A
Tweet on Monday querying the percentage of Australian bred sires considered
commercial is a hard one to answer with absolute accuracy but a look at the Top
50 sires on the Australian General Sires List by earnings gives us a pretty
good idea.
Of those 50 sires, only 10 have a suffix denoting that they were bred outside
of Australia and one of those, So You Think is Kiwi bred.
Of the remaining nine, High Chaparral (IRE) and Street Cry (IRE) are dead, Lope
de Vega (IRE), Medaglia D'Oro (USA), Hard Spun (USA) and Galileo (IRE) no
longer shuttle, leaving just Teofilo (IRE), More Than Ready (USA) and
Myboycharlie (IRE) as shuttle stallions available to Australian breeders this
spring.
So what does this mean?
It means there are more Australian bred commercial sires, but if you look at
their lineage you see the real impact of the shuttle sires as the majority of
the Top 50 are direct Danehill line sires and many others carry Danehill
through their female pedigree.
The Danehill phenomenon is what drives interest in shuttle stallions going
forward.
Another Danehill will eventually come to Australia and nobody wants to miss out
on that, so the big international farms keep rolling the dice and Australian
breeders keep showing their support.
If you choose a shuttle stallion for your mare, you may well get in on the
ground floor of something genuinely exciting, so don't let obvious facts at face value get in the way of
an inspired gamble.