By Bill Finley
The Jockey Club is estimating that when the final tally is concluded, the 2017 North American foal crop will consist of 22,500 horses. That is the same number estimated for the 2016 foal crop. The report is a sign of some welcome stability to the breeding industry, as the last time the foal crop did not decline was 2005, when there were 38,365 foals.
Other highlights from The Jockey Club's annual breeding statistics report:
• Uncle Mo was the most popular sire regarding number of mares bred. He was bred to 256 mares with 207 live foals reported so far. He fell just short of the number of mares bred the previous year to Scat Daddy (258), which is believed to be a record. Kitten's Joy was next, having been bred to 224 mares, four more than Into Mischief. Having breed bred to 208 mares, American Pharoah was the only other stallion to top the 200 mark.
• Kitten's Joy was bred to an unusually high number of mares (22) during the summer months, meaning the foals will be headed to Southern Hemisphere countries to begin their racing careers.
“Some of those are ours, probably a third of them,” said Ramsey Farm General Manager Mark Partridge. “The others are mainly South American mares, with a couple of South African mares in there too. There were people like Chad Schumer who have Southern Hemisphere clients and they bred a bunch to Kitten's Joy and sent them down there. We were playing with the idea of sending some of our own to Australia, but we've kind of gotten away from that because it is so expensive to send them down there.”
Partridge said the Kitten's Joys bred to Ramsey mares will be sold privately to owners in the Southern Hemisphere.
Tapit was bred to 14 mares on Southern Hemisphere time.
• The breeding business in Maryland is booming. The Jockey Club estimates there will be 500 Maryland-bred foals from the foal crop of 2017, a 21.7% increase over 2016. Maryland was the only state where the breeding industry saw more than a modest increase. Kentucky and Ontario were the only other states or provinces that showed an increase in number of mares bred.
• A New Mexico sire named Quick Action (Carson City) has the distinction of leading the “percentage of live foals” category. He was bred to just one mare and she produced twins.
• There were 439 horses that were conceived in North America by North American stallions, but foaled overseas. Saudi Arabia leads the list with 115. South Korea is next with 110.
• The number of active stallions continues to decline. It was 1,546 in 2016. As recently as 2014, the number stood at 2,023.
• The New Jersey breeding industry is barely hanging on. There were only 32 mares bred in the state in 2016. In 2002, that number was 456.
• Now standing in Oregon, Grindstone was bred to just seven mares, perhaps an all-time low for a Kentucky Derby winner.
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