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c h a p t e r f i v e STUD FARM The best place to observe contemporary ideas about Thoroughbred fertility in action is on a stud farm. My first period of fieldwork was spent working in Cheveley, a village just outside Newmarket, on a stud owned by a businessman who had no interest in racing and visited only once a year. He had bought the farm as an investment and was waiting for the market to improve before he sold it. In the meantime a bloodstock agent managed it on his behalf. The stud had an exalted past but a slightly reduced present. It had stopped standing stallions, as they were considered too great a financial risk for a small and conservative venture where there was no desire for expansion. The stud still owned several good mares, and their yearlings provided the primary income stream at sales time. Other income came from boarding mares either year-round or during the breeding season, to be covered by stallions on neighboring farms. I was a stud hand for four months, working under the stud groom and the manager, and the five other hands. I mucked out, watered, moved mares, foals, and yearlings here and there, but mainly I cut lawns in neat patterns. The 460 stud farms that surround Lexington range from the prestigious Lane’s End, owned by Texan Will Farish, which stands twenty-two stallions on two thousand acres in Woodford County, to more humble establishments housing two or three mares. Many people with whom I worked at the racetrack kept horses at home and produced a foal or two a year. A 2001 survey commissioned by the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association and the Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, based on 150 responses from 460 farms canvassed, found that the average farm was 356 acres and the median number of horses was thirty-four; the average number of employees was twelve, with a median of four. Average net income was $49,789. 78 h o r s e p e o p l e These averages conceal vast contrasts, between a large number of one- and two-horse ‘‘mom and pop’’ operations and the few ‘‘mega farms’’ like Gainsborough and Lane’s End, some of which form small communities in themselves. Friends from the track who had mares were kind enough to take me with them to view new stallions while they decided on mating plans. In addition, riders from the track took me with them to farms where they were breaking yearlings. ‘‘Breaking yearlings’’—introducing them to saddle, bridle, and rider—takes place on stud farms in the US and on training yards in the UK. Finally, many stallion owners were excellent sources of information, keen to discuss their ideas about breeding and happy for me to visit their farms and talk to their staffs. This chapter draws upon all of these experiences.∞ Each category of bloodstock is meaningful to farm owners in distinct ways. Stallions are individuals, commercial propositions, unique opportunities, and huge liabilities . The majority of mares are incomplete halves, made whole by the reproductive process. Some famous mares, including Ashado, sold at Keeneland to Sheikh Mohammed for $9 million in 2005, have pedigrees, racing records, and looks that make them invaluable. These mares were sometimes called ‘‘blue hens’’ by my informants. Foals and weanlings are either yearlings in the making, to be sold at auction to the highest bidder, or potential home-bred racehorses and therefore stallions or broodmares of the future. Studs function as nurseries (for mares and foals) or stallion stations (with mares shipped in from neighboring boarding farms for covering), though the two may be merged on one farm if it is large enough to allow for a degree of separation to be maintained between them. The first of these is an intensely feminine place; the second is supercharged with testosterone. Some farm owners I spoke to are motivated solely by the market, some by the desire to produce the next generation of champions. All would love to combine the two. In the past, breeders like Lord Wavertree and James Ben Ali Haggin were able to adopt specific breeding strategies and to pursue these strategies to the exclusion of any other. As we have seen, this is no longer the case, and breeding decisions are far more haphazard, related to a combination of more immediate, primarily commercial, concerns. These motivations are inscribed upon the bodies of Thoroughbreds, through practices that...

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