Stud fees
 

Nearly all the fees a published and are well known. With the top mares going to the top sires.What I was wondering, have any of the mares pwnership turned the tables and demanded a fee in reverse or maybe a share in the offspring?Tecently maybe Rags to Riches and Arazi could reach this status.

Foal share deals are common at all levels.

as mentioned foal shares are common....but also complentary seasons are often offered for high caliber mares if they are willing to take a chance on a lesser stallion. And then of course there are so many ways to get reduced or free seasons it would make you shake your head....it's harder than one might think to fill a stallion's book.

But what do you think is a reasonable number of covers? I can imagine that a book of 160 might be hard to fill, or is it the opposite?

Books are normally considered full around 80-100, but several popular stallion will be bred to nearly 200.

I guess I was asking off of the "hard to fill" part of her post...and what she thought was "reasonable". I had heard of the 150+ cover stallion, but is that ideal, besides the obious monetary part

I am not so sure about that. You will not find foal shares from the farms or syndicates to to the AP Indy's, Storm Cat's, et al of the world. As much as the rumors fly, it is very, very rare. Now, I do know that people who have a share or a season might try it, and perhaps pull it off. But normally the farm has first and last right of refusal. Also close to impossible to find with non-commercial stallions, ie: Empire Maker.

Are the farms using the "pooling" method or something of the like?

Eric

you won't find traditional foal share deals with the stallions you mentioned but you WILL find that seasons are offered (sometimes for free) if the owner is willing to breed the mare back to another farm owned stallion that might need some better class of mares.
Ashford pimps out their portion of Storm Cat in order to get mares back to their studs.

you're right though about Juddemonte not "playing the game".

a book of 160 would be very hard to fill for some studs, and easy for others....just depends on the horse. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprising depending on how closely you follow the sales) well bred horses that are in the 10-15K range are a becoming a lot harder to get to as commercial breeders are filling their books with the hope of maximum return on investment.

the term "cover" by the way is used for the number of times an individual mare has to be bred before she gets in foal.....I think the you are talking about how many shares/seasons are available for a stud.

I imagine that at the elite level, you better have an elite mare. Remember, it was a foal share deal that produced Secretariat. I don't know for certain but I imagine that now that a Phipps has married a Farish and the Phipps Stable is breeding to some Lane's End stallions that maybe "sharing" is involved. Of course, like the Phipps/Chenery deal it is an arrangement between two elite breeding parties and not two "public" or commercial entities who breed to sell.