Swettenham Stud

Interview with Ian Rimington, Bloodstock manager/sales and marketing, Swettenham Stud, Nagambie, Victoria

By Virginia Harvey - The Land

Do you think breeding industry bodies are doing enough to encourage more people into owning a broodmare? And any suggestions?

Who are the breeding industry bodies? 

If you mean all the bodies that have a vested interest in breeders providing the product to conduct racing for the next decade, then the answer is an emphatic no.

Have these bodies realised the need for breeders to be encouraged?  I honestly don’t think so.

For racing to continue to fund itself even at its present levels it needs horses.

Maintain horses bred, and you maintain race meetings, race fields, turnover, distributions and stakemoney.

Once race fields decrease so does the turnover and therefore by definition the funding decreases.

A popular misconception is that we are producing too many horses.

What we do is produce far too many horses for the yearling sales series as we know them.

Go to any mixed sale in the past two years and show me evidence of a tighter economy and decreasing prices. 

You cannot because the demand is still there for tried horses. 

So the question is what would encourage anybody to own a broodmare?

Higher returns at sales, higher prizemoney (including bonus schemes), higher residual values – these are three possible answers.

However, let me focus on what may be an attractive incentive to some breeders?

Suggestion A:

• In 2008 there were approximately 6200 people who owned one mare. And they make up 60 per cent of all breeders.

• Making a gross assumption I believe most owners/breeders generally have one to two mares
• Almost 75pc of breeders had one or two mares returned in 2008.
• So many of these people are non-commercial breeders.
• We actually have a little cottage industry similar to what New Zealand enjoyed for many decades. In NZ, their importance is recognised and appreciated.
• So we need to recognise and encourage our smaller breeders.

Let’s consider these initiatives:

• The revenue earned from registering racehorses is not huge in the overall scheme of things.  Give the breeders of these Thoroughbreds free registrations of those horses if they are in the registering owners for racing. No registrations before 16 months of age and with a declaration not entered for a yearling sale ie. genuine owners/breeders.
• Rebate all stud book fees related to that horse being registered as long as the same breeder/owner all the way through. At the absolute most this will involve 9000 horses (by my calculations) and this is a cheap incentive to maintain our racing numbers.
• Importantly, this will be less than the governing bodies will need to spend trying to encourage people to breed once they have left. The owner/breeders are incredibly resilient and we just need to recognise them and assist a most important section of our breeding ranks.
• Then if you are really worried about having enough product.  If numbers are disappearing at a rapid rate then consider a payment to those qualified as above when the applicable horse first races assuming it races in the same ownership. Whatever you do for these breeders (who are the essence of our industry), you are helping to maintain our horse population.

Suggestion B:

• Many very wealthy people want to be involved in our industry and have somewhere to channel their enthusiasm and finances.
• Breeding is an area run more on business principles so new investors may feel more comfortable to invest in the breeding industry, rather than go straight into racing horses.
• Access to the right information is more forthcoming in breeding circles than when buying yearlings.
• With some minor inexpensive changes the industry can ensure breeders if successful can still get the kudos if perhaps that was something they seek.

So let’s do something simple that won’t cost a lot of money, but has significant benefits to the industry:

• Simply invite all breeders of runners in Group 1 races to the members for their particular Group 1 race day.
• Provide them with seating for the race and then escort the winning breeder to the mounting yard for the race presentation.
• Provide a trophy (no need for another speech) and involve them in the after race celebrations in the winners room with the owners.
• It won’t take the press long to realise there are some great stories with the breeders particularly when faced with the same owners or trainers that are often over exposed anyway.
• Imagine you were the breeder of Whobegotyou, the centrepiece of marketing for most of the Spring Carnival. Did you pay to go and watch from the outer?  You sold the horse for $15,000 and the poor return on investment will be much forgotten if you part of the race day celebrations.  How about that you have a positive experience from breeding a racehorse?

Are you (Swettenham) still feeling “leftover” effects from the equine influenza (EI), and in what way?

Do not know what effects we were supposed to feel after EI? 

There were three main things that occurred because of EI from our point of view:

• A large number of Victorians realised you don’t have to go interstate. The large NSW stallion fee rose in 2007 and 2008 and caused a lot of people to rethink, but EI just rammed it home.

• The book for Dash For Cash in the EI year was extended way past where we thought we would go. He served 221 mares. 
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This happened mainly because he was achieving a 92pc positives to serves ratio in the first month, so we could keep taking bookings.

Last year, 2008, we brought him back to 102 mares and were happy to give him a quieter year looking at the long-term picture.

This was a sound move as he had a hoof issue that may just have turned nasty if he was forced to cover a huge book again.

His foot is now 100pc, so we can see the benefit of the conservative approach.

• The sales companies now have the challenge of working out how they position their 2010 yearling sales and how they market the larger numbers from Victorian Stallions. 
  

How do you think the small breeder in Victoria is placed in the breeding industry today?

They are faced with a huge range of stallions to choose from with excellent credentials.

The service fees are very affordable. However, all their other costs have remained the same or increased. 

So the pressure is still on them.

If they own their own farm and are breeding to sell they have a tremendous chance to increase their returns in 2012.

There will be a significantly reduced yearling crop. 

Victorian Stud farms standing stallions have borne the brunt of the decreases:

• No farm has said to the stallion handler or broodmare manager that they have to take a wage cut similar to the stallion fee decreases.
• The decreases in fees and reduced broodmare numbers available for service will affect the profitability of many farms.
• The Victorian stallion service fees were already much fairer and reflective of realism than elsewhere.
• This was proved at the Melbourne Yearling Sale where Victorian stallions’ rate of return on service fee was significantly greater than NSW and these sales figures were calculated on 2006 service fees (ie. before some of the big hikes up north).
• The astute breeder is starting to analyse things more, but access to fair, unbiased commentary is getting more difficult as all the various publications, websites, etc come under increasing pressure to maintain revenue streams by servicing their vested interests or sponsors.
• However, Victoria has done the job in the past and the Victorian Stallions 2009 (a non profit publication to promote the Victorian industry) is a worthy tribute to the impact of Victoria on Australian breeding.
• People are realising the right stallions are in Victoria. Huge prices for stallions elsewhere do not mean they are better. In fact, many have failed to produce with bigger fees and supposedly better books once they moved north.
• The landscape is changing. 

Do you think Australia should introduce artificial insemination and why?

No. I personally like the fact good management of your stallions is still an important part of the process. 

The thought of stallions just isolated to farm their sperm and possibly not receiving excellent, caring handlers or a good quality of life, is scary. 

Are you more likely to send your mare or mares to a shuttle horse or an Australian bred horse in 2009 and why?

All our mares will go to our stallions (eight in total) as we have a very diverse range of stallions and none have shuttled in 2009.