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24 HOURS WITH… ED HARPER
I
’m more of an evening worker than a morning worker so I tend to arrive at the stud at 8am which, in the season, is the first covering slot of the day. I pop my head into the covering shed to see how things are going and during the foaling season I’ll call in to the foaling barn first thing. We have a full 24-hour rota including night watch staff and three on-call foaling staff during the season, and it’s always good to see any newborns in the morning. If it’s not one of our own foals I’ll make an assessment to pass on to the breeder. I then join Carole Steel, our stud secretary of more than 40 years, in the office to have a look at the covering board and see what’s in store. We have four different time slots for mares to visit our four stallions – 8am, 12pm, 4pm and 9pm – and generally our clients are very good at being on time, but as we’re slightly off the beaten track we sometimes have to be a bit flexible. We like to have the stallions turned out as much as possible and we’re lucky that they each have access to a paddock through the back door of their stables. Swiss Spirit seems to be able to tell the time as he brings himself back into his box about ten minutes before each covering slot – he’s as keen a stallion as we’ve had! For the last two seasons Showcasing has been fully booked by the end of November. During January I’ll be in the latter stages of filling the other stallions’ books. We’ve also been getting our new boy, Due Diligence, used to covering a few retired mares. Come the middle of this month he’ll be very busy with plenty of young maiden mares coming to him early on, so it’s good to be able to hit the ground
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He professes to being “not so much of a morning person”, but Whitsbury Manor Stud Director ED HARPER is still at work by 8am, while during sales season life revolves around phone and laptop running after a few practice jumps in January. We weigh the stallions on a fairly regular basis; we have to be careful with Showcasing, who seems to be able to get fat on fresh air. The non-shuttle stallions, Swiss Spirit and Due Diligence, will have a fair amount of hand-walking and lungeing to get them fit for the season. They’ll be busy this year, covering around 120 mares each, so it’s important that they are ready to cope with it. We have 65 of our own mares at
Whitsbury and another 20 permanent boarders and around two-thirds go to our own stallions – we’ll be sending 22 to Due Diligence this year. I try to get out to chat to our resident vet Charlie Pinkham and Stud Manager Phil Haworth during the daily vetting sessions to find out about any issues Charlie is dealing with. It’s also a great time to see the young foals. I look after the sales side of things – the nominations and cataloguing – so in the season I spend 95% of my
time either on the computer or on the telephone. I’m able to do that as we have such a great team outside, led by Phil and including Joe Grimwade as our Broodmare Manager, while Carole deals with the vast majority of the day-to-day admin for visiting mares and bookkeeping. After university I spent three years qualifying as a chartered surveyor, then did a stud season in New Zealand before taking over the business about three years ago. Initially that meant that any outside interests were put on hold. It’s not just the stud – we also have the arable farm and the property side of our racing stables that are used by Marcus Tregoning and Paul Henderson and which are really at the heart of Whitsbury village. For the first time in quite a few years, I managed to fit in a brief skiing holiday in January as the stallions are going so well. If there’s any sale coming up I’ll usually spend the evenings with the catalogue on my lap and I learn plenty from trying to go through it in as much detail as possible. Although we have the TV on in the office, I record the Flat racing through the day and in the evening I’ll watch any race from ten furlongs down. Our knowledge of the industry becomes redundant very quickly if we’re not keeping abreast of events on the racecourse. Obviously we follow all our stallions’ stock and those of our clients, while I like to get away from the stud when I can to visit clients, especially to see any first foals they have by our stallions. By the time I’ve gone through all this I turn in about 11.30pm, which is probably why I’m not so much of a morning person!
Interview by Emma Berry
THOROUGHBRED OWNER & BREEDER INC PACEMAKER