Promoting Your Stallion

You can be successful with your breeding programs and horse business if you do some planning followed by aggressive action.

Advertising! Everyone knows that they should advertise the stallion if they want to get outside mares to breed. So, they get a web site and figure everyone will see it and it was cheap, right? But, there are thousands of sites just like yours and the people that may be interested can’t even find yours without hours of cruising the web. The way to alleviate this problem is to use the print media to your advantage to get your web address to the public.

Some print advertising should be in regional or national magazines depending on your budget. Local classifieds should also be used. Every print ad should have your web site address and e-mail address as well as your phone number, mailing address, etc. You will increase your likelihood of getting mares to breed immensely.

You have to be consistent in your advertising. Most magazines have sections devoted to business card ads or a directory at a reasonable yearly fee. Using that will keep your stallion in front of the public at very little cost.

Use of photos in your advertising, whether it is print or electronic, should always present your stallion, his foals and mares in their best light. They should be groomed and clipped with a show halter or no halter. The background should be unobtrusive. If you can’t see the outline of the horse for the trees, most people will think you are trying to hide some fault.

From a business standpoint, if you want to impress the government, your banker, your accountant or your attorney, it makes sense to advertise your stallion and his progeny. It shows that you are serious about being in the horse business and you are creating a market demand for your product.

Your advertising is a deductible expense. If you have a photographer do the pictures, an ad agency create the layout or place the ads for you, that is an expense that you can deduct. Most magazines have a person who can create the ad with your photos and information at little or no cost to you, just the cost of the ad itself.

Advertising should have a budget amount each year. If you are promoting an unproven or little used stallion, you are going to want to have a bigger budget than if he is a proven stud with progeny on the ground that is competing.

You should also track your ads to see which ones are read and responded to. When someone inquires about your stallion, ask them where they saw the ad or heard about the horse. Record the information so you can make a knowledgeable decision about which media to use and how often. Strategically placed ads are less costly than the shotgun approach to advertising.

Have a pedigree available to send out to potential clients. It should be at least five generations with a list of each horse’s accomplishments, outstanding individuals that have been produced, what your stallion and his progeny have done, what crosses you think will work if they breed to your stallion, etc.

It is important to be competitive about your breeding fees. Do not set your fee based upon what you read or what others charge for their stallions. Do your homework. Compare what others do for their fees, what their stallions or progeny have done in the show ring or what their immediate ancestors have done. Set a reasonable fee that will entice mare owners to consider your stallion. If you have a world class stallion, set the fee at what others are charging, not lower or higher just because you think your horse is better. You can always offer enticements to get clients such as no chute fee, live foal guarantee, reduced fee if they show the get, etc. These enticements should have a cutoff time or a set of rules so if your horse becomes popular you can adjust the fees and enticements.

I think stallion owners should be willing to breed to any mare, registered or not, that the owner wants bred. The more get you have on the ground, the more likely you are to have performers in some area. You just never know where that foal is going to end up. It can be a regional or world champion out of a mare that you may not of liked for one reason or the other.

When you present your horse to the public at home, your surroundings should be neat and clean as well as the horses that you are presenting. You don’t have to have white fences and brick barns to be presentable. Obstacles, broken boards, stalls that are not kept up are things that detract from your stallion even if he just won the world.

Donations of breeding to stallion service auctions are another way to get your stallion and his progeny in front of the public. You may have to purchase the breeding yourself but it is advertising. Choose the best mare in your program and hope that the resulting foal will be all that you hope for.

M. R. Bain has been successfully involved with horses since 1955. For info on the seminar, ‘The Business of Horses’ you may contact him at MRBAIN@msn.com or phone 541-953-8342

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Equine Viral Arteritis (EVA) is a contagious disease of horses caused by the equine arteritis virus (EAV). The disease does not usually kill healthy adult horses, but it can kill young foals and cause pregnant mares to abort. In stallions, the disease can result in the establishment of a carrier state whereby they can continue to spread the virus.

Equine Arteritis Virus is present in many horse populations throughout the world, but an outbreak in U.S. Thoroughbreds in 1984 was the first time the disease received worldwide recognition. This outbreak prompted many countries to impose import controls on the entry of carrier stallions and EAV-infected semen. These foreign import policies have had significant repercussions on the international trade of horses and semen, particularly in the U.S., where we do not have an import control policy for EVA. The U.S. continues to permit the import of carrier stallions and infective semen and certain breeds have been severely affected by these permissive import policies.

