Stud Fees for stallions in the UK compared to abroad

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i have been doing my usually trouling (SP?) through endless websites looking at stallions (standing in this country and abroad)and it has become more increasingly visable to myself the huge difference in stud fees in this country compared to that of stallions in europe,

for example one Very young stallion who has no record undersaddle as of yet, or offspring but has good breeding and attained good results in the bef is being advertised with a stud fee for £700 which i find astonishing really seeing as you could use a stallion standing abroad for the same money which will have more of a proven record, and probably with as good breeding if not better

is this just me, in thinking this??
 
can anyone blame breeders going abroad?, as the costs of breeding horses are expensive as it is in this country let alone with some of the stud fees that are being chosen for the stallions in this country
 
£700 is the same as 1000€ and you can get a whole lot of stallions for that price. Additionally, if you add another £150 to the budget, you are into the world of top 100 stallions. Bearing in mind that stallion you are talking about probably has no kids on the ground (or they are too young to compete), he obviously will have nothing competing at GP or be in the top 2500.

So, no it's no surprise that UK breeders use European stallions.
 
There does seem to have been a huge leap from being successful in the BEF to being priced as a proven stallion. It is expensive to produce stallions in this country, however, so I can see where the price is coming from and the cost of getting semen sent to this country is a cost that has to be remembered. We for example include it in our fee for upto two collections and have been able to do a door to door delivery in certain circumstances.
 
No, you're absolutely right. Look what I found : http://www.frenchstallions.org/french_stallion_detail.php?stallion=2007020

I've got my eye on him for my filly in a couple of years' time although he will be more expensive by then! But just look at his price now? Like the one you quote at £700, he has no offspring yet but with those lines at 350 Euros you couldn't go wrong.
 
Thanks Forester, you've made me blush. The problem is, that in Mainland Europe there are thousands of stallions and you've got to make a name for your stallion. If you don't have the benefit of a huge global brand and marketing machine, you've got to do something. In fact BLC the owner of Jaguar Mail gave away 180 coverings in 2006 for one of his young stallions. he had no choice, even a well know stallion owner and breeder like Bernard has do something to get his stallion known and foals on the ground is the answer.

In the case of Dallas he has a way to go with his flat work , so he has left his home at the French national stud and gone for two months of dressage training, so that he starts to canter with his back not his legs. Fortunately, he has a forward thinking and enlightened owner!!!!!!!!!!
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Headline price is not the only thing you should bear in mind. Add on costs. Concessions. What happens if the mare is not in foal? There are so many variations that it is mind boggling. At the end of the day if you think you have found the stallion of your dreams don't be put off if he is £150 more in his ad than the next on your list, because you will always wonder "what if".
 
If it's the stallion I'm thinking of (a black 3 yr old ;-) ) then it is an eye watering amount for something unproven, ungraded & has already failed a stallion grading with one warmblood studbook!!

Although to give the owners credit, after my last ranty post, they do know how to market their horse & generate PR coverage! :-)
 
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There does seem to have been a huge leap from being successful in the BEF to being priced as a proven stallion. It is expensive to produce stallions in this country, however, so I can see where the price is coming from and the cost of getting semen sent to this country is a cost that has to be remembered. We for example include it in our fee for upto two collections and have been able to do a door to door delivery in certain circumstances.

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I think its probably a bit of a vicious circle for owners of young stallions in this country as if they try to price them realistically (including all the traners fees etc) then they are far too expensive in comparison with mainland Europe and they then need to charge even more in later years to catch up, which puts off mare owners even more. Obviously some of the studs include a vet package and are NFNF rather than a straight fee that AI usually is, but even so it probably doesn't encourage the mare owners to come and storm the door down.

OTOH, there are still a whole group of mare owners out there who like to do what I describe as 'pat the stallion on the nose' (ie see him in the flesh and preferably at home) so regard professionally produced videos/DVD Roms of stallions abroad or available only by AI with a certain amount of suspicion. The 'pat on the nose' system is not a way of selecting a stallion that particularly appeals to me -- pedigree, conformation and paces marks at grading and performance under saddle is far more vital to the process when selecting a young/1st season stallion IMHO -- but some do still see it as essential and this is where the home-basd stallions probably score despite their higher stud fees. And of course many eventing stallions don't do much AI (or are not allowed to by Wetherbys) and can charge accordingly becuase of the high international reputation of British eventing breeding, so slightly higher fees are not an issue here.

As someone who has stood -- and had stallions trained -- both here and abroad (including the only *UK-owned TB* ever to be graded and stand at stud in Denmark) I have to say that whilst the fees you have to pay to get the training and competition in that is necessary to promote them and attract the mares there are considerably cheaper, the competition for mares is much more intense and that is what keeps the prices so low and the choice so much wider.

OTOH, going for semen for a hot first season stallion (such as His Highness and Hotline when they first came out), is like looking for hen's teeth if you are in the UK and the fact that quite a number of studs abroad regard the UK as a 'dead end' as far as including any results from progeny born here in their marketing material for the following years is concerned, does not help the situation either. Let's hope that as more and more foals and youngstock take part in the Futurity -- and UK breeders let the stallion owners abroad about their successes and the (hopefully) higher price their foals are making as a result -- then that attitude will change and UK-based mare owners will not get squeezed out in the rush.
 
