Home

I've had more than one customer describe TrueNicks as a "dating service" for Thoroughbreds. This might be a fair assessment, since increasingly more breeders are using TrueNicks as a research tool during their stallion selection process. With Valentine's Day just a few days away—and in hopes that breeders everywhere will find the right stallion match for their mare—we're offering 10% off all TrueNicks Broodmare Reports through February 15th.

Our most popular report this season has been the new Broodmare Select Report, which searches from your location and stud fee criteria to find up to 50 of the best-nicking stallions with your mare. This is the quickest way to find the stallions meeting your requirements that also generate high nick ratings (A++, A+, A, and B+). One word of advice on strategy when building your report: try to include a pool of between 100 and 180 potential stallions. Since only the top 50 will be included in your report, too large of a potential stallion pool could leave you with some stallions that you really aren't interested in, and too small of a pool could limit the report's value by returning only a handful of stallions. If you have questions about running this report, feel free to email me at ian@truenicks.com.

Next week also marks the unofficial opening of covering sheds in the Northern Hemisphere. February 15th, the day after Valentine's Day, is traditionally the earliest covering date of the season. Thoroughbreds have an average gestation of 340 days, so if conception occurs on February 15, then the resulting foal would be born in the middle of the following January. This doesn't always work out perfectly, however. In 2006, the Barathea mare Magical Romance sold at Tattersalls for 4.6 million guineas ($9,358,608) in foal to Pivotal, and the mare famously delivered a resulting filly on December 21—24 days premature—meaning the filly officially became a yearling at 11 days old. This prompted breeders groups to call for reform in registration rules, but the January 1 cutoff remains in place.

Filed under: Products, Pedigrees and Breeding, Broodmare Analysis Report