an idea about sires

[Pedigree Ann]

Originally Posted by Danzig

yeah, i know.

it's just that many think horses should be around longer, but no one seems able or willing to come up with incentives to actually keep horses on the track. obviously you have to make racing more lucrative-right now purses can't compete with potential stud fees.
i was just throwing it out there...

The Breeders Cup was supposed to be such an incentive. You didn't win it this year, you could come back at try to win next year, supposedly. But that was in the era of 40 mare books, so that even a $50K stud fee (only a couple of stallions had a published fee higher than that in 1984) was on a par with the purse money that could be won. No one imagined 150 foal crops.

[IrishS]

Why has Smarty Jones' stud fee been listed as private? Isn't it a bit early in his stud career for that? Is there a problem or are they trying to limit the quality and quantitiy of mares, which I thought happenened anyway.

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by IrishS

Why has Smarty Jones' stud fee been listed as private? Isn't it a bit early in his stud career for that? Is there a problem or are they trying to limit the quality and quantitiy of mares, which I thought happenened anyway.

I was going to post and ask the same question- can someone who knows more about breeding than I (which would be almost anyone here!) explain what "private fee" can mean (I imagine there can be more than one reason), and why a horse would be listed that way? Smarty's runners seem to be doing okay, not outstanding.