Horse Racing Forum - USA Thoroughbred Races

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 7:08 pm**

what is it with Calumet barely ever promoting their stallions? they also seem to barely ever breed mares. took a quick look at their 2021 reports:

English Channel 57
Keen Ice 48
Oxbow 28
Hightail 28
Bravazo 22
Ransom the Moon 14
Bal a Bali 14
Real Solution 8
Raison d'Etat 6
Optimizer 4
Mr. Z 3
Producer 1

not to mention Big Blue Kitten not breeding any mares in 2021 (did i miss something?). i was kinda surprised seeing them as finalists for Breeder of the Year, because i don't recall any top horses bred by them last year, besides i rarely ever see offspring by their studs on the track. are they just extremely conservative with their stallions' numbers or are they simply don't receive any interest? and what would ever be the reason for them to barely ever advertise them?

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 7:18 pm**

brunanas wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 7:08 pm what is it with Calumet barely ever promoting their stallions? they also seem to barely ever breed mares. took a quick look at their 2021 reports:

English Channel 57
Keen Ice 48
Oxbow 28
Hightail 28
Bravazo 22
Ransom the Moon 14
Bal a Bali 14
Real Solution 8
Raison d'Etat 6
Optimizer 4
Mr. Z 3
Producer 1

not to mention Big Blue Kitten not breeding any mares in 2021 (did i miss something?). i was kinda surprised seeing them as finalists for Breeder of the Year, because i don't recall any top horses bred by them last year, besides i rarely ever see offspring by their studs on the track. are they just extremely conservative with their stallions' numbers or are they simply don't receive any interest? and what would ever be the reason for them to barely ever advertise them?

I’m not sure that promotion does much for stallion book size as much as success on track, perception of the market, desire for speed, etc... Lanes End promotes the hell out of their sires, and still Honor Code got 29 mares. 29 ! If people wanted to breed to Calumet sires, they would.

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 7:52 pm**

Slewfan2 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 7:18 pm
brunanas wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 7:08 pm what is it with Calumet barely ever promoting their stallions? they also seem to barely ever breed mares. took a quick look at their 2021 reports:

English Channel 57
Keen Ice 48
Oxbow 28
Hightail 28
Bravazo 22
Ransom the Moon 14
Bal a Bali 14
Real Solution 8
Raison d'Etat 6
Optimizer 4
Mr. Z 3
Producer 1

not to mention Big Blue Kitten not breeding any mares in 2021 (did i miss something?). i was kinda surprised seeing them as finalists for Breeder of the Year, because i don't recall any top horses bred by them last year, besides i rarely ever see offspring by their studs on the track. are they just extremely conservative with their stallions' numbers or are they simply don't receive any interest? and what would ever be the reason for them to barely ever advertise them?
I’m not sure that promotion does much for stallion book size as much as success on track, perception of the market, desire for speed, etc... Lanes End promotes the hell out of their sires, and still Honor Code got 29 mares. 29 ! If people wanted to breed to Calumet sires, they would.

yeah i agree advertising doesn't do too much, but i believe it helps a little... some of their studs are pretty nice. yet no one ever breeds to them and they don't seem to ever breed any major horses either

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:23 pm**

There isn't an easy way to look up who they bred. Last year they had 4 GSWing homebreds, G1 Channel Cat and Lexitonian, G2 Bourbonic, G3 Gear Jockey. Only one of which was by their own stallion.

English Channel moving to Calumet after starting at Lane's End plummeted his mares bred numbers, I think he was over 100 for 2 years at Calumet. Bal A Bali, Keen Ice and Oxbow got decent numbers when they first went to stud but they didn't fulfill expectations and are now unpopular. They also used to overprice their stallions. There for awhile they'd move stallions around a lot, they'd be in Kentucky one year, then some other state the next, then back to Kentucky. I feel like they sent Lexitonian to Lane's End so he could get a good start at stud.

Raison d'Etat they bought at Keeneland November for 140k, then they stood him the next year for 15k. He never even won a stakes.

The reason they were nominated for leading breeder was they finished 2nd in money earned by the horses they bred. However if you look at the stats, the horses they bred made 4x as many starts as the breeders who finished 1st and 2nd. https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing ... eders/2021 So they are breeding mostly lower performing horses.

They've started selling yearlings and mares in foal the past couple years and they mostly sell for really low amounts. The mares sold with non-transferrable breedings to stallions that Calumet stood, they specifically said which they could be bred to. I don't know how many people took them up on that. They also did that weird thing where they brought in the colored thoroughbred stallion and bred their mares to him. Then they bred at least one of those resulting foals to Keen Ice and sold her on, this was a half sister to their stallion Hence. I mean she might have been worth more than 2.9k if she was by an actual racing thoroughbred stallion. I almost feel like its just a side hobby of the owner and he doesn't really care and just does what he wants. He wanted to be leading breeder and technically he was in 2019/2020 for money earned but he isn't going to win an Eclipse Award.

As for Big Blue Kitten, its honestly not uncommon for their stallions not to have bred mares for a year. This happened a lot the past couple years. Then they'll end up in a breeding stock sale or a digital sale.

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:31 pm**

Flanders wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:23 pm There isn't an easy way to look up who they bred. Last year they had 4 GSWing homebreds, G1 Channel Cat and Lexitonian, G2 Bourbonic, G3 Gear Jockey. Only one of which was by their own stallion.

English Channel moving to Calumet after starting at Lane's End plummeted his mares bred numbers, I think he was over 100 for 2 years at Calumet. Bal A Bali, Keen Ice and Oxbow got decent numbers when they first went to stud but they didn't fulfill expectations and are now unpopular. They also used to overprice their stallions. There for awhile they'd move stallions around a lot, they'd be in Kentucky one year, then some other state the next, then back to Kentucky. I feel like they sent Lexitonian to Lane's End so he could get a good start at stud.

