December matings by the numbers

Written by Bren O'Brien

The foaling season may be all but completed around Australia, but the breeding season continues for stallions, with the stats from the 2020 season revealing that around 11 per cent of mare covers occur in the final month of the year.

TDN AusNZ has had a look at the service dates through December 2020 via Studbook across Australia's top 20 stallions in terms of total covers for that season.

Across around 4000 total seasonal covers for these 20 stallions, there were 451 mare covers in December, or 11.3 per cent of the total stallion workload across the breeding season, which begins on September 1.

The monthly breakdown of service dates reveals it is the middle two months, October and November, which are the busiest of the four months, with 30.4 and 30.5 per cent of covers respectively. That would be no surprise to anyone working on a stallion farm.

Table: Month-by-month breakdown covering dates by top 20 Australian stallions (2020)

September had 27.8 per cent of total covers, something which reflects the preference of some farms to ease into breeding season, especially with first-season sires, who are adapting to their workload in the shed.

The busiest stallion in December last year was Shamus Award at Rosemont Stud, with 39 covers, or 22 per cent of his 177-strong book, the last of which occurred on Christmas Eve.

Second on that list was Coolmore's So You Think (NZ), who was Australia's busiest stallion overall last year with 261 covers, 37 of which came in December. He didn't finish up his season until New Year's Eve.

It was an extraordinarily busy season for So You Think, who clearly had the most amount of covers in September with 84, and then 71 in October and 69 in November.

Table: Largest books for Australian sires in December 2020

Also with over 30 services in December last year were Vinery Stud's Star Turn, who had 35, or 21 per cent of his final book in the final month, along with barnmate All Too Hard (31), as well as Newgate's Capitalist (31) and Coolmore's Yes Yes Yes (30) and Pierro (30).

Shuttle stallions are usually headed back across the equator by Christmas and so usually wrap their seasons earlier. High-profile Coolmore shuttle pair Justify (USA) and American Pharoah (USA) left Australia in mid-December last year but were still able to serve December books of 11 and 14 respectively.

Swettenham Stud's Toronado (Ire), who had the biggest book of any shuttle stallion in Australia in 2020, left these shores for France on December 16, having covered his final mare five days earlier. He served 12 mares in December.

The stats also back up the fact that older, or proven stallions, also tend to have a quieter time of it towards the end of the breeding season. I Am Invincible, who had the highest service fee of any stallion in the country, served 12 mares, or just 5.6 per cent of his total book, at Yarraman Park in December 2020.

It's a similar story with Arrowfield Stud's four-time Australian champion Snitzel, who had 12 bookings in December from a total book of 150, while Coolmore's Fastnet Rock had eight (of 82) and Darley's Exceed And Excel seven (of 107) and Lonhro, a famous December foal himself, 10 (of 97).

The New Zealand numbers

Looking at the top five New Zealand stallions (on service fee) last year, and the ratio of December covers is quite similar.

Gallery: Waikato Stud stallions

Across Waikato Stud trio Savabeel, Ocean Park (NZ) and Super Seth as well as Cambridge Stud's Almanzor (Fr) and Little Avondale Stud's Per Incanto (USA) there were 790 covers, of which 84, or 11.85 per cent, were in December, compared to 11.3 per cent across the Tasman.

Mainly because of climate New Zealand breeders prefer to send their mares to stallions later in the spring and this is backed up by the fact that 36.67 per cent of services across those stallions were in November, a much higher ratio than Australia where it as 30.5 per cent, 28.21 per cent in October, and 23.27 per cent in September.

Table: Month-by-month breakdown covering dates by Top five New Zealand stallions (2020)

The busiest stallion of those five in New Zealand through the December of 2020 was Savabeel with 24, or 17.5 per cent of his book, the latest cover being on December 30.