BREEDING YEARLINGS IN ENG LAND.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1875, 26 February 1880, Page 3

BREEDING YEARLINGS IN ENG LAND.

la 1840 the average stallion fee in England, says “ The Turf, Field, and Farm,” was less than £l2. Then the lights of the stud were Bay Middleton, Birdoatcher, Camel, Defence, Venison, Harkaway, Emilias, Euclid, Gladiator, Touchstone, Pantaloon, and Voltaire. Now the average fee is £3O, and the list includes such horses as Blair Athol, Oremorne, Galopin, Hermit, Rosicrucian, Springfield, and Speculum. These seven stallions command a fee of £IOO each, but the average is reduced by the more moderate price put on the services of the other horses. The value of the colts and fillies has increased with the years. In 1840 the price of one of the best fillies, as fixed by Lord George Bentinck, was £340. In 1879 the average price of yearling fillies was £670, and of colts £BBS. The London “ Field ” makes these figures the foundation of a leading article. It thinks that for fairly average animals there is a good market, and it sneers at the breeders’ cry of “ breeding at a loss ” as nothing but a cuckoo cry. Wo make room for an extract: — “Of course, among such a large number of yearlings as are annually sold in this country, there are necessarily a large number of weeds, which cannot possibly be prevented; but, after attending all the principal sales of blood stock of the year, we cannot forbear expressing our opinion that the weeds preponderate to an alarming and unnecessary extent. For this breeders have principally to thank themselves. They are too fond of having their foals dropped in January or February, and they breed too much to fashion. Take Blair Athol, for instance, a horse that has had, year after year, the best mares in the country put to him, and who, except that he begat perhaps the beat miler ever seen, the roarer Prince Charlie, and fair second class horses like Silvio and Craig Millar, has been an undoubted failure at the stud. Ho is now advertised to cover at lOOgs, with a reasonable chance of having his list filled, because breeders, following one another like a flock of sheep, instead of exercising their own judgment, believe that his stock will continue to sell, but in this they may find they have made a mistake. It appears to the majority of breeders to be sufficient that a horse has performed brilliantly on one occasion on the turf, is standing at a high figure, and has blood that may be supposed to nick with the mare, to justify his being patronised—never mind whether in shape he be a suitable animal, or wt other he bo sound or unsound in many different ways. Fashion, they consider, must be served ; but fashion is sounding the knell of our thoroughbred stock, and instead of breeding from animals like those we have mentioned as serving at an exorbitant fee, the owners of mares had better rely upon some of the sound, genuine, staying horses that, standing at perhaps half the fee or less, are in every respect more suitable, and of which we could choose some eight or ten, except for the fear of appearing invidious. That lOOgs. is an absurd price, especially for a horse that is yet to prove his ability to beget racing stock, cannot be disputed ; and it says but little for the judgment of breeders that the owners of these horses should find it profitable to set so high a fee upon their services, and each year we see the absurdity clearly manifest. Last year the Cesarewitoh (the principal long-distance handicap of the year) was won by a horse who had been previously sold for 3090 gs., whose dam was unknown, and whoso sire would scarcely have realised £2O if sold by auction ; this year the same race fell to a genuine staying horse, perhaps the best in the country, whose sire was positively not advertised in the last Book Calendar, and whose servhesare now to bo obtained for2s gs. The third in this race was a three year-old filly, who would probably have won but for being sacrificed for a stable companion, and who, after winning the Great Yorkshire Handicap at Doncaster, was sold for 2000 gs.j yet her sire was a horse whose services could hitherto have been obtained almost for the asking, and of whom this was the only thoroughbred progeny.