In the spring all roads lead to Louisville, Ky., as the hopes of Thoroughbred owners everywhere center on having a runner good enough to compete in the Kentucky Derby (gr. I). This fall, however, most roads have led out of Central Kentucky…and the roads are filled with horse vans taking mares away from the “Horse Capital of the World.”
Where are they going? A sizable number of them headed east on Interstate 64 toward Pennsylvania. New Pa.-bred rules starting in 2008 state that in order for a mare’s foal to be eligible for Pennsylvania-bred registration—and the lucrative state-bred purses at Philadelphia Park, Penn National, and Presque Isle—the dam has to reside continuously in the Keystone State from Oct. 1 of the year of conception through foaling.
It’s highly likely a second armada of vans will head east after next month’s breeding stock sale at Keeneland. Pennsylvania rules also state that if the dam of the foal is purchased at a public sale after Oct. 1 of the year of conception, is brought into Pennsylvania within 14 days of the date of purchase, and resides in the state through foaling, that foal, too, can be a registered Pa.-bred.
It wasn’t long ago that the preferred choice of Thoroughbred breeders and owners was to have a Kentucky-bred.
Potential buyers of young horses are scanning down the catalog page quickly to see which state-bred program the horse is eligible for rather than the line that reads “Foaled in Kentucky.” Today’s Kentucky-bred doesn’t offer the buyer the same options that are available through some of the better-positioned state-bred programs such as the one currently in Pennsylvania.
One good example? On Sept. 19 at Philadelphia Park during “Pennsylvania’s Day at the Races,” a maiden special weight race was worth—drum roll please—$84,000. During Keeneland’s fall meeting, the top-end maiden special weight race goes for $50,000.
It’s no wonder that as the foal crops are contracting on a national scale, they are growing in states—such as Pennsylvania—that have crafted solid state-bred programs.
It’s also no wonder that a sizable number of mares, ones that used to reside in Kentucky throughout their lifetime, are now mere “seasonal” residents. After foaling in the state of their owner’s choice, they are shipped to the Bluegrass to be covered by a Kentucky stallion, and, once well in foal, shipped back out. Instead of providing a boarding farm with a whole year’s worth of income, the Kentucky boarding operator gets a few months' worth.
One such boarding operation noted it has recently added a few Pennsylvania clients, saying they’d shipped four or five mares out not too long ago. In fact, one left Sept. 30…
Northview Stallion Station has two operations, one near Chesapeake City, Md., and a newer operation 30 miles away near Peach Bottom, Pa. Business at the new facility is booming. Last spring co-owner Dr. Thomas Bowman indicated to breeders he would take “as many mares as we had the facilities to take care of, and our building program would be predicated on the response we got.”
Bowman built a second broodmare barn and is in the process of building a large shed.
“At the present time we have all the mares our facilities can handle,” Bowman said. “And I’m sure that we’re not alone. The mood in Pennsylvania is quite optimistic as opposed to many other areas in the country.”
While the state of Kentucky and the local Thoroughbred industry posture over slot machines and casino gaming to put the state’s purses on a “level playing field” prior to next year’s general session, our task should be to do a better job educating the general public about the depth of our industry. There is more to the big picture than just enhancing purses.
It’s more than just helping Turfway Park compete with Mountaineer Casino Racetrack and Resort and Charles Town Races and Slots in West Virginia and Ellis Park compete with Hoosier Park in Indiana and Arlington Park in Illinois with fatter purses. It’s more than just the large stallion operators in Central Kentucky.
It’s also about the real bread and butter of the state’s signature industry—the small boarding operations that dot the Central Kentucky countryside. Their full-time clients are becoming “seasonal.”
Is Kentucky headed toward the new title of “Sometime Horse Capital of the World”?
Evan Hammonds is Executive Editor of The Blood-Horse.
