LYNDHURST STUD WHICH SUPPLIED “QUEENSLAND STALLION OF THE YEAR” IN THE JUST COMPLETED SEASON HAVE BEEN INNOVATORS FOR DECADES

18/09/14

One gets the distinct impression that the dawning of the 2014/2015 thoroughbred breeding season has the Kruger family at one of Queensland’s oldest and most successful stud farms, Lyndhurst Stud, unsure whether to laugh or to cry. On the negative side, their wonderful stallion servant Sequalo has just turned 24, and, as happens to us all, time is fast catching up with the horse that was crowned “Queensland Stallion of the Year” of last season, at the recent Racing Queensland Awards night.

Sequalo came to Queensland for his debut season at Lyndhurst in 1996 after winning 10 races to Group 2 level in Victoria and he’s been domiciled at the famous Warwick stud ever since. On a positive note though, the stud is excited at the prospect of seeing the first crop of the son of champion stallion Redoute’s Choice – Drumbeats – step out on to the racetrack of dreams at different tracks around Australia, in the hope that he can replicate what other Lyndhurst stallions such as Smokey Eyes, Celestial Dancer and Sequalo have been able to achieve.

So last week I jumped in the jalopy and drove out to Warwick to catch up with Jeff Kruger, who along with his brother Griff, oversees the day-to-day running of the stud. Firstly I asked Jeff Kruger if he’d give me an update on the current stallion roster at Lyndhurst and he advised, “Hidden Dragon and Drumbeats are the main two stallions. Sequalo is taking a bit of a back seat at his age – 24. We’re reducing his numbers back substantially. Hidden Dragon’s service fee is $5,500 and I think he’s pretty well priced, compared to his Queensland opposition. He gets a good book of mares to start with as he’s backed by shareholders. He’s got 66 shareholders, so that’s a good start before we take a booking. With free returns and Lyndhurst support he’s guaranteed to cover a book of mares of 80 to 85. I think he’s doing a particularly good job, winner wise. His winners-to-runners ratio has escalated in the last few seasons and he’s got nine stakeswinners including a couple of Group winners. He’s certainly a top bread and butter horse here in Queensland and hopefully the phone will start ringing.

“Drumbeats is in his fourth season. His shareholders have got double nominations this year for his fourth season, so he’s got 50 shareholders and with our support and a few free returns, he’s guaranteed 100 mares before we take a booking, so that’s really good, especially with the new prizemoney levels they’ve (Racing Queensland) just announced. Had these prizemoney increases not been announced (before this new breeding season) we’d have probably been struggling for outside support other than what we’re giving the horse now. His first crop is broken in and will be hitting the tracks soon as 2YO’s. All we need is his first runner to be a winner and the phone will run hot for a week or so”.

Asked if there are any positive reports on these just turned 2YO’s of Drumbeats, Jeff stated, “I know one of our clients has one with Bart and James Cummings and there’s positive reports coming back there. We’ve got a couple in work with trainers, one in particular is trained in Toowoomba and looks like she’s well above average. We’ll probably try and target the Magic Millions with her, but knowing that, we’ll have to get two wins under our belt to make the field”.

In respect of recent prizemoney increases announced for thoroughbred racing by Racing Queensland, Jeff told me, “It’s very positive, particularly in Brisbane Saturday racing, to know that they’re going to race for $65,000 a race. With the QTIS being, using their (Racing Queensland) word ‘reinvigorated’, adding the QTIS on top for the two and three-year-old racing, it makes for very good prizemoney levels, which are the equal of any two or three-year-old non-Carnival racing anywhere around Australia. I’m on the Breeders Board (Thoroughbred Breeders Queensland Association) and we’ve been right behind the push to reinvigorate QTIS and we took it to the government and got it over the line. We’ve brought back the breeder bonus for the breeder, which is good for the bigger breeders like ourselves. It costs us a lot out of the hip pocket when you’ve got to register 35, sometimes 40, yearlings for QTIS. So if we can breed a QTIS two or three-year-old and win in town and we get 6% of that prizemoney, it’s a big help towards registering the next crop of foals for QTIS”.

