Today is February 14 - Valentine’s Day, and romance is in the air. Rather aptly, it’s also the traditional start of the racehorse breeding season in the Northern Hemisphere, although there’s not a lot of romance around in that department. It’s more medical procedure, lab work, and rodeo, as Ken Snyder found out.
It’s a chilly but bright and quiet Sunday morning in late February 2020 at Nashwan Stud, part of Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum’s massive Shadwell Farm operation, in Lexington, Kentucky.
Somehow it seems there should be more fanfare for what is about to happen. A sleepy driver and what looks like a sleepier mare, Miss Hopper, arrive in a simple double-horse trailer. Miss Hopper is a maiden with no idea of what’s about to happen, of course, and it is perhaps for the best as she will move from proverbial pillar to post in the next hour.
The 5-year-old mare had an undistinguished career on the track. She had two wins in 27 starts and total earnings of $38,365.
Pedigree trumps race record with fillies and mares, however, and she has plenty. Her sire, Grasshopper, was on the board in 13 of his 21 starts, five of which were wins — and earned a highly respectable $848,852. He was placed in six Graded events and winner of a Grade 3, the Mineshaft Handicap, in 2008.
The dam of Miss Hopper, My Girl Bess, by More Than Ready, had a pedestrian career on the racetrack, much like her daughter, winning one of ten starts and earning just $24,640. Miss Hopper’s maternal grandfather more than makes up for missing past performance in his granddaughter, however, having won over a million dollars. Wins included a Grade 1, two Grade 2s, and a Grade 3.
The Shadwell Stallion Mohaymen, who will be bred to Miss Hopper, has earned the 60 mares he will breed in 2020 and $7,500 for the farm’s coffers for each mating (a fee he will carry into 2021) with earnings just short of a million dollars. He won four Grade 2s, including both the Lambholm South Holy Bull Stakes and Xpressbet.com Fountain of Youth Stakes, two key Kentucky Derby prep races in 2016. He ran a respectable fourth in the Derby itself.
Breeding, essentially, is a crapshoot, albeit one with educated guesses on complementary pedigrees. Often, the objective is to blend speed and stamina in pairings, and the constant in breeding is consideration of how much to invest on a stallion fee.
Speculation on breeding ability is always highest with Kentucky Derby winners in America, but running ability is no predictor of progeny. “There’s more Derby winners that have failed at stud than been successful,” said Shadwell Stallion Manager Kent Barnes.
Pedigree, even without past performance, can trump even the greatest racing career. Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner (and U.S. Horse of the Year) Sunday Silence was not popular with breeders because of an absence of pedigree. After being sold to Japanese interests and relocated there, he became one of the world’s greatest sires, overcoming low expectations because of ancestry. “California Chrome could be [another] one that just got away from us,” remarked Barnes of the Derby, Preakness and Dubai World Cup winner (and dual American Horse of the Year) who was recently shipped to Japan for reasons identical to Sunday Silence.
‘Ovulation isn’t by the calendar’
Miss Hopper fits the profile for a late-February breeding. This is the time when maidens (like her) or previously barren mares (mares that have been in foal but miscarried) are bred. “You’re going to have very few select mares starting to come now,” said Barnes (pictured). “Mid-March to the end of March is our busiest time. You have the overlap - you still have maiden mares that haven’t been bred yet; they’re slow coming around on their cycle. Same with barren mares, and then you have the big influx of mares that have foaled already.”
The start of the breeding season — February 14, Valentine’s Day — it is more tradition than fact, according to Barnes. Nature and not the calendar dictates the exact start. “We try to stick to February 14th,” said Barnes, but ovulation isn’t by a calendar, he added. “The tenth [of February] is the absolute earliest.”
The process of breeding Miss Hopper to Mohaymen would have begun the day before with a vet checking a follicle that will produce the egg to be fertilized in ovulation. “It [ovulation] is probably going to go in the next 24 hours or so,” said Barnes, a 30-year veteran in breeding sheds. Hence Miss Hopper’s arrival at Shadwell for her ‘date’.
