BUYING FROM The EASTER BROODMARE SALE

1. Last week, on 14th,15th & 16th April in Sydney, Australia a
catalogue of 673 Thoroughbred Broodmares were offered for sale.

2...This would be a an ideal place for new buyers to investigate if
they were keen to buy their first mare. Ideal because there are a
huge number of mares all in one place for you and you can look,
inspect, compare at your leisure or at an intense pace for
several days.

3...The best sires are well represented, the best families are
well represented, and there is a large proportion of good
race winning mares including many Stakes Winners.

4...If you don't know very much about conformation or
bloodlines, then it would be wise to pursue a course of
action to ensure you are confident about being able to use
these tools successfully, or are advised by very successful
people who have the knowledge to help you positively.

5..One internet site published that 596 mares were catalogued,
374 were sold (which represented 74.8%), 126 were passed
in, 96 were withdrawn...Gross for the sale was $21,935,000
which gave an average of $58,649..Top lot sold was the
supplementry 677 entry (Samantha Miss) for $3,850,000.

6..WHAT TO DO?..Perhaps just go to the bank, make a
loan application for $4,000,000, and take the Cheque to
the Auctioneers, and take Miss Samantha to the highest
priced , most successful sire available.

7...If that action would put too much stress on your current
finances, mortgages, marriage, or family plans, then perhaps
you would need to make a plan tailored especially for yourself.

8...If you intend to breed a foal or 2 to race, then play the
percentages and put competitive speed into both sides of
your pedigree because there are more short distance races,
and they sometimes require less specialist training, and less
specialist jockeyship. Even average sprinters can win back to
back races when emphasis is on straight basic speed.

Also your selection for speed can be more effective and
positive than if you persue more stamina orientated breeding
principles. The majority of Stamina sire X Stamina mare matings
can lose too much of that important ingredient called SPEED.

But all is not always straightforward for speed pedigrees,
however, because Nature does reward and require some
unusual patterns in sprinting pedigrees. Thousands of foals
every year are doomed to failure because just about every
top breeder in NZ and Australia show in their Yearling
Sales Pedigrees that they do not understand the principles
and requirements of speed x speed breeding.

Over 30 years ago I couldn't understand why speedy
mares put to sprinting sires quite often resulted in lots of
placed horses, or minor winners. However, the answer was in
the pedigrees as soon as a few dozen were checked. Nature
hides her 3 principles quite well, and after 3 decades, I have
still not seen any pedigree analyst put forward the reasoning
for this, even though I published some of the information in
our publications THE THOROUGHBRED BREEDERS
GUIDE way back in 1986.

9...The ideal mare would be one that had a good racing
record. Tthis means the ability is up front and your expectation
would be so much greater in expecting the foals to also
inherit and have good racing ability.

10...A young mare means there could be plenty of foals left in
it's future breeding career, but an older mare that has already
left a Stakes Winner or two is PROVEN to have the ability
that most mares just will not have or ever attain. You may
have to pay more for good race record, or close relationship
to an outstanding galloper, but class could be priceless if
they deliver similar ability into their progeny in the future.

11...Another bonus would be if the mare has good matings
and several foals already racing or ready for race. A mare
was identified in Australia a few seasons ago and our analysis
indicated the first 2 unraced foals would have Stake Winning
ability. Both foals have now turned into major Stakes Winners,
one just winning a major million dollar Derby race.

Our client checked the first foal, then flew to Australia to buy the
mare, but a conformation check by a major Australian Agency
Principal indicated a few little faults, so bidding up to a pre-
determined budget meant she went to another discerning buyer for
just a few thousand more. Talk about the one that got away!

12...There are still many prospective broodmares of merit
left in this sale, but if your budget is smaller, you have to be
more informed, know what you are doing AND MAKE
SURE YOU HAVE THE ANCESTORS NECESSARY
FOR A STANDOUT MATING. Most high priced mares,
or extremely good racemares are relative failures at stud
because of the unsuitable matings they are subjected to.

13...Here then is the secret to producing great racehorses.
Use a mare with high class speed and ability in her pedigree,
with the best pre-potent ancestor crosses, then match her
with an outstanding sire that has the outstanding crosses,
match-ups and principles that we have found in hundreds
of the most outstanding gallopers in the world.
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14..We compiled the pedigrees of all 673 broodmares listed
in the EASTER BROODMARE Catalogue out to 15
generations to see just what is in the background of this
group of mares. We have found they generally compare quite
closely with lots of solid ideas, & principles which were
found when extending every pedigree in the last 12 years or
so of the KARAKA YEARLING SALES in New Zealand

15...When we went in and checked out all the best gallopers
from all these sales, we find there are slight variations in each
new top galloper, but the broad principles line up very well..

