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REFLECTIONS By Nelson Dunstan Henry Knight Had 180 Mares Sells 30 Head Stymie Develops Into Magnificent Stallion Why Do Breeders Fatten Market Yearlings Ira Drymon Answers That Puzzling Question QuestionLEXINGTON LEXINGTON Ky May 9 9ThreeDot ThreeDot Shorts Henry H Knight the Almahurst Farm breeder today sold 30 broodmares to an unnamed Californian who is entering the breeding business Delivery to be made in October At Cy Whites farm we saw 22yearold Black Helen with a Polynesian foal at her side She is no longer the Little Black Helen that Colonel Bradley once left home because she was too small to race Shes a big gal now Lady Lark dam of the 60000 filly Perfection has a bay colt by Ardan by her side at Mereworth Farm She has no 1952 yearling Walter J Salmon is well on the mend after his re ¬ cent illness Kentuckians are keenly awaiting the outcome of tomorrows Golden Gate Handicap A large delegation of Lexingtonians will go to Pimlico for the Hill GailSub Fleet duel in the Preakness The Howard Reine ¬ mans Crown Crest Farm is one of the most attractive in Ken ¬ tucky Since his illness Neville Dunn popular editor of the Thoroughbred Record has been taking things easy and is coming along fine Veteran breeder Tom Piatt will race a string at the Delaware Park meeting At Calumet Farm they have a brother to Hill Gail and sister to Coaltown among the 1952 foals Blue Grass had some rain this week but needs lots more moreMany Many Kentucky breeders will have colts and fillies by Stymie to sell this year Always one of our favorite race horses we went out to Doctor Hagyards farm yes ¬ terday to see him and in appearance he is a magnificent specimen of a stallion Not since Man b War have we seen a horse who appears to know he is being admired When brought outrof his stall he immediately strikes a pose throws his fine head in the air and trains his eyes on a faraway point with the look of eagles He had a few yearlings last year but this seasons crop will be his first full one Most of the breeders we have talked with appear confident he will make good as a stud and just one of his colts we like is the bay out of Alpenstock HI the Broodmare of the Year in 1951 and one of the Mere worth Farm group Alpenstock III has produced the trio of stakes winners Sturdy One Ruhe and Alladier and if this Stymie colt makes good the owner will have a good representative of the male line of Equipoise of which there are all too few Only time will tell but the good looking boy colt at Mereworth appears to us to have what it takes for in some ways he looks just like his old man manStymie Stymie is in the hands of Dr Charles Hagyard one of the best known veterinarians in the United States The son of Eques ¬ trian one of the favorites with New York race fans for many years is a good doer and also sure with the mares he serves There is no greater disappointment to the owner of a top horse such as Twenty Grand to find that when sent to stud he lacks the power to reproduce his kind It does not happen very often and Dr John MacLeod a member of the faculty at Cornell and an authority on the subject has this to say I have had an opportunity to study about 30 or 40 stallions in the Blue Grass section mostly normal stallions because of course we had to study the normal stallions to get some idea of the abnormal One would say offhand in looking over the records of thorough ¬ bred breeding in the past 10 or 20 years that the problem of sterility in the thoroughbred stallion is not a serious one The reason for that partly is that when breeders find that a stal ¬ lion is not doing very well in the stud there is a human tendency not to emphasize that fact too much or if they do have stallions which are lesser known so to speak from the racing point of view and which do turn out to be infertile they very promptly are dropped from the stud and we dont hear any more about them It is only when we come to the prominent stallions well known race horses which go to the stud and suddenly develop difficulty that the real problem arises It has been my experi ¬ ence in the past several years that at least 10 prominent stal ¬ lions in the Blue Grass section have suffered from varying de ¬ grees of infertility infertilityOne One question this student who has been watching sales for a quarter of a century asks breeders is If the fat must be worked off yearlings by the purchaser then why do breeders fatten the yearlings they send to the sales ring year after year You get a variety of answers but the frankest we have ever heard was stated by Ira Dry ¬ mon one of the top small breeders in the Blue Grass Drymon said If you are raising your horses for the market you have to send them to the market sleek and fat well groomed well mannered and free from unsoundness and blemishes Trainers of course say they dont want fat yearlings but nether the trainer nor the owner will buy them unless they are fat If you are the owner or manager of a farm where you are raising to race you dont have the problem of trying to get them sleek and fat Maybe you can raise a better racer that way We wish we could raise better horses but we do have tohave them fat when we send them to the sale AH of this requires good management and care Feeding the foal after the mare is bred not after the foal comes and pushing the foal all of his Me MeMany Many people say there is more good luck and more bad luck in the horse business racing or breeding than any other call ¬ ing Ira Drymon tells another story that can be applied to any small breeder working on limited capital He tells it this way A few years ago I went to one of the bigger farms here and bought a mare in foal to a pretty good horse I bought her in my limitedcapital way because she was blind in one eye and we all knew that she was going blind in the other eye At that same farm and at the same time the manager offered me a yearling filly She had her ankle hurt But he offered her to me pretty cheap and she was a grandaughter of this pretty good mare I didnt buy here because I couldnt afford to buy two and I decided to buy the mare Two or three weeks later a man bought this yearling filly for more money than she was of ¬ fered to me for She won 20000 or 25000 Her first foal was Aunt Jinny the leading twoyearold filly of 1950 Her second foal is Tom Fool the leading twoyearolds colt last year and she is a mare that is now very valuable I dont know whether that was luck or just plain foolishness on my part but I didnt get her
