Cape-based Bloodstock Consultant and Stallion Manager John Freeman has been involved in racing and breeding for over 45 years.
He asks in his latest eNews whether someone would please just push the pause button on the costly never ending dream of an export protocol.
With all that is going on around us right now the last thing we need is unnecessary cost and risk in the Cape.
I have mentioned this before and alluded to protocol issues contributing to the cancellation of the KZN Yearling Sale.
The cost of getting a horse to the sale is one thing. The cost and risk to Cape buyers or breeders who didn’t sell of getting a horse back is in excess of R15 000 per horse.
John Freeman – ‘time to face reality’
This includes blood tests, a stint in quarantine and two sets of transport. The cost forced on an ailing Cape Racing and Breeding industry, and the risk has become too much. Our breeding season looms.
Solution: move the quarantine station away from the Cape – please.
Let some other region give it a go. Alternatively at least move all sales to where horses are predominantly bred and not have them forced into this migration and return to Joburg.
Thirty years down the line, after many promises, hundreds of millions wasted, usually around sale time, ‘it’s happening’ about being asked to allow ‘just one more try’, time is up – it has to go!
We can’t afford it anymore!
It’s time to look after SA racing and in this instance Cape Racing and Breeding. Move it or pause the protocol.
Too many broken promises: ‘just one more try’ every year.
I know that the HKJC have kindly agreed to subsidise the running costs of the operation.
But that’s only a fraction of what this programme really costs owners, trainers and breeders daily. The ‘hidden’ extra costs of keeping our end of the rules and inconvenience.
It was a nice dream and a really good idea when it started; I kno, I was at the coalface. The current failed system has run its course.
Each time a horse moves into the Cape everyone has to jump through hoops.
Even taking mares from Wellington to Robertson and vice versa is an inconvenience and costly; movement requires a health certificate and state approval – apart from the cost of getting a vet, try and get the state to respond to a movement request after 15h00 on a Friday!
If the rumour I hear about new vaccination rules is true we won’t be able to move mares around at all for some time.
It’s time to let the dream of an export protocol remain just that, as it has been for the last 30 years.
When do we finally admit that it’s not going to happen! I said that 15 years ago and have said it many time since; it seems to me that the way this system is presently designed is surely the problem!
At the very least please take this responsibility away from the Cape and rethink the way forward – dong more of the same and expecting a different outcome is a fools game.
