Based in the home of Australian thoroughbred, Hunter Valley, Monarch Stud is on its way to becoming one of Australia’s leading stud farms. They cater to a limited number of mares, with special emphasis on preparing their progeny for the sale ring or their race track careers.
Monarch’s sales success includes Group One winner's Vega Magic, Shot Of Thunder and Blue Murder, and other Group and Stakes horses include Lucky Hussler, Kirvinsky, Shamardashing, and Liberty Rock.
Ten Furlongs chats to owner Kieran Falvey about the farm and his 2019 Inglis Easter Yearling Sale:
Q: What is the size of your draft at the Easter Yearling Sale and what’s the quality of horses should buyers expect?
A: Monarch will present just one yearling at this year’s Easter Yearling Sale. Buyers can expect our Kermadec/Boredom colt to be an impressive, powerfully built individual who carries himself particularly well.
Q: Could you please tell us a bit more about your draft yearling?
A: Our one yearling (Lot 382) is the only progeny in this Easter sale by Darley's exciting first season sire in Kermadec. His progeny have been very well received by the market selling up to $540,000. He is the third foal from the winning Ad Valorem mare Boredom. Boredom's first two foals are winners including the very smart three-year-old filly Tropezina who has won her first three starts this campaign including the $250,000 VRC Inglis Dash.
Boredom comes from a great Woodlands family and is a half-sister to Group One winner and young sire Complacent as well as 4 other black-type horses. The mare has a nice Artie Schiller filly foal at foot and we sent her back to Kermadec on the strength of yearling she produced.
Q: Could you please tell us a bit more about your Farm?
A: We are a small farm based in the Hunter Valley and permanently board mares and their progeny for a handful of long term clients. The vast majority of the horses bred here are bred to race and will never go to a yearling sale.
We would average 20 foals annually and from this to give a snapshot of the last three years we have produced three Group 1 winners- VEGA MAGIC (Goodwood/Memsie and second in the Everest $3.94 million),LUCKY HASSLER (Toorak/William Reid and second in four other Group One races $2.14 million) and TRAP FOR FOOLS (Mackinnon $1.87 million). Also, we have produced Stakes winners TO EXCESS, ZARANTZ, SEANNIE, and RAIDO, as well as Stakes place, getters DREAM KISSES, BELTER, VEUVE DE VEGA, RIVER BIRD and ZONTE.
Some young upcoming horses to watch in the next few months from the farm include the ultra-impressive Hong Kong sprinter REFINED TREASURE who seems destined for Group racing, YOU MAKE ME SMILE, MO'S CROWN, PABLO'S POEM and TROPEZINA who is the 3YO sister to the Kermadec colt we are presenting at the Easter sale.
I stress these results have been achieved from annual crops of twenty foals on average and most of these are by stallions standing for fees between ten and twenty thousand dollars.
Q: What are the main factors you consider when you plan matings and when you preparing yearlings for sale?
A: When we do our matings every year there are many factors to be considered. Before looking at stallions we have a long hard look at the mare. If she was a good quality Stakes mare or high-grade metropolitan winner that’s the best starting point-if not there has to be something in her immediate family that says to us there is something we can try and replicate.
If the mare didn't achieve on the track due to unsoundness then that’s fine but there has to a concerted effort to try and offset that by sending her to a stallion who stamps his stock with correct limbs and himself displayed a tough a durable career on the track. In Australia, we have forged a great reputation around the world for producing great sprinters.
I think that a massive proportion of these horses are by stallions that excelled as milers and we find we can get more value for our mares in using good looking, Group one milers than the more commercially driven two-year-old sprinting type stallion that has generally been packed off to stud prematurely. There is often the debate do you breed for the racetrack or the sale ring-If your horse does the talking on the track then hopefully the buyers will come for your product.
The factors we consider when preparing our yearlings for sale are to get that yearling to peak on the week of the sale. In striving to achieve this we want to present the yearling as well prepared mentally to handle the trip to the sale, to adapt quickly to their new environment and to be able to present successfully on the 80 to 100 inspections that will be required of that yearling while on the sale complex.
Our preparation at home intensifies in the ten weeks before the sale with the yearling boxed for that period with some time every morning in a small paddock. The horses are lunged every day in rollers and side reigns at a gentle trot and walk responding to voice commands. With the current emphasis on x-rays, great care has to be taken from the day a foal enters the world. Diet and pasture are of paramount importance. It has been well documented that eastern Australia is enduring a sustained period of drought which has been a challenge to all breeders. We are fortunate in that we have up to now been able to irrigate all our property from the adjacent Hunter River.
Q: What do you consider when you design a commercial stallion?
A: The "design" of a commercial stallion for me has to be a horse of the highest class on the racetrack first and foremost. I think there are many overpriced young stallions going to stud on the back of an incomplete career on the track but being the son of one of the top three or four stallions in the country seems to be commercially more appealing than performance. Confirmation and good looks are obviously very important and I think the mental attributes a stallion passes on are often overlooked.
We have been in-breeding a species for a few hundred years with the goal of speed and probably compromising conformation but also the mental side of things. You get to know pretty quick when foals of a new stallion hit the ground how their temperaments will handle the challenges that life will present to them. You watch any race and if your horse can't settle and conserve it's energy early in a race invariably there's not much happening at the business end.
The pedigree of the stallion is also of vital importance. While there are exceptions to the rule, it seems to me that more often than not successful stallions come from families with stallions in them.
Q: What about 2019 energizes you and brings you excitement?
A: The run of good fortune that we've had with horses bred on the farm in the last few seasons has certainly energized and excited us at Monarch and the anticipation of hopefully similar standards for the next generation. Being an Irishman who has worked in the breeding game in various parts of the world before settling in Australia, I'm so impressed with the way racing is promoted in this country. There is no country that can sustain a model of country racing like ours, our prize money is growing at a healthy rate and the great job Peter V'landys and Racing NSW have done in relation to this and innovative concepts like the Everest and the Golden Eagle.
I brought my daughter to the Everest to support Vega Magic last year and I couldn't believe what an amazing success the race has become so quickly. I have been at some of the world's great racetracks and football stadiums and I have never heard a crowd roar like the run to the line in the Everest. There was this crescendo of wave after wave of noise, I'll never forget it! They have gone out to introduce racing to a younger audience and give themselves a winning chance.
Q: What was the best piece of advice you were given?
A: In my chosen profession I have been the recipient of a lot of advice, much of it keenly sought after but a lot imparted for free. Despite the good intentions of the later, I think keep asking questions, try to find a way of improving every day.
Published In The Impact 7 Issue, 2 Vol
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Credit: Pallavi Shevade pallavi.shevade@secretariatsworld.com