Stallion News

[Diver52]

I've seen "Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet" accidentally inject into a vein with scary results. I have no comment on encouraging a stallion's libido but Laoban's death seems to have been a sad accident that could have happened with a more innocuous jab.

[BaroqueAgain1]

I saw that "Dr. Oakley" episode, and IIRC it was a sedative that she accidentally injected into a neck vein (or artery?). Went straight to the horse's brain and he went down, with seizure-like thrashing/shaking. It passed and the horse was fine, but I give props to the show's producers for allowing them to show something like that. A real 'injection' of reality.

[Gemini]

A lack of horsemanship, but plenty of greed.

They literally brought to life that parable of "killing the goose that lays golden eggs".

[barbaro111]

Laoban is reported to have died following an injection of "Black Shot", given to him to raise his libido after he was unable to breed for two days in May. as long as we have no breeding cap, stallions will continue to drop dead because of greed.

There is a reason why stallions shouldn't be breeding 100+ mares over-and-over. Trying to push the envelope by not listening to the horse by injecting him with a libido enhancer that expired nine years ago is purely negligence and animal cruelty. They killed that horse. Good for insurance not paying out.

Yes they killed the horse and covered it up!!! And they are not going to be punished except by the insurance company. This is so disturbing. I am a fan, not in the horse industry, and had no idea they did things like this to enhance the libido of horses. Naive I guess. It is truly horrible.

[barbaro111]

Libido enhancer. He already covered 126 mares, and was basically not interested anymore. They shot him up with this cocktail that expired nine years ago.

Not only was it expired, They used five times the reccomended dosage as well... horrible,poor horse

Win Star should be forced to shut its doors.....they don’t give a damn about these poor horses; the horses are commodities with which they make their money, that’s all. This is unfathomable greed and cruelty

It is all of those things you mentioned but worse, my guess is the Win Star will pay no price for their massive greed and cruelty.

[Mylute]

Sir Barton's tack is being sold via online auction. Someone didn't even know they had it.
https://www.weissauctions.com/AMSEvents ... 92379bc53a#

[Flanders]

Curious to anyone who has been to Old Friends. Do they commonly put companions in with the stallions? I know Alphabet Soup and Gorgeous George, the donkey, were together and when Soup passed George is now with Ide. There are more pics only on Facebook, but I found this one on Twitter where Sun King has a gelding friend named Draxhall Woods. I think its great for the retired stallions to have a friend as long as they don't beat the crap out of said friend.

https://twitter.com/Oldfriendsfarm/stat ... 5417532421

[Izvestia]

Curious to anyone who has been to Old Friends. Do they commonly put companions in with the stallions? I know Alphabet Soup and Gorgeous George, the donkey, were together and when Soup passed George is now with Ide. There are more pics only on Facebook, but I found this one on Twitter where Sun King has a gelding friend named Draxhall Woods. I think its great for the retired stallions to have a friend as long as they don't beat the crap out of said friend.

https://twitter.com/Oldfriendsfarm/stat ... 5417532421

Haven’t been, but it looks like it Depends on the horse! Touch Gold would probably eat another horse!!!

[Gemini]

The vet accidentally gave one or more of the shots intravenously and Laoban started going into distress less than a minute later. They said they have video of it. So while we know more now its still the same as its always been. He died after getting a shot that was mistakenly given intravenously. Even with the vitamins being 9-10 years out of date, they wouldn't have killed the horse. That was probably why they gave 5x the amount though.

What blows my mind is that you have an operation easily worth eight or nine figures and handling premier stallions...but they can't clean out their cabinets and keep new meds on hand? Such a redneck move.

[BaroqueAgain1]

My elders would say, "penny-wise, but pound-foolish."

[Northport]

The vet accidentally gave one or more of the shots intravenously and Laoban started going into distress less than a minute later. They said they have video of it. So while we know more now its still the same as its always been. He died after getting a shot that was mistakenly given intravenously. Even with the vitamins being 9-10 years out of date, they wouldn't have killed the horse. That was probably why they gave 5x the amount though.

What blows my mind is that you have an operation easily worth eight or nine figures and handling premier stallions...but they can't clean out their cabinets and keep new meds on hand? Such a redneck move.

It’s definitely baffling, unless the vet brought her own supplies (usually the case for a vet who works out of his/her car and stops at multiple farms in a given day), but is the vet in question a private WinStar vet and full time employee of the farm? In which case the farm would be the “owner” of the drugs in question.

Given how WinStar volunteered no information at the time of Laoban’s death, and has repeated in the last couple weeks that they have accepted the outcome and are moving on, they know they seriously f*cked up. They aren’t fighting the insurance company, they aren’t suing the vet, they are just keeping their heads down and hoping people forget that their greed ultimately led to the death of a perfectly healthy 8 year old stallion.

[Modern Renaissance]

Too bad they've disabled comments on their Twitter over the past few days.

What is the stance behind not allowing TBs to go the AI route?

[BaroqueAgain1]

Besides the long-held, traditional belief that TBs should only be the product of a live breeding?
IIRC, there are arguments that AI would lead to loss of genetic diversity, as everyone would try to get semen from a Dubawi, Into Mischief, Tapit or War Front. Since QHs have allowed both AI and embryo transfer for a while, I would be curious if any of our QH experts out there have seen a loss of genetic diversity in the breed.
IMHO, that issue of too many breeders wanting semen from too few stallions could be addressed by some sort of cap on how many 'straws' from a stallion could be sold.
It is tempting to think of the potential offspring we could have seen from stallions we have lost. If Coolmore had stocked Galileo's semen, wouldn't it seem wonderful if they could use it?

