Running a stud farm

Deborah McGurran Editor, Politics Show East

The National Air Traffic Service has been forced to review plans for a change in flight paths over the region after more than 12,000 complaints.

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Most of them have come from Suffolk and Cambridgeshire where the new holding stacks would be and not least from the region's horseracing industry.

Newmarket is the centre of the UK's horseracing bloodstock industry and employs around 17,000 people.

Horses have been bred in Newmarket and the surrounding villages since the reign of Queen Anne.

It is believed the changes would disrupt the foals.

Alastair Watson, Chairman of the Newmarket Stud Farmers' Association and Stud Manager of Lanwades Stud, Newmarket, has submitted a report to the National Air Traffic Services outlining their case.

Here is his account of running a stud in Newmarket:

Alistair Watson, Stud Manager of Lanwades Stud, describes his year

The workload at the stud farm changes depending on the weather.

At this time of year, late summer, early autumn, the majority of the animals are still sleeping out at night.

There are still a few that are not well or have problems that might be stabled at night and the stallions, because of their enormous value, are stabled at night.

The staff start work each morning at varying times, depending on their job.

The stallion men start first and they turn their stallions out... they groom them, put a bridle on them and lead them out to their paddocks where they will spend the rest of the day out at grass.

In the winter, when most of the animals are stabled at night, the staff come in at about half past six and do exactly the same... they catch up all the animals in their boxes and lead them out to their various paddocks.

The stallions go on their own in the paddock and the mares go in groups of six to eight.

On a June morning when it has been light for an hour or so, it is lovely, but on a December morning when the entire job is done in the dark, and probably in the rain, it is not much fun.

The next job is mucking out the boxes, cleaning them up and getting ready for the animals to come back in again and that takes probably the rest of the morning.

The staff have a break for breakfast and a break for lunch as people in every other job do, but in the middle of that comes all the work - the blacksmiths, vets etc.

In a stud, not all work with the vet is because horses are ill or injured.

There is a lot of routine veterinary work, such as worming the foals or doing obstetric work on the mares to help find the optimum time to cover them to get them back in foal when they visit the stallion.

All of that goes on in the morning and hopefully, by lunchtime, the staff have got everything organised so that when they come back after lunch, at the time of year when the animals are coming back in again, they can spend most of the afternoon bringing them back in, checking them over and making sure everything is alright and feeding them up for the night.

The animals that are not coming in, which as I said, at this time of year is the majority, are checked first thing in the morning as soon as it gets light in the paddock, to make sure none have injured themselves or got sick during the night and they are fed at that stage, depending on the amount of grass available.

At this time of year, there is a lot of grass, very little feed but probably a vitamin and mineral supplement is given and they are checked again after lunch and last thing, before it gets dark and, if necessary, fed again.

So, in the summer there is much less work with mucking out and things like that because the animals are out at night but correspondingly there is a lot more work to do cutting the grass, keeping the place tidy, painting the boxes to be used in the winter - there is a lot of maintenance done as well and the people who work with the horses lend a hand with that in the summer.

In the breeding season, which lasts from beginning of February through until the beginning of June, there is a huge amount of work done on the horses and really, there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done.

We are all chasing around, no maintenance gets done and nobody has any holidays at that time of year.

In the second half of the year, when we are not so frantic, the staff get their holidays in and that is when we do the maintenance and prepare the place for the next season.

On this stud farm the owner actively works in the running of the business and I am the day-to-day manager on her behalf.

We have two farms here and each one has a stud groom and he is in charge of the day-to-day care of the horses and the supervision of the staff.

Under him, on this stud where there are stallions, we have two stallion men who look after the stallions and a relief stallion man who helps when they are off and each stud groom has what is known as a second man, although that can be a girl or a man, that's the name of the job - a traditional title, and they are the second in command and look after things when he is away.

Then we have any number of stud hands - at the moment we have eight on each farm and the stud hands' job is the entire general care of the horses.

Then we have a maintenance team of three people whose job is permanently looking after the fencing, the vehicles and the stables.

You have got to love horses to do this job.

Everyone enjoys foals being successfully born and I suppose the real reward is when animals that they have helped to produce sell very well in the sales room and even more importantly go on and win good races which is after all the whole reason for the job.

By the end of the first week of December, when the weather really does start to get cold, all the animals are bought in at night.

By this stage, they have been separated up into their various categories: all the pregnant mares will be on one farm and they will start foaling in January, the premise being that the earlier in the year the foals are born the older they will be when they start their racing at the age of two.

A yearling is a racehorse that is considered to be one year old until a subsequent 1 January A foal born on 31 December would become a yearling one day later January 1 after the year of the birth of a foal is the birthday for all thoroughbred horses

If they are born before the first of January, i.e. if they are born on 31 December, one day later they have become a yearling, they all share a common birthday.

Therefore we must ensure they are born as early as possible in the year.

So, in December we are getting all the pregnant mares together, getting them in a foaling unit, the mares that did not get in foal the last year are put in a separate category and likewise the fillies are retired from the racecourse and are going to be the next generation of brood mares.

They are all batched up in their various groups, they start foaling in January, probably about the 10th or 12th January and the foals are born all the way through until the middle of May.

They foal in specially prepared boxes, usually at night and they always foal under supervision so from when the first one is due onwards there is always at least one person at night watching them and helping them foal.

The foals are born from mid January.

Mares carry their pregnancies for eleven months and therefore, in order to make sure that the next year's foals are not born before 31 December we do not cover any mares before 15 February.

So, if she is covered on 15 February, in theory, although it never happens quite like that, she should foal around 15 January the following year.

So, as from 15 February, the stallions are terribly busy covering the mares, the mares that have had foals already and the mares that didn't get in foal last year want to be covered as early as possible.

We are not only covering our own mares but we get a lot of mares that come in by horsebox to be covered and the stallion can cover up to 150 mares in four months so we are very busy on that.

So all of late winter early spring is spent producing the foals, caring for them, leading them in and out, making sure they don't get cold and wet and getting the mares back in foal.

As the weather gets nicer in May and early June, fewer of the mares need to be stabled at night and so the workload decreases in that respect.

By late spring, all the foals have been born, the weather is nicer, most of the mares are sleeping out at night, although all the young stock, the mares with foals and the foals, once they are weaned from the mares, are brought in for an hour every morning just to keep them handled and so we can have a look at them.

The covering finishes by the end of June and then things are fairly quiet on the stud until the beginning of August when we start preparing the yearlings for their date in the sales ring, which happens at the beginning of October.

So, August and September are spent just maintaining the stock and preparing the yearlings for sale.

The yearling sales happen at the end of September, early October.

As soon as that is finished we need to start preparing the mares that we are going to sell and the foals that we are going to sell for the breeding stock sale which happens at the end of November and beginning of December.

The spring stock sale finishes at the end of the first week in December and then we are back to the middle of December when all the mares have to be brought back in again at night and the year has gone full cycle.

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