I asked Jeff to give readers an insight into 1) how big Lyndhurst Stud was, 2) what numbers of horses were domiciled there and 3) why part of the stud had become a housing development in recent times and he replied, ”Lyndhurst Stud sits on just shy of 3,000 acres”, adding, “my father (Merrell) has done some property development in recent years. It was over 3,000 acres but we’re split from Warwick township by the Condamine River and quite a bit of (Lyndhurst Stud) property is close to town, so we’ve done a little bit of subdivision and there’s even a Sequalo Street in the new development to honour him. On farm today there’s probably 300 individual horses. We’d have 35 mares of our own and 25 yearlings of our own and the rest are all horses agisted for clients. We also run 200 head of Black Angus cows”.

Lyndhurst Stud has long had a reputation of being leaders in the thoroughbred industry in Australia when it comes to having foster mares on standby at their stud all year round, so I asked Jeff to give me an insight into that aspect of the operation. He told me, “We’d have 12 or 13 foster mares here. We try to be a bit strategic in getting them in foal from early July through until December at the rate of a couple a month, so that if we get an orphaned foal, we’re not bucket feeding the mare and can put them straight on to the foster mare. So ever since I came back from Ireland in 1989 and my mother (Esdene) was bucket feeding six foals, I said ‘We’ve got to pick up on this idea they’ve got in the United Kingdom and Ireland with Draft (horse) mares. They don’t have to be draft mares but draft mares are guaranteed good milkers and they have a good temperament. And ever since that time we’ve never bucket fed one foal. We’ve had just about every stud in Queensland ring us at different times and we’ll help where we can, particularly with clients that have supported us with our stallions, as it very well may be an orphaned foal by one of our stallions, but most importantly when you’re foaling down 100 mares of your own, you have to look after your own back yard first. If there’s one available, more often than not, we help other breeders”.

Asked if all “12 or 13” Draft mares were Draft horses, Jeff advised, “No, we’ve got three Clydesdale mares and two thoroughbred/Clydesdale cross mares. When I was sourcing mares, there was a well-known guy in Victoria, Tony Williams, and he had a foster service operating in Victoria. He took a job with Magic Millions and he had to offload all his horses and he rang me and said, ‘I know you’re trying to put a band of (foster) mares together. I’ll give you two or three mares, but I’ve got a Belgian Draft stallion you’ve got to give him a good home for me, so I went along with it and he arrived at Lyndhurst and I started putting him over these Clydesdale mares and we kept the first six or eight fillies and we’re still breeding from them today. They’re much bigger than your Clydesdale mare. Each one of them would weigh 850 to 900 kilos and that’s pretty accurate, because I have put one of them over the scales. When it comes to putting foals on them you can put two foals on each of them, or you can introduce the thoroughbred orphan and at a later point take her own foal away from her, so she rears the one. Some people have got a bit of a fallacy that the foal can have too much milk and you can end up with leg problems and that sort of thing. But we find that the draft mare only puts up the milk that’s required. Like she doesn’t stand there running milk just because the foal isn’t sucking her. If you put two foals on her, she’ll simply make more milk. We actually use an old thoroughbred stallion, Rash Action, over the Draft mares. He’s well-known to racing people as he won 17 races. He was at a farm in far North Queensland, just sitting idle and the owners of the horse are good friends of ours. He’s got a good number of winners, without throwing champions.”

Asked what happens to the half thoroughbred half Draft horse foal, Jeff said, “I sell them on the Internet, but having done it now for the last 15 years or so I get quite a few calls just from word of mouth. They get sold for $1,000 just to move them on, as soon as they are weaned at six or eight months. We’ve had those foals grow up and become showjumpers, dressage horses and so on. Some of them are magnificent looking horses”.

I reckon you can bet “London to a brick on” that with 300 horses and 200 cattle to look after and foals arriving daily as well as mares to mate, you won’t find anyone from Lyndhurst Stud aimlessly walking the streets of Warwick looking for something to do to fill in some time.

Today on www.brisbaneracing.com.au there’s the second montage of photos from Doomben last Saturday. On www.sydneyracing.com.au there’s the story about a 20-year-old woman’s dream to drive a Sydney winner, plus we also catch up with a young man who has driven a staggering eight winners from his last 14 drives, whilst on www.melbourneracing.com.au Matt Nicholls looks at the David Hayes stable which is on fire. Does anyone have a hose?

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