June, 2022 | Horse Racing Free Tips

King’s Stand Winner Nature Strip Won’t bid for Royal Ascot Double

Nature Strip (Aus) (Nicconi {Aus}), a brilliant winner of Tuesday's King's Stand S. at Royal Ascot, will not bid to double up in the Platinum Jubilee S. on Saturday.

Trained by Chris Waller, Nature Strip slammed his King's Stand S. rivals by over four lengths and, despite pulling out of the race in rude health, will not bid to emulate the great Choisir (Aus), who was the last Australian-trained horse to complete the King's Stand and Platinum Jubilee double in 2003.

Nature Strip's managing owner Rod Lyons told Racing.com, “No [he won't run]. I think there was a fair bit of pressure on the boss to get him to run, but he said he's done his job, let's get him quarantined, get him home and get him ready for The Everest.”

Waller will be represented in the Platinum Jubilee instead by Home Affairs (Aus) (I Am Invincible {Aus}), and the legendary trainer described himself as proud of Nature Strip on Wednesday.

He Tweeted, “Our king Nature Strip has pulled up a treat and we are so proud of him. He's certainly made us very proud. It was a memorable moment for everybody.”

The post King’s Stand Winner Nature Strip Won’t bid for Royal Ascot Double appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Bloodlines: Mo Donegal’s Belmont Stakes Score Extends Deep Family Ties

The results of the 2022 Belmont Stakes produced a double of different kinds for both the sire of the winner Mo Donegal (by Uncle Mo) and for the breeders, the Lyster family's Ashview Farm and Richard Santulli's Colts Neck Stables, which bred and sold the winner, as well as the runner-up, Nest (Curlin).

With a winner of the Belmont, champion juvenile Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) has his second classic winner. The bay stallion's first came from his first crop in 2015 champion juvenile Nyquist, who won the 2016 Kentucky Derby.

One of 25 stakes winners (16 percent of foals) from Uncle Mo's first crop, Nyquist was unbeaten at two, winning all five of his starts, including victories in the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity, Frontrunner, and Breeders' Cup Juvenile. The next season, the well-conformed bay progressed enough to win his first three starts, including the G1 Florida Derby and the Kentucky Derby. Nyquist was third in the Preakness, then fourth in the Haskell and sixth in the Pennsylvania Derby before retiring to stud at Darley's Jonabell Farm in Lexington.

Mo Donegal comes from the seventh crop by Uncle Mo, who stands at Coolmore's Ashford Stud outside Versailles, Ky., where Uncle Mo has sired 1,054 foals aged three and up. From those, the stallion has 768 starters (63 percent), 521 winners (43 percent), and 77 stakes winners (7.3 percent). Had the percentage of stakes winners for subsequent crops been able to match the extraordinary results of the first, Uncle Mo would have the highest stud fee of any sire in the country, and as it is, he stands for $160,000 live foal on a stand and nurse contract.

The 11th G1 winner for Uncle Mo, Mo Donegal was bred in Kentucky by Ashview and Colts Neck, and they sold the bay to Jerry Crawford, agent for Donegal Racing, for $250,000 at the 2020 Keeneland September sale.

The Belmont Stakes winner is out of Callingmissbrown, a Pulpit mare that the Lysters acquired privately for their breeding partnership, and she “is a beautiful mare who has a beautiful foal,” said Gray Lyster. The quality and balance of the dam no doubt helped when Ashview brought the Uncle Mo colt to the 2020 Keeneland September yearling sale and sold him for a quarter-million, then brought the mare's 2021 yearling, a filly by leading sire Into Mischief, to the Keeneland sales last year.

By the hot sire but out of a mare who hadn't at that time produced a black-type winner, Callingmissbrown's 2021 September yearling brought $500,000 from Frankie Brothers, agent, and Litt/Solis. To bring twice what Crawford paid for the mare's Uncle Mo colt a year before, this filly was quite nice.

Clearly, being by Into Mischief put a bull's eye on the filly among discerning horsemen, she looked the part, and she brought a premium for it. Now named Prank, the Into Mischief filly has had a pair of official breezes at Saratoga.

The family that produced Mo Donegal also accounted for Canadian classic winner Niigon (Unbridled), winner of the 2004 Queen's Plate. He was out of Savethelastdance (Nureyev), who also produced Sue's Last Dance (Forty Niner), the third dam of the classic winner and dam of Pozo de Luna (Famous Again), champion juvenile colt in Mexico, and Island Sand (Tabasco Cat). The latter earned $1.1 million with victories such as the G1 Acorn Stakes, as well as a second in the G1 Kentucky Oaks.