Proper management can easily prevent the dissemination of the equine arteritis virus while allowing the continued use of carrier stallions. This is essential to the horse industry because these stallions often represent the best genetics within their respective breeds. In addition, establishing proper management practices ensures that the health interests, as well as the financial interests, of the horse industry are protected.

Over the past decade, numerous U.S. stallions have been unable to be exported to the European Union (EU) because they are known to shed the equine arteritis virus (EAV). Upon investigation it became evident that many of these same stallions had been imported from the EU as carrier stallions. The EU was permitting the exportation of EAV carrier stallions and infective semen while preventing the importation of stallions and semen of the same status.

In 1996, the AHC began an effort to address these issues and established an EVA Working Group, which ultimately produced and distributed guidelines for mare owners who wished to breed to infected stallions or whose EAV status was unknown. The guidelines permitted the continued use of shedding stallions or their semen, but required such stallions to be identified so that mare owners could protect their mares.

The AHC then sought the input and support of the states in addressing the unknown EAV status of imported stallions and semen. Next, the AHC asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to establish import regulations requiring that the EVA status of stallions and semen be determined upon their entry into the U.S. so that U.S. breeders could take necessary precautions.

In response, USDA published an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) seeking public comment on the best way to regulate the importation of horses in connection with EVA. Nearly one hundred comments were received from the horse industry and other interested parties in overwhelmingly support of the establishment of federal import rules to determine the serological status of stallions with regard to EAV at the time of importation. While the industry supported the identification of infected stallions and semen, it expressly rejected the idea of simply prohibiting the importation or movement of such stallions or semen.

Despite the support for a new import restriction, USDA maintains that requirements of the World Trade Organization prohibit the establishment of import regulations for a disease, like EVA, that exists in a country but is not under a domestic control program. Absent a domestic control program, USDA maintains that it must continue to permit stallions and semen known to be capable of spreading EAV to be imported into the U.S. without regard to the potential health risk they present to our domestic population.

In lieu of actual regulations, USDA has now developed, with industry support, draft guidelines entitled Equine Viral Arteritis Uniform Methods and Rules (UM&R) to guide states and the industry in establishing their own programs for addressing EVA through a common set of methods and rules.

The draft UM&R sets out minimum standards for detecting, controlling and preventing EVA. There are sections addressing laboratory issues, procedures for addressing an outbreak, suggestions for controlling EVA and for regulating movement of stallions and semen. Finally, there are recommendations for breed registries wishing to address the infection within their breeds.

The EVA UM & R was made available to the industry and state regulatory animal health officials for comments. Many comments were received, including some from the AHC and our member organizations. The comments have been analyzed and some changes have been incorporated into the UM & R as a result. The document is now available should States decide to implement preventative steps to address EVA.

The UM&R is intended to be a set of minimum requirements. Unfortunately, however, the proposed UM & R places tremendous and unnecessary burdens on the states for implementation, especially in light of the fact that the vast majority of states currently place no restriction on the movement and use of EAV (equine arteritis virus) carrier stallions and their semen. To institute these "minimum" requirements would unnecessarily interfere with the regular business practices of the horse industry and would place needless obligations on the resources of states. As a result, the states are unlikely to implement any measures outlined in the UM & R.

The AHC is supportive of the goal of an EVA control program that determines the status of stallions with regard to the equine arteritis virus and which allows for the management of these stallions accordingly. U.S. horse owners have clearly expressed a desire to avail themselves of the gene pools that these carrier horses represent. Horse owners have also expressed a desire to manage the EVA in a way that minimizes their risk of exposure. There is no reason why the industry’s wishes should not be accepted and reflected in the UM & R.

While the document is useful as a backdrop for those wishing to establish control programs for EVA, we believe it does not meet the needs of the horse industry relating to this infection. We believe that the UM & R, though a step in the right direction, is not enough. In its current state, the document only serves to discourage the states and the industry from adopting the management practices it outlines. Greater steps must be taken to address the problem of imported stallions and semen whose EAV status is unknown. The AHC supports the USDA in its efforts to seek changes to the European Union directives that require only non-EAV Carrier stallions be imported from the U.S. but permits the free movement and use of known European stallions of like status.