Yes i agree there with the costs of keeping a stallion in the UK! We put ours in a stud ready to promote him to the public for coverings, it cost £20 a day for basic part livery then VAT on top and of course any etcs on top of that, you add that up over a month and you need a stud and half just to cover his costs at stud without the other costs on top of that! Then there was the huge cost of advertising which ran into the thousands as he was a new boy to the UK we wanted to get him known, he was very marketable, the same calabre of horse that is in Europe and one of only a handful fully approved and tested Oldenburgs in this country and most certiantly the youngest but it wasnt cheap to do. I wouldnt do it again unless i bred it and could keep in aboard for half the cost of over here and with a lot more breeders who know what there looking for, one lady over here asked me if he was cuddley! It was her first question LOL
 
I watch the market throught the world and have noticed in recent year, the obsession with stallion ownership. Particularly in America, where the explosion in stallions is enormous. There seems to be a consensus that stallion ownership is easy (well, it's not enormously complicated providing you have the facilities or easy access to facilities), and that making money from stallions is a piece of cake. Well it's not.

You have owners at the top end like the owners of Diamant de Semilly who sold over 500 coverings in 2007 for 3000€, therefore turning over 1.5M€. Now look at the cost of keeping the 250 horses they own and the competition yard that the son Eric runs. There's a profit there but not as much as you might think. Diamant had to become a team World Champion to get where he is now.

To collect 142 doses from Dallas cost us 4000€, now add in his costs throughout his four year old campaign (8000€), thank god he came equal first in the Grande Finale. Add in advertising costs, shipping costs to New Zealand, America etc etc, three doses per pregnancy (which would be high, but you have to allow for bad vet work and infertile mares) and there is no way on earth that there'll be a profit from this exercise.

Then take into account that everything costs at least twice as much in the UK and you're embarking on a very very tough project. That doesn't mean someone shouldn't do it, but they need to recognise that you'll probably not make a whole stack of money in the first four or five years until a young stallion becomes successful abroad and is recognised as a good sire.
 
Then of course you have to add on competition costs and really you have to put the horse with a rider that can get it to the bigger shows so they get noticed, so between the ages of 5-8 add another £30-£45k on top for a showjumper.
 
yes - and you do all that and people still go and use foreign stallions instead of british ones because the europeans are still better at marketing a 'product' rather than marketing just their particular horse- performance auctions, etc are still more common abroad than here

and then prize money is higher abroad than in the UK in some cases so the foreign stallions can recover some of their training fees from prizemoney which certainly is unlikely to be the case in the more expensive UK operation with a horse competing in the UK only

I get a lot of people asking for stallion livery and you ask them why they have a stallion, what it does, etc and really some of them shouldn't be let loose with a rocking horse let alone a stallion
 
" and really some of them shouldn't be let loose with a rocking horse let alone a stallion" Made me
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I must admit that sometimes you see a stallion at a show and you think why and how
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The most cutting remark I heard was at an AES grading show whem Ted Edgar was sitting in his coat made of corgi hair with a microphone and said when ask for his opinion ' the best thing I can say about that horse is that it is turned out nice'. Cutting but unfortunaly it was true as many see their horse through rose tinted glasses.
 
It was at the same grading where our female friend who is a great producer of horses and a stallion owner, went into the toilets to get changed, and when she came out we said that you do realise that you have been in the Gents. Without blushing, she said I thought it was strange, as I thought when I came out ' that dirty bar steward is pi$$ing in the sink'!!

The thing you have to think about about having a stallion is being honest with yourself and thinking is my horse really that good and is it really worth havng all the additional cost and hassle and what kind of life style will he have (ie kept apart from other horses etc)

We had ours castrated as a 5 yo (by Carthago Z) even though he was graded as although he was OK as a stallion he lacked concentration at shows which affected his jumping but before we did we had semon collected and frozen for future use.
 
I think the TB market is one to watch there is some very aggressive marketing going on, with young stallions they actively pursue the best mares with pedigrees that compliment that stallion and offer all sorts of inducements to get those mares, especially in the 2nd and 3rd seasons at stud when the race record is forgotten and nothing from them is racing. A mare owner can potentially make a killing from this!
In todays pressured commercial environment those stallions have probably until their 3 year old crop to prove themselves or its off to the far east for them!!

I think that as a stallion owner especially in performance breeding you need to accept that until the offspring are on the ground and proving themsleves that the first few years at stud are a PR exercise at best and at worst producing stallions is expensive and not an exact science.

So the more get from quality mares in the first three or so years the better for your stallion, you need to attract mare owners with inducements, keeping mares may be more convenient but it's an expensive and lengthy process to conceive, produce and sell foals, offer decent inducements and you'll get the early patronage and the mare owners could make a bit of money!!!!
 
Very interesting topic. Having had two stallions to promote and keep in the UK I can see from both sides of the coin, so to speak...

Livery, training, feed, bedding, farrier, vet and competition fees and fuel to competitions is much more expensive in the UK than on the Continent. To keep one stallion at a competition yard for one year in the UK costs an owner approx £10-15k+ (dependent on rider). This is also excluding any fees for semen collection/freezing etc. However, I can also appreciate that riders and the other services in the UK have to make a living also at what they are doing.

The price on the continent is much much less for stallion owners, so they can also afford to ask less for the stud fees.

I totally agree that a new young stallion should be reasonable in cost, to attrack mare owners and get foals and youngstock on the ground, and they also have to promote themselves as a sire and competition horse.

I also have several mares, and we too are looking at the cost of stud fees, so yes as a mare owner you are trying to also set yourself a budget on what it will cost you to get your mare in foal, so you are going to go for value for money.

But it is very very difficult being a stallion owner in the UK, hence why we only have one and sold all our other colts, as unless you can compete your own stallion yourself, we feel the costs are very prohibitive for the return.
 
fingers crossed, I got a call from a client in New Zealand, who had especially leased a mare so that she could use Dallas. His perfect type, tb, pretty, good moving. They used just two straws and she's pregnant.

I told Dallas, and he got all blokey about it, but I think he's quietly pleased with himself.
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