OUR parents always told us, only buy a horse if you are willing to race it if you can’t or don’t sell it. Their point being ‘don’t buy something because it’s good value or cheap, buy it because it’s the best.’ If you are not willing to race it, why should you expect someone else to buy it off you?”

The words of David O’Callaghan, manager of Yeomanstown Stud outside Naas. Not the usual advice you’d expect from your mother and father but Gay and Annette O’Callaghan didn’t raise any fools.

Just a few kilometres away, David’s brother Robert assists his father at Morristown Lattin Stud where Dark Angel heads a five-strong stallion roster. Another brother, Guy, has his own operation at Grangemore Stud on the Curragh, while Peter has established Woods Edge Farm in Kentucky as a serious bloodstock operation.

If we start to include the ‘Kodiac’ cousins at Tally-Ho Stud in Mullingar, we’re going to need a lot more pages. That’s for another day. Not to mention uncle Noel of Mountarmstrong Stud in Tipperary, the ‘Alexander’ man.

The O’Callaghan influence on Irish racing and bloodstock is extremely significant. All branches of the family enjoy a strong reputation for producing winners on the track, in the covering shed and in the sales ring. What one word underpins their success? Hardworking? Horsemanship? Or how about speed? “We generally focus on speed,” David admits, referring to the Yeomanstown stallions. “You need a fast, good-looking horse with a nice bit of pedigree. Just having a fast horse without looks and pedigree … you have to produce the full package or you won’t get the support. The competition is stiff out there.”

David, Gay and Annette O'Callaghan

Stallion success

He gives us a potted history of Yeomanstown, which the family acquired in 1981. “Gay has been involved with stallions for a long time. He managed Castlehyde for John Magnier at the beginning and had shares in several stallions before he and Tony bought Fayruz together. Gay then went on to set up Morristown Lattin Stud in 1989 standing Common Grounds. That was the start of it all – he was a huge success.

“Then came Pips Pride, who died young but his first few crops did exceptionally well. Definite Article did both flat and National Hunt – he suited a lot of jobs. Next there was Revoque and Desert Style – we’ve tried to upgrade it all the time.”

David is not directly involved with the stallions. His job at Yeomanstown principally involves foaling 80 family-owned mares and preparing a similar number of yearlings for the sales. And if that wasn’t enough there’s also a dozen Yeomanstown two-year-olds being prepared for the breeze-up sales. Whenever the breeze-up sales take place this year.

“Normally at this time I’d be in Newmarket for the Craven Sale. Then Doncaster the week after, then France. All the sales are put back but you can’t stop with the two-year-olds, just work them less. I’d love to sell a few of them privately but we are preparing ourselves to have to put some in training ourselves. You wouldn’t mind doing that. Mostly in England maybe but probably a few here as you’d imagine racing might start in Ireland first.”

And that is another thing that distinguishes the O’Callaghans from the vast majority of breeders and consignors. If they can’t or don’t sell, there is a Plan B. In line with their parents’ advice, they are prepared to pay training fees themselves.

David and Rolline

Power couple

David is married to Rolline Kavanagh from Borris House. “Rolline deserves special mention. She has sharpened up our act in terms of marketing and branding. She always offers a fresh approach to our, maybe, ‘set in our ways’ kind of thinking. She has vast experience internationally and at home. She is an essential cog in the wheel.”

They have three children under three years of age. With no childcare available in these times, he says they are ‘flat to the mat’ and, based on our phone call, it’s apparent that Daddy does his share of the parenting duties too. But when he is awoken from his sleep it is usually to foal a mare rather than heat a bottle.

“We have 65 foaled, 15 left to foal,” he says. “The night watchman calls me and I foal them all. The workload has actually dropped significantly at this time of year. There are 82 yearlings and they are all out on the spring grass now, so there is a lot less mucking out and dragging them in and out of fields. The lockdown is nothing new to anyone with mares and youngstock. You can’t go anywhere for months!”

The yearlings are a mix of homebred and stock bought as foals for resale. The homebreds are generally by their own stallions. “We do send out a couple of mares [to outside stallions], not many, generally a Dark Angel filly.”

There is no room for boarders, save for a few visiting mares who need to be foaled before heading over to Morristown Lattin. There are seven full-time staff in Yeomanstown and a similar number at the stallion station. “It can be hard to keep people but we have a good team at the minute. Some people like to move around. They might come to see how you do yearling prep but they only see the final 20%. For me, sales prep starts the day the foal is born.”

Difficult days

The bloodstock business can be an intimidating one for the inexperienced, the uninitiated. There may be a perception that a family as shrewd as the O’Callaghans get everything right but David dismisses that notion.

“I enjoy every aspect of the business but there are lots of difficult days, maybe not stressful but definitely there is anxiety. You have to be resilient, try to manage the elements you can control, put good systems in place, try to limit the problems if you can.”

There’s that word ‘resilient’, so often used to describe the bloodstock world. It’s a quality that will be tested to the extreme in the coming months.

