The collective investment by breeders from the Apple Isle will be on show when the majority of the state's best-bred horses are offered at next year's Magic Millions Tasmanian Yearling Sale.
Continuing the rolling out of catalogs for the 2024 sales season by the three auction houses, Magic Millions has unveiled a 140-lot catalog for its island state offering, a source of horses that has a history of graduates that punch above their weight.
Underlining the commitment to the Tasmanian industry, Magic Millions also confirmed that an agreement between the auction house, Rural Youth, Tasracing, and Tasbreeders had been reached to continue to have the sale held at Quercus Park at Carrick, near Launceston, until at least 2027.
Next year's sale will be held Feb. 26, with Tasmania's Magic Millions race day to be held earlier than it traditionally has been, with the meeting, which includes the Magic Millions Tasmania 2YO Classic, set to be run Feb. 4.
Magic Millions managing director Barry Bowditch conceded the demand for spaces in the sale from vendors outstripped supply as a result of Tasmanian breeders' willingness to buy a better class of mare and a handful of interstate vendors concentrating on the sale.
"We are restricted by room and also by what we think the market can absorb there. We had good strength in our entries for the sale and, therefore, when you have got to restrict your numbers, it provides reason for a catalog that is strong, and most horses should appeal to the market that we're selling into," Bowditch told ANZ Bloodstock News.
"The investment in stallions over the last few years, in the quality of mares that they've got in the state and then also pinhooking some weanlings, it gives a diversification to the catalog which allows us to be able to market the sale to the interstaters and get a few of those people down there."
Motree Thoroughbreds' Mandy Gunn has a draft of 28 yearlings heading to her home-state sale. Her cohort has received a boost in recent weeks with progeny of exciting young stallions Tassort and Cosmic Force, both of whom have sired first-crop winners early in the new season, among her crop of yearlings.
The diversity in stallions in the Motree draft, which also features yearlings by All Too Hard, Rubick, Prague, and Kermadec, was a result of the passionate northern Tasmania breeder's investment in upgrading her stock.
"We bit the bullet a couple of years ago and put a lot more variation into our draft of horses. A lot of the mares are proving themselves and I thought we could try and vary our draft," Gunn said.
"It was the first time I'd sent mares to the Hunter Valley, and I only sent dry mares there to try and cut the cost a little bit. I also only tried to send mares with some pedigree and ones I could build on the pedigrees with."
Click here to view the full catalog.