16...Here is a general breakdown of some principles found
when analysing the pedigrees of these 673 mares. We have
taken the liberty to just show the numbers of the mares
that have the most of these principles at the top end.

....187 of these mares have 5 or more male line-breedings
....386 other mares have 3 or 4 male line-breedings

....86 mares have 4 or more balanced line-breedings
....106 mares have 3 lots of balanced line-breedings.

....31 of these mares have 5 line-breedings to a mare
....68 of these mares have 4 line-breedings to a mare

....16 of these mares have 15 or more female lines
....75 of these mares have 12 to 14 female lines

....46 of these mares have 15 or more balance lines
....32 of these mares have 13 or 14 balance lines

....25 of these mares are line-bred to 25 or more ancestors
....45 of these mares are line-bred to 23 or 24 ancestors

....20 of these mares have 11 or more BLUE crosses
....67 of these mares have 8 to 10 BLUE crosses

....83 of these mares have indexes of 720 chains or higher
....98 of these mares have indexes of 700 to 719 chains

....30 of these mares have 250 or more genetic relation crosses
....81 mares have 220 to 249 separate genetic relation crosses

....28 of these mares have 6 or more Intricate Crosses
....71 of these mares have 4 or 5 Intricate Crosses

....20 of these mares have a Matching Index of over 200
....19 mares have Matching Indexes of 190 to 199

....38 of these mares have 120 or more F40 indexes
....45 of these mares have between 111 and 119 F40 indexes

....24 of these mares have a Focus4 index of 26 or more
....28 of these mares have a 21 to 25 Focus4 index.

....18 of these mares have a Focus5 index of 1000 or greater
....70 of these mares have a Focus5 index of 900 to 999

....58 of these mares were STAKES WINNERS
....249 of these mares were winners

....27 mares averaged 7 or more wins for their 1st 14 ancestors
....71 of these mares averaged 6 wins for their 1st 14 ancestors

....23 averaged more than 13 wins for their 1st 31 male ancestors
....37 mares averaged 12 wins for their 1st 31 male ancestors.

....33 have 29 or more of their female ancestors DAMS of SW
....42 have 28 of their near female ancestors DAMS of SW

....6 mares have 4mare damline that have produced 30+ winners
....16 mares have produced 21 to 29 wins along their damline

....16 mares(1st 4 dams) have produced 33 or more individual wins
....29 mares(1st 4 dames) have produced 29 to 32 individual wins

....5 mares-(1st 4 dams) have produced 12 or more SW along dam line
....14 mares(1st 4 dams) have produced 10 or 11 SW between them.

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17....What the above figures show is that there are dozens of
ways that a group of 673 available mares can be compared.
The trick is to know which ones are beneficial, which ones
can compound problems or cause problems so it has been
important to analyse over 57,000 top racehorse pedigrees
to try and sort out what consistent effect each method is having.

18....All these mares can be ranked on the above traits from
the highest one to the lowest one as well as a dozen or more
other not shown ones.

This means you have dozens of comparisons that can be very
meaningful and they all help to identify the better broodmare
prospects for purchasing. Of course, these principles co-exist
with dozens of physical traits and you will also have to evaluate
these conformation traits such as having a majority of stamina
conformation traits, more sprinting, too small or too tall,
crooked legs, lack of constitution, temperament, and there
could be up to 2 dozen other conformation points that
you would benefit by checking thoroughly.

Some highly successful broodmares have quite a few faults,
so you may have to make decisions on a mare that has a
number of very superior traits that you deem highly desirable
and grade the inferior faults/traits in a trade-off situation where
your knowledge and experience tells you they are within
tolerable limits, or are acceptable because of the expected
outstanding benefit of the highly desirable other traits that
the mare possesses.

However, a really poor race and breeding record for 2 dams
in a row would be very hard to accept. Very bad legs faults
may be a real deal breaker. A very poor breeding record
showing lots of dead foals, or missed seasons, or slipped
would be hard to get inspired about.

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19..Iif you finally bid on a few really good types of mares,
& find more determined or deeper pocketed bidders beating
you, this makes it really hard, because you may have to
settle for a mare with less obvious credential, and to make
matters worse, you will be in competition with these other
mares you couldn't afford, and more than likely these will go
to standout sires, and their progeny will quickly rush and
put up the full signs in the yards of the absolute best trainers.