Island Sand has produced a pair of stakes-placed winners, including Grade 1-placed Maya Malibu (Malibu Moon), second in the G1 Spinaway, and a daughter of leading sire Pulpit (A.P. Indy), Callingmissbrown, who won two of her four starts and is the dam of Mo Donegal.

The second foal of his dam, Mo Donegal has won four of his seven starts, including the Belmont, Wood Memorial, and Remsen, with a pair of thirds. The colt has been out of the money only in the Kentucky Derby, when fifth after a difficult trip.

Callingmissbrown “is a dark bay mare with no white on her legs but has a small star on her forehead like Mo Donegal,” Lyster said, “and she's by Pulpit, whom we love as a broodmare sire.” Unfortunately, the mare lost a “beautiful Curlin colt four days after the Wood,” he noted, “but is now pregnant at 20 days gestation to Uncle Mo.”

Could there be “Mo” classic prospects in the future for this partnership?

The post Bloodlines: Mo Donegal’s Belmont Stakes Score Extends Deep Family Ties appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Colorado State Studies Effects Of Gelding On Wild Horse Herds

While wild horses on the nation's public lands often elicit a romantic image of the West, these quickly growing herds have long faced problems associated with overpopulation. But results of a recent study offer a promising tool to help address those challenges.

Some effects of the situation have been seen this spring in Colorado and other areas. The recent death of more than 140 wild horses due to an equine influenza outbreak at a Bureau of Land Management facility in Cañon City prompted Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to call for further evaluation to prevent a similar situation in the future.

And BLM officials recently launched a $20 million effort to increase the use of fertility control to slow the growth of wild horse and burro herds, which they say has expanded to three times the appropriate size for the public lands on which they live.

Now, a research study released this spring by the U.S. Geological Survey and Colorado State University explores one way to help manage herds humanely.

The USGS collaborated with Sarah King, a research scientist in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at CSU, to test the effects of gelding wild horses in the Conger Herd Management Area in Utah.

Gelding, or castrating, horses is a common practice seen for domesticated horses. The study sought to determine if gelding could reduce population growth and if it changed important social behaviors.

In the study, titled “Effect of adult male sterilization on the behavior and social associations of a feral polygynous ungulate: the horse,” and published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, King and USGS scientist and CSU Affiliate Kate Schoenecker and NREL Research Associate Mary Cole examined how gelding stallions might affect the behavior and mare retention patterns within the herd.

[Story Continues Below]

“These horses are not native to the United States,” said King, who also serves as an associate faculty member within the Ecosystem Science and Sustainability department at Warner College of Natural Resources. “The populations have increased dramatically over the past 10 to 20 years. More recently, it's just been an exponential increase, so the Bureau of Land Management is looking for different ways of managing the horses to control population growth.”

Although castration for domesticated animals like cats and dogs, as well as feral animal “catch and release programs” are common practice, studying how gelding affects behavior within these animals' herd dynamics is an understudied area.

“From an animal behavior aspect, it was really interesting to explore this topic given the lack of literature,” King said. “A major goal was to see if gelding would reduce the population growth of the herd for the sake of land management.”

Exploring Behavioral Ecology And Managing Wild Geldings

The execution of the study involved gathering the population and gelding 27 of the 34 male horses caught. Over the course of four years, King and her colleagues reviewed changes in behavior such as aggression, social group size and the ability for a gelded male to attract and keep mares.

“It was actually really interesting to find that gelding had minimal effects on male behavior,” King said. “It seemed a really positive thing that although the males were castrated, they were continuing to maintain their associations with mares.”

The findings from the study also highlighted the capacity for gelding to be a safe population control tool for wild horse populations. Moving forward, King and colleagues will use the results of this study to explore female behavior, social networks, group changes and resource selection in relation to the movement of wild horse herds.

“Understanding the behavior of animals is often undervalued in how it can be used to manage animals and also to conserve them,” King said. “Once we understand how and why animals are using the landscape, it can really affect management decisions and what will affect fertility and reproductive behavior.”

Thoroughbred Makeover Diary: Getting Through the Rough Patches and Building Trust

I was a freshman in high school when I fell off of my first rearing horse. The image of the mare on her hind legs in front of me, with my butt in the sand is seared into my brain: deep in the recesses, but it’s there nonetheless. I don’t remember hurting after that fall. Maybe I did but all I remember is thinking, this girl is going to fall over on top of me. She didn’t, and I don’t even remember it instilling a fear in me those following years, but here we are, over ten years later, and suddenly I’m thinking about it all the time.