Driving down Versailles Road past Keeneland Race Course in his small horse van on a warm spring morning, his son riding in the back with two mares headed to the breeding shed, Alfred Nuckols Jr. commented on how difficult it was to get a horse from the farm to the racetrack and how little the general public knew about the task.
Nuckols didn’t say it in a sanctimonious way, far from it, but in a general acknowledging sort of way.
Really it almost seemed out of reverence for the countless men and women who, like Nuckols, breed and raise future racehorses to earn a living, continue a family legacy and to provide future entertainment for the thousands who packs the stands at Keeneland and other tracks throughout the world.
Minutes later the mares were bred, the next step in the circle of life for a commercial breeding operation that starts with a mating and hopefully weaves its way to a successful trip to the sales ring and ultimately the winner’s circle for a major stakes race.
Countless obstacles need to be cleared along the way.
Horsemen know the risks.
They understand them, live them, deal with them and oftentimes overcome them. They do it because they know the rewards, which are richly savored and don’t always come with a win photo. A win on the farm could be a successful conception, healthy delivery of a foal or even a happy, paying client.
Nuckols’ words seemed almost prophetic less than four hours later as he and three other men in the stall of one of the barns at Hurstland Farm in Midway, Kentucky, stood over the lifeless body of a day-old foal laying in a bed of straw. The young colt, born just a day earlier and needing to be brought into the world by Nuckols, his son Alfred “Hurst” Nuckols III and farm manager John Holbrook because he was so large, died while receiving veterinary treatment in the middle of the morning of April 19.
The foal’s death obviously cast a somber spell over the team at Hurstland, who before and after still went about their normal chores that include turning out yearlings, and mares and foals, teasing mares, cleaning stalls, doing paperwork and any of the other myriad things that need to be done on a working farm.
“Mother Nature can be pretty dang cruel sometimes,” Nuckols said, sitting behind the wheel of his truck as he made the short drive down Spring Station Road back to his office.
Out of the routine
The day started out fairly typical and straightforward in the midst of the busy season when the remaining mares are due to foal and the last few head to the breeding shed with hopes of conception.
Nuckols and his son loaded Glorious View, a Grade 2 winner and the dam of a Bernardini colt Hurstland will sell this summer at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale of selected yearlings, and the unraced Street Cry mare Street Attack into the small Hurstland Farm van at about 7:15 a.m. before setting off for the breeding shed at Darley. The van rolled through the gates and up to the back of the breeding shed a little after 8 a.m. and the Nuckols’ and the Darley crew went to work.
The mares were prepped and Glorious View was bred first, a quick cover by Elusive Quality, before Street Attack was covered by the slightly more patient Girolamo. The stay lasted just about 45 minutes and in a flash the men and the mares were on the way back to Hurstland.
On the drive back to the farm Alfred Nuckols got a call from Holbrook telling him a colt by Dialed In, born just a day earlier and the largest foal any of the men at the farm could remember delivering, wasn’t doing well. Nuckols quickly made a call to veterinarian Jason Wells, who said he’d be there within the hour.
After dropping off the mares a little before 9:30, Glorious View reuniting with her filly by Lemon Drop Kid born March 19 and Street Attack settling back into her stall, Nuckols and his son set off to check on the foal. When they arrived at the barn they found Holbrook, who wore a look of concern on his face but remained calm and collected the way only a lifelong horseman could, and two other members of the Hurstland team in the stall with the foal and his dam, the Bright Launch mare Bright Orange.
The newborn foal lie on his side in the deep straw, his mother keeping close watch on her baby and the men in their space. Hurst Nuckols noticed the colt, which despite being 185 pounds looked tiny in his vulnerable state, was warm. He grabbed some rubbing alcohol, rubbed it over his wispy bay coat and immediately noticed him cooling off and taking more relaxing breaths.
Hurst Nuckols stayed with the mare and foal, and Holbrook and his crew, while Alfred Nuckols set off to take care of additional chores that needed tending while they waited for the vet. The first order of business was picking up two of the farm’s most valuable players – human and equine – for the next order of business. Nuckols met Gene Masters, who’s been at Hurstland longer than anyone, and the farm’s teaser, Daddy, in another of the farm’s two-horse vans.
The two-man and one-horse show stopped at many of the farm’s barns during the roughly 30 minutes it took to “tease” the mares. Masters led Daddy on his futile duty stall to stall, sometimes open fairly wide and other times just a crack, to see which mares were receptive. It wasn’t easy to discern which mares were receptive and which were not; the sound of hoof meeting the wood or metal of the stall door giving away those that weren’t without fail.