All may not be lost, although you will have to make sure you
have the pedigree and mare that will be very prepotent,
and by using superior breeding knowlege or techniques,
you can produce that exciting galloper.

20..Perhaps only 1 out of every 10 really superior racemares or
well bred mares will be very successful at stud, so that is a huge
field for study. If you buy from the bottom half of the sale, then
generally, you could expect perhaps 1 out of 100 will be
highly successful,.... so be very patient, very careful, very selective.

The buying of the mare may seem high as this sale averaged over
$58,000 each. But, this is the smaller part of your outlay over the
next 5 or 6 years because agistment, high Stud Fees, and costs
for your foals will double or triple your up front investment.

This leads one to consider that you definitely will have an uphill
battle in future years if your mare does not have either good racing
ability, the best of pedigree as well as a close relationship to some
outstanding gallopers. The best policy is to extend yourself and
buy one superior well performed and well bred mare rather
than several cheapies that are very average in most respects.

21..Another problem arises here, because if your mare and her
immediate family have limited or mediocre ability, then when
you intensify the pedigree, the faults that are there will be
magnified, and you will increasing your chances of producing
duds or cull animals with considerable faults. Bad legs,
lack of speed, or lack of constitution would be high on the list
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22...In general, I dislike having to conform or to follow fashion
blindly, but a study of the best pedigrees tells us that they are
built up on combinations of the most common, most popular,
and most successful lines.

Therefore, to give yourself a better chance of using the best
ancestors, adhere to fashion and keep to the more popular
bloodlines. because Nature utilizes principles that rewards
this course of action, especially if you are breeding, buying
or standing stallions.

23..Generally, if you move one generation away from the most
popular bloodlines, you would effectively limit all your matings or
sire choices to a very small selection if you want to use the most
effective breeding techniques, and if you move 2 generations away
from the norm, you could be effectively shooting yourself in the foot..

24...I have compiled all the pedigrees of these 673 mares
and counted up how many times each ancestor appears as
a duplication. There are 3002 separate ancestors that
appear two times or more in this group, which is quite a big
number, but there is a very small number that predominate.

25...I've listed the 25 horses that appear the most often,
and you will notice the huge preponderance of US bred
horses, plus how interrelated these most popular and
successful animals are, and also the amazing success of
TESIO'S unbeaten Nearco and his descendents

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26...SICKLE(Phalaris x Chaucer) decends to NATIVE
DANCER (appears 542 times)which sired RAISE A NATIVE
(378 times), himself sire of MR PROSPECTOR(250)

NATIVE DANCER(542) sired NATALMA(711), dam of
NORTHERN DANCER(786).the sire of DANZIG(209)

PHAROS(Phalaris x Chaucer) sired NEARCO(345) the sire
of NASRULLAH(448), which sired BOLD RULER(203)
NASRULLAH(448) also left NASHUA(224) the sire of
GOLD DIGGER(245) the dam of MR PROSPECTOR(250)

NEARCO(345) also left NEARCTIC(636), the sire of
NORTHERN DANCER(786) which sired DANZIG(209)

NEARCO(345) to TURN-TO(274)..sire of SIR
GAYLORD(265) the sire of SIR IVOR(261) as well as
HAIL TO REASON(216)

PHARAMOND(Phalaris x Chaucer) to BUCKPASSER(231)
to ATTICA(205)..to SIR IVOR(261)

There are lots of other intricate relationships,(HYPERION
has good linkups) but these examples give a very good idea
that the vast majority of the most prolific and successful
bloodlines are very interwoven, so sticking to this powerful
nucleus of the best ancestors may help you get the best results..
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HERE IS THE LIST OF THE 25 ANCESTORS WHICH
APPEAR THE MOST OFTEN IN THESE 673 MARES

1....NORTHERN DANCER appears 786 times
2...NATALMA.................................711
3...NEARCTIC................................636
4...NATIVE DANCER....................542
5...NASRULLAH............................448
6...RAISE A NATIVE.....................378
7...NEARCO..................................345
8...ALMAHMOUD........................280
9...STAR KINGDOM....................273
10..SIR GAYLORD.......................265
11..SIR IVOR................................261
12..MR PROSPECTOR................250
13..LADY ANGELA.....................249
14..GOLD DIGGER......................245
15..RAISE YOU...........................236
16..BUCKPASSER......................231
17..TURN-TO..............................224
18..NASHUA...............................224
19..PRINCEQUILLO..................222
20..HAIL TO REASON..............216
21..PAS DE NOM......................209
22..DANZIG...............................209
23..ATTICA................................205
24..BOLD RULER......................203
25..ROUND TABLE...................198
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