On The Hunt In The Valley

Five of the last seven days I've spent tootling around a very green and lush Hunter Valley looking at Magic Millions yearlings.

I've been to Strawberry Hill, Attunga, Yarraman, Kitchwin Hills, Bellerive, Holbrook, Kia Ora, Segenhoe, Darley, Riversdale, Ashleigh, Willow Park, Murrulla and Kulani Park.

I took the opportunity to go up to Willow Tree to see the new Kulani Park farm of Rhys Smith and Chloe Latif. I'm too much of a hardened old cynic to start pissing in peoples' pockets at my age, but this country blew me away. The property is on a magnificent stretch of virgin horse country lying to the north/east with rich soils, 1,000 acres or so, and whilst it's being set up with practicality a priority it is aesthetically very stimulating and will be a real showplace. Looks to me every bit as good as anything in the Valley proper. I used to say when I was running Waikato 20-odd years ago that a fool could breed good horses there (and I did, often) because the farm itself was superior. I can visualise Kulani Park breeding and rearing good horses at this new location; they have wide open spaces and fertile soils and have made a decision in principle never to overstock the place. Good luck to them. I also heard on the Hunter Valley grapevine that Coolmore have either bought or are acquiring land in this area as an insurance policy for the future.

I'll be up in the Valley for a further two days, look at about 100 more yearlings, then call it quits. At least that breaks the back of the main catalogue. I hit the Gold Coast on 1 January.

There's general nervousness, and rightly so, about what state the market will be in when MM opens. In times of economic uncertainty - and I'm sure the worst is still well ahead of us - people react primarily on emotion and are likely to approach this sale thinking conservatively. I believe vendors hold the key; if from the start they adopt a realistic approach to the value of their horses and allow them to get sold and create momentum at the sale, that will be an encouraging signal to the buying bench to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in. Let's face it, yearlings have been selling for far more than they're worth for several years now and many breeders have enjoyed massive profits. It's in breeders' best interests now to keep the stock moving, keep owners in the game and help keep the wheels of racing turning.

In the last recession, late '80s/early '90s, the damage was done when very high ingoing costs of production (notably service fees) were met by a rapid drop in the value of resultant progeny, as much as 60% over a couple of years. This imbalance put a lot of breeders out of business. Faced with the near-certainty of a declining market in the immediate future, upper-end service fees in 2008 are totally out of kilter with the reality. Major studs profess to have the interests of their breeder customers at heart (though savage increases in service fees, sometimes before stallions even have a runner, tend to belie that). If they truly did have those interests at heart they should be rebating 25 or 30% of the service fees charged in 2008 for breeders who are contracted at full freight and who pay on time. They can afford to do so. It would give their customers a better chance of trading profitably at the sales of 2011 and would be an appropriate gesture of goodwill as breeders head into uncertain times.

Oh look at the sky! Pigs flying!