Final moments
The original plan was for Wells to attend to the foal and then bring him to Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington for further treatment. Not long after Wells arrived at about 10:30 the colt crashed. Steps were taken to try and revive the colt’s nearly lifeless body, all done again with equal parts calm and concern.
Hurst Nuckols tapped an area near the colt’s chest after his heart stopped. Wells gave the colt an injection, stepped out of the stall and then back in before giving another injection. Alfred Nuckols, just back to the barn after dropping off Masters and Daddy, stood in the open stall doorway and asked, “Is he gone Jason?”
“I’ve still got a few things I’m trying,” Wells responded.
Eventually it was clear to all that nothing else could be done. Nuckols instructed the men to “cut it,” just before 10:50, then asked, to no one in particular, “How do you go from having a normal horse to a dead horse in three hours?”
A few minutes after the four men who stood over the dead foal made their way out of her space, Bright Orange turned and looked out the wide-open stall doorway at the men looking in. Less than 20 yards away other mares and their newborn foals went about their normal day in their grassy, spacious paddocks, oblivious to the goings on inside the barn.
The Dialed In colt was one of four foals that didn’t survive this winter and spring at Hurstland, a high number according to Nuckols.
“I haven’t hard four foals lost in the last 10 years,” Nuckols said. “You lose one here and there, but not like this year. This was the fourth – two stillborn, one that died at Hagyard’s and now this one.
“It kind of makes you wonder. I’ve been hearing all these people talking, about foals dying, that maybe it was different this year. This year the winter was so mild that wasn’t your typical winter. Maybe that has something to do with it, but you don’t know what that’s going to do. It’s a percentage business, a statistical business, and over a period of time this is what your percentage is going to be. You’re going to have this many foals, you’re going to lose this many foals.”
Nuckols won a free breeding to Dialed In that produced the resulting colt during an annual “dart-toss” party thrown by Darby Dan Farm.
Breeders are sent invitations to the party in the form of a dart in a box and when the time comes at the party they toss the dart into a board with some designated spaces representing Darby Dan’s stallions. If the dart hits one of the designated spaces a free breeding right is awarded.
Nuckols won Dialed In seasons twice in three years, and he bred Bright Orange to the Mineshaft stallion both times. Nuckols sold the first foal, also a colt bred in the Hurstland Farm name, for $25,000 at last year’s Keeneland September yearling sale.
“Both of them I got through a dart toss; and for a dart toss I was making money,” Nuckols said. “Normally you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to have three or four years down the road. Especially with these new sires; everybody loves to jump on the bandwagon. Usually I’ll pick out something I like because I can’t afford some of the proven sires if I’m not doing a foal share.
“I’ve been lucky to have mares that are good enough to foal share, so that takes a lot of risk and exposure out of it. You can save a whole lot of money on that, you don’t have to insure them, unless you want to. If you’re paying stud fees you definitely want to insure them so you get your stud fees back, that’s what, 4.5 percent? Generally you’re trying to protect the stud fee, so if something happens I’m not totally out of pocket.”
Nuckols returned to Bright Orange’s stall a little past 11:40 a.m., where only her dead foal remained. The mare was turned out in an adjacent paddock, clearly unsettled to be outside in the sun without a foal by her side, as the foal’s body was placed on a burlap muck sack, lifted off the ground and placed in the bed of Nuckols’ pickup.
“We take anything that happens like this and we go and get the necropsy done just to make sure you don’t have something going on at the farm,” Nuckols said, a necropsy request form attached to a clipboard resting on the dash of his truck.
A few minutes later Nuckols was on the road again, heading east to the University of Kentucky Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory on Bull Lea Road not far from Fasig-Tipton on the north side of Lexington. Pulling into the unloading area, ahead of some farmers who arrived just minutes after with a huge dead cow in the back of their truck, Nuckols again commented about the foal’s size before one final moment with the dead colt.
“I’m sorry little guy,” he said, patting the foal’s neck. “I thought you were going to be a good one.”
Pulling out of the loading area as he made his way toward Newtown Pike, Nuckols adjusted his cap, took a deep breath and sat back in his seat before one final reflection on the morning.
“I still can’t get used to this part,” Nuckols said. “It just sucks. There’s no other way to describe it.”
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a multi-part series that tracks the progress of a group of yearlings and life at Hurstland Farm in Midway, Ky., to the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale of selected yearlings in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The series started in February during the nomination period and will continue through the spring and summer up to the Saratoga sale.
Read the Saratoga Yearling Diary No. 1: Nomination time.
Read the Saratoga Yearling Diary No. 2: Waiting game.
Read the Saratoga Yearling Diary No. 3: Inspection day.
