Farm yarns: Mike Rennie

We’re catching up with the WS Team each fortnight to update everyone as to what’s been happening at the farm, on the race track, who’s been visiting the farm and everything in between. First up is WS General Manager Mike Rennie.

Hi everyone, another solid week here.

Last Wednesday actually ended up being a Group 1 meeting at Matamata, which is a rare thing. That was a rescheduled Hastings meeting, so Skew Wiff (Savabeel x Starvoia) was in Group 1. She ran massively for second. Probably if she got held up a bit longer, she could well have won—but shoulda, coulda, woulda.

We bred Savaglee (Savabeel ex Glee) who won the Hawke’s Bay Guineas that same meeting and he’ll go towards the (Gr. 1) 2000 Guineas (on 9 November at Riccarton Park) now and he seems in really, really good form so that’s really nice to see. We sold him for $400,000 out of the Karaka Sale, bought by Rick Williams and the Oak Stud, trained by Pam Gerard – so that was great for everyone involved.

Then we had a nice visit from Colin Litt on Friday to come see his foals, himself and his wife Helen are great friends of ours and they race Orchestral (Savabeel ex Symphonic), so a lovely tie up there. He pops out regularly to have a look at his stock and have a cup of tea and catch up which we always really enjoy.

Plenty happened over the weekend, a load of foals. Of course, Posy (ex Spring) was a big one which the team have saved which is just a fantastic story which I’m sure we’ll follow up on a bit more as they get back to the farm (read the update here).

Guy (Heveldt) and the Trackside crew overnighted – last year himself and Emily (Bosson) were here, slept on the floor the whole night didn’t get one foal – so that was great that they got a foal last night to do all their footage for and then while he was having a cup of tea at the White Horse this morning another mare started foaling so he actually got to foal that which was really neat.

Otherwise, we’ve had a tick over 70 through the barn over the last seven days, 15 foals and, yeah, it’s been a big week of fine-tuning for yearlings – all the sales companies are wanting acceptances back for the first few sales by the end of the week, so a lot of final inspections, reassessing X-rays, reassessing pedigrees, reassessing overall numbers and just really dialing in across the board. We’ll look to go to Magic Millions, NZB and Classic at this point in time, and there’s probably 85 or so yearlings to place across those sales quite strategically – so there’s been a load of circles run around there, we’re starting to get a bit dizzy but the more preparation we can do now, the better results we’ll have the other end. So, we’re all but there.

The farm’s about to go at absolutely full noise because foaling’s going hard, breeding barn’s going hard, the yearling yards are about to kick into full gear. So, it’s as busy as we’re going to get as an overall farm. There’s 43 staff on at the moment, and we’re actually prepping six of ours towards a Ready to Run Sale in November too.

It’ll be all cylinders go, but we’ve got a pretty epic team, and we’ve got a load more people starting the next few weeks. We had Col and Sophie start this week and another four that’ll start before the end of the month – so we’re fully into it.

We’ve got a real good team, the weather’s been a bit variable, but pretty warm overall – a load of grass around the joint too. Farm’s looking epic – so just in the thick of it.