Page 10 - 8 June 2012

BREEDERS
The unsung heroes of the horse world.
In my experience, what breeders everywhere have in common is a deep-seeded, undeniable love for mares.
by Stacy Pigott
This issue marks the first Speedhorse “Broodmare Issue” I have been involved with, and to be hon- est, it’s one of my favorite issues so far. Sure, the Special Effort commemorative issue we did last year was noteworthy. And the Stallion Register is always one of the year’s highlights. But the Broodmare Issue...it gets my vote as my favorite issue of the year.
For one thing, there’s nothing else like it in the industry. By design, our industry is heavily weighted toward stallions. We follow the leading sires, the lead- ing freshman sires, the leading 2-year-old sires, the leading sires of money earners and the leading sires of winners. The list of the leading broodmare sires is the closest most people get to honoring
our mares.
But in the Broodmare Issue, I get to write about, talk about, research and read about mares! And I love mares! Most of the horses I have owned in my life have been mares.
I even tried my hand at breeding a few times, the first with my old roan mare, Imp. I bred her to a Paint stal- lion, hoping for a flashy Paint foal. What I got was a solid bay colt. So I bred her again, and to the same stud. (It can’t happen twice...right?) I got another solid bay colt.
Once I moved to California, my
show horses gave way to racehorses.
My first racehorse was, of course, a
mare. We retired her after her sopho-
more year and bred her to Jazzing
Hi. Oh, the high expectations I had
for that colt! But he bowed a tendon
as a 2-year-old, and then developed a
neurological disease and had to be to put down at age 3. He never did race.
In all, that mare had six foals. The second one made it to the track, and is probably still running... not still racing, still running, trying to catch up to
the other horses! None of her other four foals were even registered. The next one died before it was 30 days old. Then there was the twin that might actually have registration papers—with the American Quarter Pony Association. Another died before it was 45
days old. Her last foal was reportedly a good-looking Paint that might have gone on to a career in dressage. Maybe. That, in a nutshell, is the grand sum of my endeavors in breeding racing Quarter Horses.
I still have the old mare—you sometimes read about her in this column—although I’ll never breed her again. She’s too old, too crippled, and quite hon- estly, had too much bad luck as a broodmare for me to put her through that again.
Perhaps because of my less than successful attempts at breeding, I have the utmost respect for breeders of American Quarter Horses. I love talking to breeders and hearing their stories, whether they have one mare or 100. And over the years, I’ve gotten to talk to plenty of breeders about their mares and babies. Some of them keep one or two horses at home on small acreage, like
I do. Some breeders have vast ranches with wide-open
pastures full of broodmares and foals. And some even live in the city, relying on breeding farms and boarding facilities to take care of their equine charges.
There are breeders who have the money to buy the best mares in the business and breed them to the best stallions. And there are breeders who scrape and struggle to afford the best mare they can buy, then scrape and struggle some more to breed her to the best stallion they can afford. Some breeders have pages and pages of stakes winners to their credit, others go years just hoping and praying for a winner.
But in my experience, what breeders everywhere have in common is a deep- seeded, undeniable love for mares. I’ve seen breeders break down in tears over the loss of a good mare, and have seen breeders cry tears of joy over the accom- plishments of one of their foals. Breeding requires patience, foresight, vision, perseverance, knowledge, passion, and,
sometimes, a healthy sense of humor. Breeders take the bad with the good, knowing that for every sleepless night spent nursing a sick mare back to health, there are the unequalled rewards of seeing a spindly-legged new foal take its first unsure steps with an encouraging nuzzle from its momma.
The Broodmare Issue is the one time a year we get to pay tribute to the great mares in our industry— those elite individuals that produced a stakes winner last year. And behind each of those mares is a breeder who painstakingly and carefully planned the way. I tip my hat to the mares, and the breeders, represented on the following pages, and hope you enjoy the Speedhorse Broodmare Issue.
I can’t imagine life without my mares.
8 SPEEDHORSE, June 8, 2012
UNDER WRAPS
Stacy Pigott/Speedhorse