“There will be a little bit of pain, a correction might be a better word. But once racing gets going again everything will fall back into place. Just keep taking each day as it comes.”

We talk about the recent online yearling sale in Australia, which David followed with interest.

David is congratulated on a sale price achieved at Goffs UK

“In fairness to the Australians, agents and trainers there visit the farms a lot. It’s a done thing. They go around and they would have seen a lot of those yearlings. They weren’t going there blind.

“It’s a positive that the online thing worked. It will encourage a bit more of it here. It might change people’s behaviour a bit. Buyers might visit farms a bit more to look at a yearling. It’s not common here and it would be a bit of a change, from a home presentation point of view.”

Going a bit against the grain, Yeomanstown don’t shuttle stallions to Australia for the southern hemisphere season. “We used to, and we’re not against it, but it’s just not high on our to-do list at the moment. We don’t have a place in Australia and shuttling usually means you have the limit the books on both sides.

“It’s nice to give stallions a proper break. We turn them out 24/7 for the summer months with a few cattle. They have great enthusiasm when they come in.

“All our stallions seem to enjoy the job and I think a lot of that is down to them having a good break. It can be a hard job to travel.”

Short supply

Finding the stallions in the first place is more than half the battle. “We’re always trying to find a new horse. They are in short supply. We’re independent operators and you are racking your brains trying to find potential stallions that are not already in the hands of stallion owners.”

When Yeomanstown do find a stallion, they have the wherewithal to give him every chance of being a success. “We have always felt that it is not up to the breeder to make your stallion, it is up to the stallion owner. If you are not going to get the ball rolling then you can’t expect others to do it. We support our stallions at stud and in the sales ring, buying some of their foals and yearlings, helping the thing along as best we can.”

Virus or no virus, it’s business as usual at Morristown Lattin. “The numbers [of visiting mares] has not been affected that much. A few less from England but generally everything’s working away. They ring up beforehand and we send them a letter they can present [to Gardaí] on the way here if they are stopped.

“When they arrive with us they don’t get out of the vehicle. We unload the mare, prep her, cover her and load her up again. As far as everyone’s safety is concerned, it’s pretty cut and dry. There’s a bit of extra paperwork but it’s working fairly smoothly.”

Taking the rough with the smooth is the O’Callaghan way. Nobody in racing or bloodstock will escape pandemic pain. Some operators will quietly disappear, others will go out with a bang. But it’s a good bet that the O’Callaghan brand will emerge just as influential as before, if not more so.

Yeomanstown & Morristown Lattin Stud stallions

Dark Angel: Bred and sold by Yeomanstown Stud, then bought back by the O’Callaghans after his Group 1-winning career as a juvenile. A move which was criticised at the time as being ‘bad for the breed’ but there was no sprinting programme for three-year-olds at that time. Now the sire of seven Group 1 winners, including Battaash, Harry’s Angel and Mecca’s Angel, the last-named bred by David and Yeomanstown. His stud fee has gone from as low as €7,000 to €85,000.

Dark Angel: bred at Yeomanstown and repatriated after his racing career / carolinenorris.ie

Invincible Army: New recruit for 2020. A Group 2 winner by Invincible Spirit. David recalls: “He caught my eye at the breeze-ups. I even went to see him myself, which I never do, and I liked him a lot. We followed his career and expressed an interest in him. In another year he might have ended up in Kildangan Stud but he didn’t. We bought 50% of him and his owner and breeder Saeed Manana retains 50%. He will be a huge support to the horse, both with his own mares and in the sales ring. We are sending him 30 mares ourselves, including many blacktype producers and performers. A good-looking, tough, consistent horse, he has been very well received by breeders.”

El Kabeir: “We wanted a son of Scat Daddy and we were following this horse in America for a couple of years. He was a very good two- and three-year-old, a tough, consistent, fast horse. You might say he was a bit left-field for the Irish market but he is a very good-looking horse by an exceptional stallion. He has a good American pedigree up top and deeper down he has a lovely European pedigree. We don’t buy a horse just to fill him for one year. We buy a horse as a long-term project, and he has what it takes to make him a good stallion.”

Camacho: “He did five seasons with us, then one season at Mickley Stud in England before coming back here again. His second, third and fourth crops were very small but then, because his first crop got the results, his fifth crop was big. It can be hard if they don’t get the numbers. Stallions can yo-yo in and out of popularity and he suffered from that. But he’s bit of a Renaissance man, and everyone has done well out of him. For the last four years he has got good numbers and a consistent level of performers on the track. He’s had a classic winner, a Royal Ascot winner, he’s rock-solid and a proven stallion whose not too expensive. Him and Kodiac are the only two sons of Danehill still active at stud.”

Gutaifan: “He did quite well with his first crop last year – he got 32 two-year-old inners, the leading sire in terms of individual winners. He started this year well – his three-year-old son Woodford General bolted up at Naas on the opening day of the flat season for Kieran Cotter. We sold the horse as a yearling, so we were delighted for connections. He is an exciting horse.”

Guy, Robert and David / carolinenorris.ie