Stud fees

[GBBob]

Originally Posted by paisjpq

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?

[Thoroughbred Fan]

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

[GBBob]

Originally Posted by Thoroughbred Fan

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

[paisjpq]

Originally Posted by GBBob

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?

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.