With the stallion auctions coming to a close for a POA there is great debate on how to improve one of our auctions and get more bidders. One thing people vented about was that too many stallions were live cover only. Ah... this brings up the debate I voiced this winter. To ship or not to ship. I got a lot of really great feedback. It was something we talked about and went back and forth on - what would be our plan for Nugget moving forward?
In an ideal world, where I had all the money, we would be able to have Nugget at a stallion station/vet clinic where they could collect on him and ship to anyone who wants to breed to him. This would have many advantages:
It would be safer for him. We wouldn't have to worry about him getting kicked or hurting himself breeding the taller mares. (It's a trick to stand the mare in a hole and get him high enough that he isn't hurting his stifles/hocks.)
It would help ease my anxiety about having strange mares on the place. It seems like things that can go wrong always will and having someone else's baby (and mare) here would be nerve wracking for me.
It would ease the space constraints that having outside mares puts on our small property.
It would free up time for us here to not have to schedule getting those breedings in as it is a 2 person job and we are all so dang busy.
More people from a further distance away might want to breed to Nugget.
Ultimately - here is why it is not feasible or something we can offer at this time.
At this time we don't care to invest the money it would take to train Nugget to collect. This is not something they just do automatically; especially a stallion like Nugget. He's kind of a shy, timid guy and unless things change from the last two seasons, his feelings get hurt easily. We could be wrong, but we have a feeling this isn't going to be something he "gets excited" about easily.
The amount of mare owners it would take to make this worth our while economically isn't something we see in his near future. He's a young stallion who, if everything goes perfectly, will still only have 3 babies after this foaling season and 6 total in 2025. His oldest is a yearling this year and won't be even shown under saddle until next year at the earliest. With not having a show career himself, people aren't knocking down our door to breed to him. Yet.
Therefore the stud fees we would have to charge to make it worth our while just aren't going to have anyone looking at Nugget. In POA there are plenty of options if you don't like the costs associated with one stallion you can go elsewhere. There are plenty of stallions for the limited number of broodmares we have in our breed. We think Nugget is pretty special - it may take a while for others to see that.
Our schedules are not conducive to hauling to the closest vet that collects. Yes, it is only a half an hour drive. However, by the time you hook up the truck and trailer, haul there, collect and haul home after working all day - you've shot the whole evening. Now do that a few times a week and when do our show ponies get ridden and trained? Everyone who knows us knows that we train our own and that means - 3 green ponies this year that all need to be worked 3-5 days a week. That's not even factoring in our second, third and fourth jobs. Frankly, that boils down to just not enough hours in the day or week.
When would we breed our own mares? Nugget has 3 ladies of his own here to breed. We will start breeding him in April and if all goes well will be done in May. Even if they all take on the first try - he will be busy here through everyone's ideal breeding months.
Trust me - we get the frustration that people have. Especially people who live in more remote areas of the country. We are blessed in our area to have so many NICE stallions within a 3-5 hour drive that shipped vs live cover isn't a huge concern. We understand that isn't the case in some parts of the country.
We have been on the mare side of live cover and the mare side of shipped. We felt that by the time you paid the vet side for both the shipping and the insemination it evened out with hauling our mare and the mare care for live cover. But that was our experience. We understand that not everyone has had the same experience and we get that some people don't need to pay the vet to inseminate. Every single person out there has to weigh what works best for their family and their situation. No one should be judging others when they do not know the life situation is on the other end.
In an ideal world, people will be amazed at how incredibly awesome Nugget's babies are and some day it will be worth it all to get him trained to collect and ship. Or in another option - maybe this is something we girls here will pick up as a skill and he won't have to leave our property to collect. Some day... until then - settle down. We are all just doing the best we can to provide for our ponies, breed a few really gentle minded, outstanding moving babies to improve the breed and support our favorite club anyway that we can. The way everyone chooses to do that is their business. As I often have to tell my sixth graders - "you do you, boo."
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