| |
|
Welcome
to the West Lodge Stud website. There's a guide to the site below. We hope
you find what you're looking for.
You can't
contact us by emailing westlodgestud.com any because we had to close
that email address after it fell into the hands of the spammers and we
were getting over 1,000 emails a day. While we're looking for a more
secure email system look us up in the Thoroughbred Business Guide.
 Or
the phone book.
All the news that fits is on the Flash News page - that's Flash on the
right, he's an Irish terrier.
We last updated pages on this site on
March 11th 2008 |
| |
How we're doing. The stats for West Lodge Stud Thoroughbreds.
From a
total of 221
racing age (including two year olds at January 1st 2008) horses bred and
174
runners we have
bred 107
winners of 294
races. 12
Stakes winners. 11
Stakes placed.
Which
is 62%
winners to runners,
7%
SWs to runners and
14% Stakes performers
to runners. |
| |
| Site
Tour |
|
All the news that fits is on Flash News
.
This page was going to have a format change for 2007
to become a blog but we tired of that pretty quickly. Why add
to the soup of unread and unnecessary information that's out on the web
anyway? So it's just news but less of it.
See notes and news on horses that we have bred and sold on the
Horses bred page.
Notes and news on the horses we have in training
in our own colours are on
Horses in Training. This
page also has an entry for Snowdrops the
filly that raced for us up to January 2006 in the USA and won ten races
and nearly $600,00 in prize money.
Sales Stock
is the page where we post details of what we have for sale; foals,
yearlings with links to updated catalogue style pedigrees.
The
Broodmares
page has brief notes for each of our mares with links to their
pedigrees.
Foals & Matings
has the current year foals, the sires that the mares have visited
and their pregnancy status and mating plans for the current breeding
season.
There's
Random
Notes
with our slant on current news, issues and gossip in the racing
and thoroughbred breeding industry We haven't added to it for
an age so it's not all that current at all and changing Flash News to
a blog form in 2007 didn't spur us to opine more last year.
Finally, some Editorial opinion. You'll find something on the subject of
"over-production" below.
|
| |
|
EDITORIAL, The Proprietor gets on the Soap Box |
| |
Is there
over-production of foals?
Right now this is a big talking point but when I wrote
this
in Spring 2005 it wasn't. I wrote it in response to
an email from the Editor of Pacemaker, Darryl Sherer They were planning to do an issue on the subject of
'over-production'. The email was in the form of a questionnaire. I wrote
him back a reply, didn't hear back and when the issue appeared he hadn't
used any of my stuff. So it's become this Editorial piece below.
The phenomenon where yearlings are routinely traded at public auction at
prices which don't give the producer a chance of cost recovery plus normal
profit is being labelled as 'overproduction'. Too many mares are being
bred. There is talk of regulation. Now in a market in which the Law of
Supply and Demand ruled this situation would be rectified with
the producers cutting production until there was an equilibrium at which
prices moved to a level where cost plus normal profit was reached.
This
won’t happen in the trade for yearlings at public auction.and there are two reasons for this. The first is that many of the producers,
the breeders, are not producing an economic good; breeders may
complain about losing money and lot's did last year, probably more than in
previous years but as selling yearlings is not their primary livelihood
their decisions are not made according the laws of market economics. The
second reason is that the end users, owners, aren't buying an economic
good either The price levels at which that they are prepared to trade are
not dictated at all by the prospect of an economic return. A Market where
the buyers and sellers are not subject to the Law of Supply and Demand
doesn't have a mechanism to reach price equilibrium.
It's a Game.
The trade for yearlings is better looked at as a Game rather than a
Market, one in which the participants on each side are looking to win the
big prize. The fact that many of them are pursuing a strategy that they
know only gives them a very long odds chance of winning the prize doesn't
make them irrational but it does mean that they are not behaving as
rational 'economic man'. The breeder's Game strategy is to win the prize
of a six figure yearling at the sales and the owner's is to win the prize
of a six figure racehorse to sell to Godolphin or to America. No
criticism of anyone's actions is implied in the use of the word Game to
characterize the yearling trade. It’s a wonderful Game to be in, a lot of
the participants get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. Sometimes some
make a great deal of money. My point is that to use market economic
concepts to understand a Game isn’t helpful. The idea that there is
a crisis due to over-production is wrong-headed. Breeders who habitually
produce foals that don't have a chance of economic viability do so because
the economic viability of the foal is not their primary concern. What they
are doing is taking part in the Game. Continuing to be a player in the
Game when they consistently lose more often than they win is just the
triumph of optimism over experience.
Obviously there is a core of breeders who trade as a business and make
decisions and employ strategies based on Market economics just as there
are some owners who try to do the same. These are the producers who will
cull mares who don't pay their way. They will take them to the sales.
Realists looking for optimists. Market traders looking for Game players.
There are a very large number of optimists who are looking to play in the
Game and they produce a very large volume of the yearling trade. It's
Behavioural Economics not the Law of Supply and Demand.
This is not criticism of anyone’s behaviour.To say that there are too many
foals produced is like saying there are too many lottery tickets sold.
I've talked about the yearling trade because the foal and two year old in
training trade are observably more governed by Market Theory than
Behavioural Theory. In the foal market the buyers (but maybe to a lesser
extent the sellers) are acting rationally to the extent that the concepts
of cost and profit are informing their decisions; the foal trade might be
highly speculative but the laws of the Market are still operating in it.
The two year olds in training trade is the other way around to the foal
trade because here it's the sellers who are in the economic role with the
buyers participating in a Game.
Regulation of a Market usually just distorts its operation. Regulation
aimed at restricting peoples behaviour when it is doing no harm is
interfering with their civil liberties. As long as there is no animal
welfare issue raised by mare-owners producing foals for which there is no
profitable market they should be allowed to. It's their mare, their money
and their choice to play in the Game. |
Editorial column. In our opinion.
Click on the links below to read what was on our minds last year and
before. Terrier fans will find more too.
Transparency in the market for
bloodstock.
Whatever happened to spitting on your hand and shaking on it? When did
'luck money' become a 'bung'. (read the rest of this rant in on the
Editorial page
by clicking
here) |
| |
|
Size does matter.
Stallion Books, the foal crop and the gene pool.
(posted April 2002)
....for the rest of this opinion piece click
here |
| |
