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Karaka The moment of truth
Karaka Yearling Sales time is the moment of truth when the quality of the Stud’s teams work is judged by the thoroughbred community in the fleeting moments of the sales ring. It is a time of putting the final touches on the finished product; the yearling. A time of anxious anticipation and always a time of hoping for the feeling of ecstasy and fulfillment following a successful sale. Even the best nerves of steel are tested in these brief but crucial days. For Waikato Stud they are the days of judgment; the days in which the benchmark for success is determined for the entire year; the days where 80 percent of your livelihood for the year will be in the hands of a relatively small group of agents, trainers and owners. An inordinate amount of preparation precedes the anxious selling days. A team of sixty are assembled for 80 yearlings for sales ground parades in the final week including actual sale days. This well briefed and experienced yearling team is accommodated, catered for and presented in Waikato Stud uniform. As well as parading yearlings to their best advantage to buyers, the yearling team does everything possible to put the final touches on each yearling’s preparation. Which includes keeping them calm, happy and as stress-free as humanly possible.
They fully empathise with the temperament of young horses which are being subjected to the commotion of sales ground noise and its activities for the first time. The team knows all too well, the smallest changes can make the most significant differences in their objective to relax and coax these valuable yearlings through the sales ground experience. Operating in small and well-drilled teams, the Stud will run as many as eight parades simultaneously to accommodate buyers and prevent wait time for yearling inspections. They run the parades like clockwork using a system devised from trial and error over many years. As the team show yearlings to discerning buyers; entertaining other potential clients occurs simultaneously as standard sales ground procedure. Pedigree updates and each yearling’s history are made available to buyers hunting down the next champion; and these are supplied with the offer of refreshments as well as an opportunity to sit and relax leading into those apprehensive moments when a Waikato Stud yearling enters the sales ring. Before the arrival of horses and staff on the Karaka Sales grounds; preparation of the yearlings is a culmination of an average of 16 months of rearing foals into yearlings, which is preceded by breeding the