The $600 mare and her $100,000 foalDam fine … owner Rebecca Bates leads Decency and foal Tyra, believed to be worth about $100,000 each thanks to their impressive pedigree.
Photo: Paul HarrisNovember 14, 2008
A horse once destined for the slaughterhouse is repaying the faith of its canny owners, writes Phil Wilkins. Viewed's win in the Melbourne Cup had its annual reverberations across the thoroughbred industry, not least for a mare named Decency, now found at Woodwinds Farm in the mountains behind the Gold Coast, having been rescued two days before she was to be slaughtered in a dogger's yard in Brisbane.
Early last year, the powerful brown mare - who has a terrible scar extending from mid-belly to her flank after she was impaled on a stake while squeezing through a gate with other horses - was discovered in abattoirs by an astute young woman named Rebecca Bates, who was searching for a riding horse for a friend.
There was something about the doleful animal standing at death's door that attracted Rebecca's attention, something that caught her horse lover's eye.
She returned home and told husband Shannon: "I can't get this mare out of my head. She's so lovely, so quiet, so nice to ride. We have to save her. I've got a feeling there's something good about her pedigree."
They purchased her. Normally, a sale of her dubious circumstances would cost $400, but she was such a big mare, she cost $600. For want of a better name, they called the unknown, unnamed acquisition Mary, as in mare, mare Mary. They took her back to Woodwinds Farm, a fertile, 40-hectare stud - formerly a dairy farm until deregulation of the industry and drought forced the family to close down the bails - in the picturesque Numinbah Valley on the northern side of the range wrapping around Mt Warning.
Pursuing Rebecca's hunch, they began research. The mare's brands made her traceable through the Australian stud book, and to their delight they discovered she was New Zealand born and bred from a reputable stud farm, that she came to Australia as a yearling and was, in fact, the daughter of the well-credentialled stallion Defensive Play from an obscure mare named Lovers Knot. The word was around about her abattoir fate. "Mary" was listed as dead.
Further research authenticated Mary as the thoroughbred mare Decency, leaving unanswered the reason for her sad decline to the point she had been about to be put down for dogs' meat. The suspicion was she had a history of slipping foals, further complicated by her terrible belly wound. The Bates basically discounted her for breeding purposes and regarded her as a sale proposition to a nearby riding school.
The day before Decency was to be inspected for purchase by the trail farm operators in July last year, a quail burst out of the grass, startling her and sending her tumbling down a bank, leaving the mare with a fractured wither.
"She was so sore it put paid to her becoming a riding horse," Rebecca said. "We nursed her through the injury, and I looked at her and said, 'You don't want to leave us, do you? You just want to stay here. But that's all right. You're a lovely, big girl."'
In August last year, equine influenza struck, slamming shut all property gates, preventing movement of horses in Queensland and NSW, with Numinbah Valley classified as a buffer zone, further delaying the normalisation of horse transport.
The family's ambitions of utilising the new stud's two stallions for servicing mares flew out the window.
In desperation, they covered Decency with Tanabota, their Redoute's Choice-sired stallion.
Shortly after servicing, Rebecca took the mare for a short ride and came back, declaring to her mother-in-law Erica: "I've had a talk to Mary. She's going into foal. We'll be all right."
By October of last year, Decency was confirmed in foal. The following month, Efficient won the Melbourne Cup. Efficient was foaled by a mare of Defensive Play, the stallion that sired Decency. Now Decency has her own strapping brown filly foal, nicknamed Tyra, bouncing at her side.
"Decency could not be a better name for her," Rebecca said. "She has a wonderful temperament. She's a wonderful dam, everything about her. She's a totally decent mare."
Browsing through the weights for this year's Melbourne Cup, Shannon Bates spied the nomination of the five-year-old stallion Viewed, trained by Bart Cummings. Glancing at his breeding, he saw something that made his head spin. Viewed was out of Lovers Knot, the same mare that threw Decency.
So, if cheering was prolonged as Viewed and Bauer duelled along the Flemington straight, and joyous for Lovers Knot's canny owner-breeder Ian Johnson from Finch's Crossing Stud on the Hawkesbury River when Viewed muzzled his way to the Cup, it was even more thunderous in the community hall at Numinbah Valley as locals celebrated their "connection" with Viewed in the Cup sweep. "Having Defensive Play as her sire was our first payback for saving Decency, and then learning she was from the same dam as Viewed was our second payback," Erica said, still glowing in the reflected glory of the Cup, and brandishing a $5 each-way betting ticket that returned her $239.
So, the $600 rescue fee has been more than justified. How much more? One bloodstock agent suggested the broodmare value of Decency, now 11 years old, at about $100,000. Her foal, he thought, depending on her soundness, was also in the vicinity of $100,000. Such is life in the horse breeding game.
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It has been a very long week at work.
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