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Collette
From Page B5
healthy foal. I don't know what happened, but I got a second mare. Then I found out [the breeding business] is harder than it looks," Collette said wryly.
They now own five broodmares, which produce two to four foals each year. In a rare year, all five mares deliver live, healthy issue. A renowned thoroughbred veterinarian, the late DeWitt Owen, was said that to produce a lifetime average of one foal per year that survives, an owner must own two mares; such are the problems with conception, pregnancy and foal mortality.
Steeplechasing is the Collettes' first choice of jobs for homebreds, though it doesn't always work out that way. Through the years, they have “raised maybe six money-winning steeplechasers," Collette said. Lefroy, purchased by Charlie Fenwick, Jr., was their most successful homebred on the National Steeplechase Association circuit. Pageland also has had many point-to-point winners.
To produce potential chasers, Collette studies winning bloodlines. She also talks with local show trainers to get a line on stallions that engender jumping ability.
Through thoroughbred pedigree research, long ago she hit upon Northern Baby, who in recent years has topped the sire's list for steeplechase winners. Silent Spiral is by Northern Baby, and Collette bought a share in the stallion, which gives her the right to breed one mare per year.
She also likes the Bold Ruler bloodline. "Without a lot of money to spend," Collette said she searches out local stallions that are wellbred but not commercially popular, which is to say affordable.
As for mares, she bought Kalankoe, second in the Breeder's Cup Steeplechase in 1988. Another mare, whose bloodlines Collette described as "unfashionable, to say the least,"
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