Raison d'Etat they bought at Keeneland November for 140k, then they stood him the next year for 15k. He never even won a stakes.

The reason they were nominated for leading breeder was they finished 2nd in money earned by the horses they bred. However if you look at the stats, the horses they bred made 4x as many starts as the breeders who finished 1st and 2nd. https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing ... eders/2021 So they are breeding mostly lower performing horses.

They've started selling yearlings and mares in foal the past couple years and they mostly sell for really low amounts. The mares sold with non-transferrable breedings to stallions that Calumet stood, they specifically said which they could be bred to. I don't know how many people took them up on that. They also did that weird thing where they brought in the colored thoroughbred stallion and bred their mares to him. Then they bred at least one of those resulting foals to Keen Ice and sold her on, this was a half sister to their stallion Hence. I mean she might have been worth more than 2.9k if she was by an actual racing thoroughbred stallion. I almost feel like its just a side hobby of the owner and he doesn't really care and just does what he wants. He wanted to be leading breeder and technically he was in 2019/2020 for money earned but he isn't going to win an Eclipse Award.

As for Big Blue Kitten, its honestly not uncommon for their stallions not to have bred mares for a year. This happened a lot the past couple years. Then they'll end up in a breeding stock sale or a digital sale.

Flanders, do you think Hot Rod Charlie's success on the track will earn Oxbow more mares? It doesn't seem to yet (unless I'm missing something) but I wouldn't be surprised if he's being written off as a one hit wonder.

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 10:55 pm**

KatieK101 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 9:31 pm Flanders, do you think Hot Rod Charlie's success on the track will earn Oxbow more mares? It doesn't seem to yet (unless I'm missing something) but I wouldn't be surprised if he's being written off as a one hit wonder.

I would say it was Indian Miss and not Oxbow anyway, since she also produced Mitole to another stallion that wasn't successful in Kentucky.

But maybe Hot Rod Charlie is the reason Oxbow went from 15 mares in 2020 to 28 in 2021. Or it could have been breedings given with mares that Calumet sold in 2020. Or maybe it was that they dropped his stud fee to 7.5k. They were real slow on doing that as I said above they liked to overprice their stallions. He stood for 20k in 2014, 17.5k in 2015, 2016, they put it back to 20k in 2017-2018, 15k in 2019, and 10k in 2020. But he didn't have the racetrack or sells results to keep his stud fee that high that long. It only hurt breeders who actually used him.

He started out getting good mare numbers, his first yearling averages were okay ~100k on a 20k stud fee. By the next year it plummeted to 38k, then 10k, then 8k, back up to 18k, then to 10k last year.

I just don't see commercial breeders using him, when his foals haven't even covered his stud fee for years. One good foal doesn't turn a stallions career around.

Posted: **Tue Mar 01, 2022 12:33 pm**

They are a bit better at setting stud fees these days, but I think their newer practice of breeding claiming mares to their stallions then dumping them or the resulting progeny at Keeneland November or September for four or low five figures is definitely not helping. Even when they do breed nice mares like Paladin Bay to their stallions, they still willingly dump them.

When they brought in interesting prospects like Grey Swallow or Musketier I was intrigued to see if they had a master plan of sending nicely matched mares and racing them as homebreds. But they kinda just send bad mares to unpopular stallions then make it someone else’s problem. Adena Springs did the same thing in the early-mid 2000s, though on a much larger scale. It does make you the top breeder by earnings, and maybe you get some G1 winners out of it if you throw enough spaghetti at the wall, but it is a very expensive hobby/experiment. And not always sustainable.

Posted: **Thu Mar 03, 2022 3:14 am**

brunanas wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 7:08 pm are they just extremely conservative with their stallions' numbers or are they simply don't receive any interest? and what would ever be the reason for them to barely ever advertise them?

I thought I'd just pull that conversation over here. The stallions they entered were: Behesht, Grey Swallow, Lentenor, Musketier, and Snapy Halo. Grey Swallow was sold privately and died in 2021. Musketier, I don't know, but PQ said he died in 2021. Behesht, Lentenor and Snapy Halo were then entered in the 2022 Keeneland January sale. Lentenor was purchased privately before the sale. Behesht sold for 3.5k and Snapy Halo sold for 1.5k.

I wanted to come back to this thread to touch on the Risque Remarque thing. I'm fine if someone wants to be a sporthorse breeder. But Calumet was breeding racing mares to a sporthorse stallion and sporthorse mares to thoroughbred stallions to try and make colored racehorses. Some of them actually raced. I think it bothers me because they had no intentions of keeping them and just sold them on for next to nothing like they do with all their horses. Its why I feel like its just a fun hobby and nothing more for the owner.

Risque Remarque was bred to Hence's dam Floating Island to produce Almost Fancy, who they bred to Keen Ice and sold for 2.9k at Keeneland November in 2020, I think. He also had foals with 3 other A.P. Indy mares owned by Calumet, probably other mares too, its not easy to find them.
Then they bred the palomino mares to RR. The one was also bred to Aikenite but didn't have a foal and died in 2019, the year the foal should have been born.
The other one Frost Queen (her sire was 2 when he was bred to her dam, she was bred at 3):
2018 - no foal (bred to Raison d'Etat)
2019 - Xochimilco, c. by Risque Remarque
2020 - Frosted Willowmoon, palomino f. by Ransom The Moon
2021 - bay colt by Ransom The Moon
2022 - bred to Oxbow
They sold her in a Keeneland Digital Sale in August 2021 and must have given a free breeding to Oxbow, as they like to do with mares they sell.

Posted: **Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:53 am**

Behesht moved to Ireland.

https://paulickreport.com/news/bloodsto ... n-ireland/

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