[CorridorZ75]

Supply and demand. Have you see the difference in QH stud fees versus TBs if late? Also having that many more yearlings available would eventually drop those prices as well. With better genetics these days, it would be pretty easy to determine if people were playing fast and loose with the pedigrees though.

[CorridorZ75]

Besides the long-held, traditional belief that TBs should only be the product of a live breeding?
IIRC, there are arguments that AI would lead to loss of genetic diversity, as everyone would try to get semen from a Dubawi, Into Mischief, Tapit or War Front. Since QHs have allowed both AI and embryo transfer for a while, I would be curious if any of our QH experts out there have seen a loss of genetic diversity in the breed.
IMHO, that issue of too many breeders wanting semen from too few stallions could be addressed by some sort of cap on how many 'straws' from a stallion could be sold.
It is tempting to think of the potential offspring we could have seen from stallions we have lost. If Coolmore had stocked Galileo's semen, wouldn't it seem wonderful if they could use it?

In a word, no. There are plenty of Galileos out there.

[Missbeholder]

Besides the long-held, traditional belief that TBs should only be the product of a live breeding?
IIRC, there are arguments that AI would lead to loss of genetic diversity, as everyone would try to get semen from a Dubawi, Into Mischief, Tapit or War Front. Since QHs have allowed both AI and embryo transfer for a while, I would be curious if any of our QH experts out there have seen a loss of genetic diversity in the breed.
IMHO, that issue of too many breeders wanting semen from too few stallions could be addressed by some sort of cap on how many 'straws' from a stallion could be sold.
It is tempting to think of the potential offspring we could have seen from stallions we have lost. If Coolmore had stocked Galileo's semen, wouldn't it seem wonderful if they could use it?

Wouldn't capping "straw" sales cause the same push-back if not more as the attempt to cap live covers did?

I doubt that would fly either. Jmo.

[Modern Renaissance]

Supply and demand. Have you see the difference in QH stud fees versus TBs if late? Also having that many more yearlings available would eventually drop those prices as well. With better genetics these days, it would be pretty easy to determine if people were playing fast and loose with the pedigrees though.

Can't they just control the amount of swimmers on the market? I mean ultimately that's what you're paying for. Why can't you ship ship your mare to Winstar to get implanted? I suppose the insemination process could be costly but really -- I have no idea. More just curious.

Trust me, I've never advocate for more race horses than we need.

[TwilightTear]

Curious to anyone who has been to Old Friends. Do they commonly put companions in with the stallions? I know Alphabet Soup and Gorgeous George, the donkey, were together and when Soup passed George is now with Ide. There are more pics only on Facebook, but I found this one on Twitter where Sun King has a gelding friend named Draxhall Woods. I think its great for the retired stallions to have a friend as long as they don't beat the crap out of said friend.

https://twitter.com/Oldfriendsfarm/stat ... 5417532421

I visited Old Friends last summer. They said they have upwards of 150 horses on the Kentucky property. The public tour only includes some of the "featured" horses on the farm. As I recall, nearly all (if not all...) of the geldings included on the tour were paired up. Our guide said that they like to turn geldings out with a friend if they can, although it can take time to find and make a compatible match. Other than Sun King, the stallions all seemed to be turned out alone. I definitely remember Birdstone, Sarava, Silver Charm, and Touch Gold were all in their own paddocks. On the day we visited, Soup was in the barn with Gorgeous George. (Apparently, they were rotating Silver Charm with Soup and George for paddock time.)

The paddocks are fairly close together at Old Friends. The group I was with really didn't seem to know or care about racing and seemed more interested in Popcorn's Deelite than any other horse, which didn't sit well with Silver Charm who was in the next paddock. It was pretty funny because the whole time everyone was asking questions about Popcorn's Deelite, Silver Charm was next to the fence, stomping his foot, clearly mad we were taking too long to get to him. Then, when the group at long last did start moving in his direction, he went into the back of his paddock and sulked for a couple of minutes until I guess he decided he had made his point and finally came over to the fence to get his carrots.

I'm back in Lexington in early June - I was planning to go back to Old Friends then, so I'll try to pay better attention this time to who is paired up with who.

[Falinadin]

TB racing is also much more international than QH racing, so other TB authorities have to be factored in when considering allowing AI. If the American JC allowed AI but Japan/Europe/SAF/etc didn't, it would devalue the american TB (ie foreign interests couldn't purchase and export a yearling produced from AI, or a mare bred artificially, as they wouldn't accepted into their studbook). So, you'd have to convince all the TB studbooks world-wide to accept AI together. Good luck with that.

[KatieK101]

TB racing is also much more international than QH racing, so other TB authorities have to be factored in when considering allowing AI. If the American JC allowed AI but Japan/Europe/SAF/etc didn't, it would devalue the american TB (ie foreign interests couldn't purchase and export a yearling produced from AI, or a mare bred artificially, as they wouldn't accepted into their studbook). So, you'd have to convince all the TB studbooks world-wide to accept AI together. Good luck with that.

This is a good point! I hadn't considered this stand point.