Her chances of conceiving are in the 60-65 percent range. That means, of course, there’s a good chance she will have to return to the farm for a second breeding. The same percentages apply to a returning mare. “Then we’ll get a smaller percent coming back a third time,” said Barnes. “You will have a few mares that come back for three trips. You might have just a handful of mares — maybe one or two — that have to come back for four.”
A filly or mare’s ability to conceive, surprisingly, is only half the equation. Not all stallions take to breeding, one famous example being the late Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem. “He did breed an occasional mare, but it was one every 50 or one every 100,” said Barnes.
Inexperience is a more common obstacle with young stallions. The day before this Miss Hopper-Mohaymen breeding, Barnes had traveled to another Shadwell farm for a young stallion more interested in being aggressive with his mating partner than breeding. “We put a muzzle on this horse yesterday and that’s what worked for him. The muzzle took away that ability to bite at the mare and it kind of focused his attention behind, and he was able to ‘drop down’ and breed.”
With a smile, Barnes added, “Trial and error … you try to remember things you’ve done over 30 years.”
Once off the trailer and walked into the breeding shed, Miss Hopper, who is in heat, is backed to the stall door of a teaser stallion, Jack. His interest in her, it is hoped, will prompt an appropriate response from her for what is to come.
The crew quickly notes “no response” on her part, except for curiosity as to why this strange horse is interested in things back there. She is then led into a stall accompanied by continuous whistling from the stallion breeding crew (a signal for any horse — a male horse or mare in heat - to urinate, something that will facilitate the chances for Miss Hopper getting into foal.)
Grooms and other farm workers teach the cue early in a Thoroughbred’s life, whistling when they observe nature making a call on a horse’s bladder. The association of whistling to urination typically produces an automatic response, a time-saver for horses being drug-tested after a race.
Just outside the stall, she is loaded into a three-sided, padded enclosure, a tad narrower than that of a starting gate, open to the front but low enough all the way around to provide access to her aft region. She will get a scrub in that area as thorough as that for surgery on a human. Her tail is also wrapped to help clear the way for Mohaymen.
The scene changes rather dramatically for Miss Hopper after being led from the scrub-down to the breeding shed. First, she is fitted with felt boots on her rear hooves to mitigate any harm to the stallion or stallion crew if she kicks rearward. She comically walks exaggeratedly, raising her rear hooves in an attempt to shake them off and walking very much like a camel.
The “rodeo”, as Barnes refers to it, begins with the teaser Jack entering the shed wearing an apron on his underside to prevent him from being the sire of a mixed-breed foal in 11 months’ time. A twitch on a long pole is applied to Miss Hopper’s nose and twisted down a bit for control. A front hoof is also lifted with a rope to prevent both movements by the mare and kicking as well.
Jack mounts Miss Hopper with some consternation on her part “to get her familiar with having a horse up on her back”, said Barnes.
When Jack’s work is done (a point he most assuredly would argue) he is led back to his stall and Miss Hopper is prepared for the main event.
Mohaymen is led into the breeding shed and taken behind a partition for a quick scrub of his own.
Strangely embarrassing
“He’ll mount this mare once. She’ll probably jump forward a little bit. He may shy and spook and come back off and then we’ll reset her and go a second time - probably get her bred on the second try,” said Barnes. There is no ‘probably’; 30 years has also given Barnes ability to foresee exactly how things will go down in this breeding.
Between the first and second mount is something remarkable, odd, and strangely embarrassing to observe in this most intimate activity to witness: the Flehmen response. Mohaymen goes stock-still, raises his nose into the air, and curls back his mouth. This facilitates pheromone detection by an odor organ in the roof of the stallion’s mouth.
One has to wonder how things are done or were done in the wild without a four-member team assisting - and I do mean assisting - where things go. One crew member helps with what I’ll call ‘location’ for Mohaymen and two grooms with Barnes keep the two horses in clear space rather than up against the barn’s walls. In a matter of seconds, the stallion’s tail ‘flags’ upward and the breeding is done except for a moment of lingering by Mohaymen - ‘afterglow’ perhaps - to savor the experience.
Leaving the farm, I happen to see Mohaymen in his paddock, grazing and, who knows, maybe reminiscing over his morning. What a way to start the day …
Postscript: On March 3, I received this email from Kent Barnes: “Checked Miss Hopper today and she is in foal to Mohaymen.”