New Players and Breeding - Stud Fees

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 13 years 2 weeks ago

The point I want to make with this article is that stud fees often have nothing to do with the quality of the stallion. Just as with real life, the stud fee is something an owner arbitrarily decides. Sure, the owner might apply some logic (“This horse that won three Grade 1s is standing for 40k, and this horse than won one Grade 1 is standing for 20k. My horse won two Grade 1s, so I think I should make his stud fee 30k.” Or whatever.). Stud fees are subject to the owner’s whims at any time. “It’s my birthday, so my stud boy’s price is being reduced for today only from 30k to 10k.” You’re going to get the exact same genes (ur, computer programming) for 10k that day, as you get for 30k any other day. So one can hardly say, in this example, that the price of the stud fee reflects the quality of the stallion.

If you’re in love with a horse that has a high stud fee, that’s fine. Go ahead and pay the fee, if you can afford it, and get what you want. But please don’t pay a high stud fee based up on the *assumption* that it means you’re getting a better quality stallion than studs with lower fees.

I’ve never tried to do any kind of survey, but I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of stallions have fees that go down with time, rather than up. (After all, if the vast majority of young racehorses turn out to be disappointments, it follows that the vast majority of stallions are going to be disappointments.) For that reason, I’m not a fan of paying a high fee for a new boy that’s just been retired. You’ll likely be able to breed to that same boy a few years down the line for a lesser fee. Sure, there are some that start out high and go up even higher, because they’re super studs right out of the box. In that case, I’d be willing to pay the higher fee down the line, since the stallion has shown that he’s worth it.

I’ll demonstrate the above more emphatically with mixed breeds, because I was around when there first started being player-owned stallions available at stud. That first year was a doozy when it came to high stud fees (though there were some wonderful exceptions). After all, there was little supply but plenty of demand, so stallion owners could pretty much name their price. A Quarter Horse that stood for $35,000 that first year is now available for a mere $7500. Another Quarter Horse started at $25,000, and has gradually dropped to being available for $15,000. An Arabian dropped from $25,000 to $10,000 in one move his second year at stud – his owner freely stating that the lower fee was to “be competitive”, as there wasn’t any competition to speak of when he stood for the higher price. With all these horses, you get the same genes for the lower price as you got for the higher price.

Mixed breeds aside, and beyond blatant success at stud, why would a player stand a stallion for a seemingly unreasonably high fee?

One reason could be that the stallion owner is trying to control the quality of mares. In other words, the belief is that owners of low quality mares won’t be willing to pay a high stud fee to breed those mares, so the stallion with a high fee will be blessed with only higher quality mares. I’m highly skeptical that this tactic works. If a mare owner really likes a stud, and has plenty of money, they’re going to breed that mare to that stallion, no matter how illogical it seems from a financial standpoint.

Another reason a stud fee can be unfashionably high is that the stallion owner is deliberately trying to discourage breeding, because they pretty much want the stallion to be their own private stud. So, while they could choose to not stand the horse at all, they compromise, so to speak, by demanding that the few mare owners who might be tempted pay an outlandish fee for the privilege of using their “private” stallion.

Another reason a stallion’s fee can suddenly jump is because of The Edge newsletter that The Steward publishes for SIMperior players. Each week, she writes an article on a stallion, and so very often a flurry of breeders flock to that stallion, since The Steward has already done their homework for them, in a sense. Because of this flurry of demand for the stallion’s services, his fee can go up to a large degree; and sometimes the stud owner might raise it as soon as the article is published, in anticipation of the flurry. (Granted, this flurry of breedings is sometimes a dubious honor, because I’ve heard of situations where mare owners will automatically breed to a stallion featured in The Edge, with little regard for whether or not their mare even fits the stallion’s attributes.)

I have to confess to thinking, at times, that stallions owned by some male players have high-ish fees to match their owners’ egos. But I’ll leave my speculation at that, since I haven’t done an actual study on this or tried to prove it.


Now, having said all this, you might think I’m a big proponent of stallion discounts. Well, certainly, it’s better to pay a discounted fee, if available, rather than a full blown one. But it’s not any kind of discount if this clever marketing ploy gets you to breed to a stud that you would never have otherwise considered. In other words, a bargain isn’t really a bargain if you never wanted the merchandise in the first place, but only spent your money because you got caught up in the idea of getting something for a lesser price than normal. Be as savvy a consumer with paying stud fees as you would be with buying anything else.

Certainly, some high stud fees make perfect sense, considering the proven success of the stallion in the shed. But there are other reasons for a fee to be high than proven success. Likewise, a low stud fee doesn’t always mean low genetic capability. The current fee is an arbitrary “it made sense to me at the time” assessment by the stallion's owner. I wouldn't give the fee any deeper meaning than that.

Don’t ever let the amount of the stud fee be the primary factor in determining whether or not a stallion is a good match for your mare. The fee can surely help you make a final decision after narrowing down the possibilities of good mates. But the dollar value often means little in terms of the stud’s ability to sire good offspring.

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