Stud Management for Novices - Standing at Stud

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 12 years 3 weeks ago

So, you’re convinced you’ve got a boy worthy of standing at stud. Now what?

THE LOCATION
After his racing career is over, you need to ship your stallion to a farm where he’ll stand at stud. Assuming you don’t have your own farm, you’ll need to pay weekly board.

SIM is different from real life in that where a horse is “bred” is actually the location of the stallion at the time of conception/birth, and not where the foal is dropped (ie, not where the mare is located). If you stand a stallion in a location with a track that has stakes restricted to horses bred in that state or country, it might give your boy a little bit of a boost in attracting mares. However, I have found that very few foals bred in such a state or country end up in those restricted races, so be careful of placing too much importance on location. I have all my stallions standing at my farm in Oklahoma, where there aren’t any OK-bred races, and it hasn’t affected the attractiveness of my most successful stallions.


THE STUD FEE
If you think it’s tough trying to figure out how to price a horse you want to sell, try figuring out The Right Fee to charge for your stallion’s services.

Really, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a right answer. If you place the fee high – to show your confidence in your boy and/or as a desire to get more income – you risk appearing arrogant and/or greedy, which can mean turning off a lot of players. If you place the fee below the norm, you risk coming off as apologetic, or having most serious breeders bypass your stallion completely, because any dirt/turf Thoroughbred with, say, a mere $7500 fee can’t possibly be taken seriously. (I don’t agree that the fee equates to the quality of the stallion, but most players – especially those with limited time to investigate a stallion’s record – will probably assume low fee stallions are low quality stallions.)

Your best bet is probably to place your stallion in the middle of the road for his surface/type. Unless his race record is relatively poor, most players will probably accept a mid range fee without complaint.

As of a couple of game years ago, fee changes started showing on the History tab of the stallion’s record. If you’re the type of person who is always second guessing your decisions, and therefore changing the stud fee frequently, your lack of confidence in the worth of your boy is going to show on the History tab. I wouldn’t recommend changing the fee more often than once a game year, and even that is probably more frequent than is necessary.


YOUR OWN MARES
If you don’t have mares of your own of appropriate type or quality to breed to your stud, you’re going to have a heck of time giving him a fair chance at showing what he’s capable of. We’d all like to see our stallions be popular with other players, while we receive the earnings from stud fee income. But I think most everyone would agree that the stallion’s owner is the first in line with the responsibility for getting his or her own stud some decent mares. Hopefully, you already have some appropriate mares for him, and that’s why you wanted to stand that stallion in the first place. But if you’re going about it backwards – obtaining the stallion without having any quality mares for him – you’re going to have an uphill climb in managing him successfully.

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