New Year 27

The new SIM year turned over on Friday and unfortunately I ended up withe four 2-year-olds with bucked shins and one barren broodmare. One of the babies is a sprinter so will be affected more than the others.

Finally got all 100 of my SIMMY votes done yesterday. Whew! I was surprised to see my one Appy colt Hotter Than Mojave up for a SIMMY as I often think of him as being a bit disappointing overall. However, when voting on most of the mixed breeds I noticed quite a few divisions that are lacking for talent with very few clear cut winners. One category only had one horse. Hopefully as the years pass and more breeding is done and we eventually start to see better studs put up this will improve.

Speaking of Hotter Than Mojave, I've had quite a few inquiries as to whether he will be up for stud at the end of this year. It made me look at him closer. Unless he matures as a 4-year-old and improves his consistency I can't see putting him up. Number one, he doesn't have the earnings at this point. Number two, he is not a consistent stakes winner. He has four wins, with only two being stakes. The only graded stakes he ran in was at two and he finished seventh. I just feel there's enough mediocre studs out there at this point that another won't help anything. So, here's hoping that he matures this year and shows some stud-worthy form.

Alexandra Jaysman is running her usual once-a-year $10 sale of horses that have been sent to Greener Pastures. Rather than look through the hundreds of horses individually, I decided to do a search using some of the top breeders in the game. I was looking for fillies and mares that may not be doing too well on the track but have dam's or grand dam's that earned seven figures or produced seven figure offspring. I actually found quite a few, in excess of ten which is the limit for a day. So over two days I picked up maybe 15. Only a few have already been retired, most are still racing, which is good because it will give me a chance to tweak their stats as fillers if I have to. I don't know if this experiment will pay off in the end but I thought it was at least worth a shot since I was getting the mares dirt cheap and they have strong female families. A few may have chasing potential also since none of the one's I bought have been trained to jump.

I still have about 55 yearlings to name but I'm in no hurry and may wait until they gallop in week one.

I haven't started doing any serious breeding yet, though I did pick up two trotter mares that another player had up in the forum for 5K each. They were both mares from the last AJ broodmare dispersal and had galloped with wings. So, of course, I bred them to Midnight Tornado first off this year. Also one CAM trotter mare that I created last year as a handicapping prize as a free lease. I was thinking I could probably sell off most of my trotter mares this year but than I was thinking that since Cash Call has retired Money and Music might have a chance of winning some stakes if I can keep him out of half-brother Goldigga's way. If he does well and I retire him, I'll need all of the broodmares for him.

I have eight broodmares that will potentially die while foaling this year as they are at the age of 12 or above. All are TB's and will probably be the first that I breed just to get that out of the way.

I think that most of us are just marking time until the beginning of racing starts again.