Stud: Adventures in Breeding [Hardcover]

Kevin Conley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2002

The most expensive thirty seconds in sports.

Every year, on Valentine's Day, the great Thoroughbred farms open their breeding sheds and begin their primary business. For the next one hundred and fifty days, the cries of stallions and the vigorous encouragement of their handlers echo through breeding country, from the gentle hills of Kentucky to the rich valleys of California.

First appearing as an article in The New Yorker, Stud takes you into this strange and seductive world. We move from Lexington's Overbrook Farm, where the world's leading sire, Storm Cat, a lightly raced eighteen-year-old, brings in around thirty million dollars a year; to the auction halls, where sheiks and bookies (known more casually as the Doobie Brothers and the Boys) bid millions for Storm Cat's well-bred offspring. We visit Three Chimneys, where the twenty-seven-year-old Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, a senior citizen by equine standards, makes a rousing return to active duty after spinal surgery, and stroll through Running Horse Farm, on the banks of the Rio Grande, where a nearly unmanageable colt, Devil Begone, has found peace and prosperity servicing desert mares like Patty O'Furniture.

Cheap stud, top stud, old stud, wild stud, from the Hall of Fame horse to the harem stallion with his feral herd, Stud looks at intimate acts in idyllic settings (and the billion-dollar business behind them), providing a voyeuristic glimpse of just how human the equine world can be.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Funny, insightful and surprisingly engaging, this part travelogue on Kentucky bluegrass country and part guide to equine breeding offers far more than one might initially expect. The world's priciest stud, Storm Cat (a direct descendant of Secretariat), earns a whopping $500,000 per tryst. The randy stallion's "muck" is used by Campbell Soup to fertilize its mushroom fields. Conley, a New Yorker staff writer, takes readers to an auction where two camps a stoic group of Irishmen known in horse circles as "the boys" and a modish collection of sheikhs inexplicably called "the Doobie Brothers" square off on fillies and colts fetching upwards of $3 million. But Conley doesn't stop there: he considers the advancement of civilization through the history of horses. He argues that through horse trading the nomads of Kazakhstan brought their proto-Indo-European language to most of Europe and South Asia. "History had begun," he writes, "built on the way a horse can cover ground." Conley also illustrates the racial and socioeconomic backdrop of horse country with rather telling accounts of the interactions between black and white, blue collar and blueblood that shape the equine community. The upshot is a vividly equine-centric view of social, cultural and economic human history.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This book was not written to meet massive pent-up reader demand, but it does offer an engaging lay reader's introduction to the business of breeding Thoroughbred horses. Conley, a staff writer with The New Yorker, takes us to high-profile horse auctions; to picturesque big-money farms in bluegrass Kentucky, the Mecca of Thoroughbred breeding; to second-tier farms in California and a remote stud-farm-of-last-resort run by old hippies in New Mexico; to a preserve for semiferal Shetland ponies where nature takes its course without careful human intervention; and (many times) into the high-stakes bedroom, so to speak. We meet Storm Cat, the stud's stud, whose services are sold for up to $500,000 per breeding and whose offspring earned more than $21 million at the track in 1999 and 2000; the old warrior Seattle Slew, coming back to his duties following delicate surgery; and Distinctive Cat, a son of Storm Cat and now a stud himself, who, through a "telepathic animal communicator," grants the author an interview (Distinctive Cat is happy with his job, thank you, and he doesn't even take into account the sexual aspect). A nice buy for libraries with big budgets or that are located in horse country. Jim Burns, Jacksonville P.L., FL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First Edition edition (March 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582341842
• ISBN-13: 978-1582341842
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,601,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adventures in a Thoroughbred breeding shed, March 27, 2002

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E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Stud: Adventures in Breeding (Hardcover)

The text on the back cover of this book says it all: "The most expensive thirty seconds in sports." You will need a lot of pocket change plus a very good mare before you book a cover from Storm Cat, the Thoroughbred stallion with the world's most expensive stud fee---$500,000 per mare as of 2002. And there's no `payable when the foal stands and nurses' clause in his contract, either.

"Stud" is a two-year labor of love by "New Yorker" staff writer, Kevin Conley who became intrigued by the amount of money that a Thoroughbred stallion could earn after retiring from the racetrack. This is an exuberant, stylishly-written book that will tell you everything you wanted to know about what goes on in the breeding shed, but were afraid to ask.

I also learned some things I didn't know I wanted to know, like the diameter of Seattle Slew's testicles---this is a book for horse-lovers who have already been through sex education class.

The author spends some time at the Keeneland sales in Lexington, Kentucky, where the `Doobie Brothers' (four sheiks from the royal family of Dubai) duke it out with the `boys' (Ireland's Coolmore Stud) for the most expensive yearlings in the sale (often Storm Cat progeny). Conley doesn't neglect the smaller breeders who make a profit by buying and breeding inexpensive mares with good blood-lines, and then selling their yearlings and two-year-olds for a profit. (There is a story in last week's "Thoroughbred Times" about a filly "who clearly did not have enough pedigree to shoot for the stars," yet was sold for $1.9 million at Barretts March sale because she showed that she could run.)

Finally, Conley details the differences between a `natural' cover (Thoroughbreds), artificial insemination (A.I.) techniques (Standardbreds), and pasture breeding (semi-feral Shetland ponies). Speaking for myself, I wouldn't exactly use the word `natural' after reading that it usually takes five or six people plus a stallion, plus a twitched and hobbled mare to complete the breeding process. Thoroughbred folks tend to be very conservative and have already rejected A.I. even though it is a safer, cheaper, and healthier method of getting mares in foal.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tour-de-Horse, March 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Stud: Adventures in Breeding (Hardcover)

A lively and hilarious overview of a very weird subculture, the Kentucky farms where prize stallions retire to lives of compulsory, micro-managed promiscuity.
Conley is great on the qwirks of pampered horses and humans alike. The book is really less about equine sex (it does answer certain invitable questions) and more about the incredible financial dealings that surround these animals. I was reminded at times of Michael Lewis' "Liars Poker", another great book about money-fueled nuttiness. Not particularly a horse or a financial person myself, but I couldn't put the book down.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Non-Fiction Read, April 30, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Stud: Adventures in Breeding (Hardcover)

I never would have bought a book about thoroughbred breeding on my own, but a friend gave me Stud, and much to my surprise it turned out to be the best non-fiction book I've read in a long time. It fulfilled all the requirements of a "great read." It was interesting, funny and quite moving.

Conley succeeds in giving each horse a distinctive and appealing personality so it's fun to read about these grand and sometimes frightening animals and the life they lead. His descriptions of the fabulous horse farms - big and small - make you want to stop what you're doing and fly to Kentucky or California immediately!

Best of all, he takes you into the very select and rarified world of horse breeding - a world you would never even know existed before reading this book. His portraits of the patrician owners who have been breeding horses for generations as well as the oddball characters who work in the breeding barns is really fascinating and fun.

The book includes a surprising amount of history - which Conley manages to make very fresh and interesting. His observations - whether about British royalty, ancient horse trading or the origins of the first Stud Book - are fascinating, and his writing is as elegant as the horses he admires so much.

This book would make a great birthday or Father's Day gift for someone's special stud.