Photo: Angelique Bridson
This week in Dunstan Horse Feeds Meet the Breeder, we caught up with major industry figure Mark Chitty - Managing Director of Haunui Farm. Mark co-bred Listed Rangitikei Cup winner Francee under his Haunui Bloodstock Ltd banner along with BF Bloodstock Ltd.
Tell us the story of Francee.
The late Don McLaren was a very good client of mine and he was a breeder who had between 10-12 mares at any one time in which we owned a few in partnership. When Don passed away, his family decided that they wouldn’t stay in breeding and I got the opportunity to purchase the mares that he owned at the current time, in which Calveen was one of them.
Natural progression is that we sent her to Iffraaj, who has probably been our most successful stallion here at Haunui (Farm), and we were lucky enough to get a filly. Calveen was getting on a little bit, so we elected to retain the filly to bring back into the breeding portfolio.
Francee has done a great job, and this has been her best racing season. She won the Pearl Series final on Champions Day, and then to get the black-type win, albeit only a Listed win, it just means a lot going forward in terms of our opportunity as commercial breeders. We tend to take most of our colts and fillies to the market so having a mare with a black-type win takes you a couple of rungs up the ladder which helps immensely.
A couple of years ago, I had just stepped off a plane in Australia and had a phone call from Mark (Walker) to say she had pulled up a bit sore after training, and he said we might want to consider mating her (as it was close to the breeding season). Through a bit of my veterinary experience, I investigated a little bit further with their vet Ronan Costello, who I want to pay a bit of tribute to, as it was through his diagnosis and treatment that we got to where we are today.
Tell us about your background in the industry.
I was lucky enough to have a lot of involvement with Haunui Farm growing up and then trained as a veterinarian, so naturally went to the equine side of the vet profession. I worked in private practice with Charlie Roberts and Andrew Grierson at the Auckland Vet Centre, which I did for a good number of years.
When the Ra Ora Stud and Haunui Farm partnership ceased in 2001, I started to take a more active role in Haunui Farm management. In the mid-2000s I got out of full clinical practice for the role here. I am still active in the veterinary side of things, but contract out procedures such as x-raying and surgeries.
I have a bit of a passion for reproduction and recognizing that we don’t breed for fertility in the game, we breed for performance on the racetrack. I enjoy playing a role in the reproduction side with good mares that don’t always have good fertility.
Provide an overview of Haunui Farm
Haunui Farm was started by my grandparents Geoff and Peg, in the 1950s, and was located at Whitford. My parents, Ron and Carolyn, shifted us as family onto the property in 1981. Then we purchased the Karaka property at the end of 2009, and my wife Sara and our children moved to Karaka and my parents now live off the farm.
We have about 50 mares we are breeding from, and we have been standing stallions since the early 1970s with Karayar being the first one and last year we stood Ribchester. We are currently reevaluating that as we have invested in some stallions that are off the farm. Like everyone, costs have risen and we are trying to improve the quality on a yearly basis as much as we can.
Do you breed to race or breed to sell? If sell, how do you decide on what to retain and what to sell?
Fundamentally, we class ourselves as commercial breeders and we would like to keep fillies out of the better mares early in their careers if we can but sometimes cash flow or commercial reality means we must take those horses to the market. But we try and have more intent on keeping a few fillies, Rondinella and Sudbina are a couple of fillies we kept that we managed to get black-type with. It has become a lot harder to try and buy black-type winning mares in Australasia with far more significant players in the market than there used to be so if you want to be in the top 5% level of broodmares without massive cash flow, you have got to try and breed them.
Do you seek advice on your breeding decisions?
My father has only got one eye (laughs), he is very one-eyed.
We discuss it amongst ourselves, and we talk to different people. We are active farmers, so the advice is more probably in-house. We look at certain patterns and that, but probably the best advice is breed the best to the best and hope for the best. In the long and short of it, I think the further you get away from racetrack performance, the harder it becomes. That is what the pedigree is system is all about, the more black-type in the female line, the better chance you have achieving that performance with the progeny you produce.
What do you love about the thoroughbred breeding industry?
What I love about it at a stud level is the collegiality, it is competitive, but you can ring up the stud master’s and have a good conversation not only about the industry but about other things. Although we are highly competitive in terms of the market, on the racetrack, at the yearling sales, it is that collegiality.
Also, the recognition that we don’t have the best bloodlines here in New Zealand, but we can compete given our natural environment and the quality of people that have been either brought up on the farm or have come into the industry.
What advice would you give someone entering the industry as a breeder?
Recognise that if you are going to be breeder that you are playing a long game. Learn from those who have been in the breeding game for period of time and do it as well as what you can with the means you have. If you’re in it for a short time, don’t start.
If you could make one mating with any mare and any stallion (past or present), what would it be?
If I go back to our own line, starting with Foxona our foundation mare, her granddaughter called Rosie’s Girl who was one of the typical really good racehorses – she won a Derby and an Oaks; and this is beyond me and my age when she was being bred, but she went to Sir Tristram and I think she only went once. That line of our family ended up dying out a little bit so I would love to have bred her more than once to him. The best stallion in New Zealand from an Oaks winner, maybe we just never tried that enough and maybe that way she would have gone on and been like her half-sister Lavender Hill who has been the successful part of that family.
Finish this sentence: The best part of being a thoroughbred breeder is…
Seeing the new foal because you have thought about the mating, you have farmed the mare through and then it is what opportunities it present going forward.
