again for $60,000. Vindication is the sire of Grade 2 winner More Happy and Grade 1-placed Maimonides.

Two stallions on the roster will get fee changes in 2008. Stormy Atlantic, currently ranked 14th by progeny earnings with such runners as graded winner Icy Atlantic, will rise from $30,000 to $45,000, while Mutakddim will decrease from $15,000 to $12,500.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Breeders' Cup results gave Lane's End stallion Smart Strike a new accolade: a single-season progeny earnings record of $13,830,841.

A hefty portion of that total has come courtesy of Curlin, whose BC Classic victory brought his 2007 earnings to $5,102,800. English Channel, the BC Turf winner who retired to stud Monday at Lexington's Hurricane Hall, also poured money in Smart Strike's coffers this year with his season total of $2,640,000.

Open stakes victories by a pair of 2-year-olds capped a big weekend at Belmont Park for New York-breds.

Remarkable Remy and Cannonball won the Swinging Mood and King Cugat stakes, respectively, on Sunday, the day after New York Showcase Day. Both $75,000 events were at one mile on turf.

Remarkable Remy, owned by Live Oak Plantation, won the Swinging Mood for fillies, sending her earnings to $97,627 with a record of 2-0-1 in 4 starts. In her previous outing, she had been third in the open Miss Grillo Stakes at Belmont.

Prominent dispersals, scores of broodmares with diverse race and produce records, weanlings by promising young stallions, and plenty of California-breds form the core of the Barretts October mixed sale on Monday and Tuesday in Pomona, Calif.

The two-day sale offers 653 horses, including 91 from an ongoing reduction of Betty and Larry Mabee's Golden Eagle Farm, 18 horses being dispersed by Stan Fulton, 8 horses from the dispersal of Winning Ways Stable, and 6 horses dispersed from the partnership of Santa Anita president Ron Charles and the late Shig Katayama.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Getting a colt or filly to the classics is a triumph of breeding and training. Jim and Mary Anne Squires had the thrill of a lifetime in breeding Kentucky Derby winner Monarchos, who raced for John Oxley.

Currently, Jim Squires has retained an ownership interest in a 2-year-old half-sister to Monarchos out of the Dixieland Band mare Regal Band. He kept a third of the filly, with owners Frank Gardner and Glenn Bromagen taking equal shares in her.

Annual balloting for Maryland-bred champions doesn't include a claimer of the year category. But if it did, the 5-year-old gelding Heros Reward would have clinched all the votes with his performance last Sunday at Woodbine.

Claimed by owners Bob Haynes and Jayne Marie Slysz for $20,000 in April 2006 at Laurel Park, Heros Reward earned $310,620 for his three-quarter-length victory in Woodbine's Grade 2 Nearctic Stakes.

There are three main streams feeding the economic pool that is the Ocala, Fla., market. There are breeders who supply the weanling, yearling, and 2-year-old markets. There are the pin-hookers who speculate in weanlings and yearlings. And there are those entities that break and prepare yearlings for the 2-year-old market and for racing.

Florida's foal population has remained more or less constant through recent years. In the four previous years the annual Florida foal count had ranged between 4,244 in 2004 to 4,334 in '06 and averaged out at 4,284. This year's count is 4,029.

Dylan Thomas, winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and favorite for the Breeders' Cup Turf, will retire to stud at Coolmore "before the end of the year," according to a release from the Irish-based stallion operation.

"We've already had numerous inquiries about him from breeders both here in Ireland and abroad, so we just wanted to put everyone in the picture," Coolmore Ireland manager Christy Grassick said in an announcement issued Tuesday by the farm.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Tattersalls October yearling sale's Book 3 portion ended Saturday in Newmarket, England, with declines across the board, but the auction house put a positive spin on the results by noting that the combined Book 3 and earlier Book 2 results resulted in a record gross overall.

At Saturday's final Book 3 session, the top price was 15,000 guineas, or about $32,130, for a colt by Namid out of Funny Girl, by Darshaan, that Paul D'Arcy bought from agent Jamie Railton.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Slew o' Gold was euthanized on Oct. 14 at age 27. A pensioner at Three Chimneys Farm, where the bay son of Seattle Slew had spent his entire stud career, Slew o' Gold was the first champion son of his famous sire and was a member of the Triple Crown winner's fabulous first crop, which established Seattle Slew as a sire of great magnitude.

Seattle Slew's first champion in that crop was the beautiful and brilliantly fast Landaluce, but a virulent strain of colitis X killed her before the end of her first season of racing.

Landaluce died unbeaten in 1982.