Joe Taylor's Complete Guide to Breeding and Raising Racehorses

Review from The Daily Racing Form

Most people in the horse business in the Bluegrass and many in other regions recognize Joe Taylor as one of the fine horsemen who has honestly earned that title. With the publication of his book, Taylor is destined to be read and appreciated by a much larger circle of people who raise horses and want to do it better and more efficiently.

Although Taylor’s "Guide" cannot answer every question that pertains to producing racehorses, his approach prepares the reader to anticipate many problems anyone will face in raising performance horses, especially Thoroughbreds. Taylor’s principal emphasis is on thinking carefully about plans, applying common sense to the situation and preparing the reader and his operation to work properly and avoid errors.

The book begins at the beginning - not with picking horses - but with choosing land, laying out the farm, and choosing the right fences, pastures, barns, implements and people. The first chapter of section two gives advice on choosing advisors, and the last two chapters deal with selecting broodmares and stallions. These are three of the most expensive things that horse people will encounter after developing their land, and Taylor devotes 61 pages to these subjects alone.

The third section, on horse farm management, comprises the last half of the book. Having managed Gainesway Farm since the late 1950’s, Taylor has seen and done most of the things with Thoroughbreds that others can only dream about, and his opinions about farm management are interesting and sometimes revealing.

Taylor offers his opinions and perceptions of the horse business for the rest of the book. In his discussion of standing stallions, for instance, he doesn’t offer a checklist of physical or genetic qualities that qualify a colt to be a stallion. His assessment of a stallion potential is based on economic reality. He is well aware that nobody can stay in the horse business long without making some money.

In picking a stallion prospect, he demands a recognizable pedigree and demonstrated racing ability. With those qualifications, Taylor believes that a stallion owner has a promotable prospect who has a reasonable chance to sire good racehorses. But he emphasizes the necessity of promotion to "get your stallion the right mares." Taylor prefers young mares "with racing talent and some depth of pedigree."

His approach to the best way of promoting is pragmatic: use the stallion’s race record and pedigree, use win photos and emphasize the positive in the animal. Taylor says that the stallion "has the potential to sire the next world-beater. For the first-year stallion, this is not hype, it’s the absolute truth. Until it’s proven otherwise, you may have the next Mr. Prospector."

In general, the writer is not shy about delivering strong opinions and telling the reader to do something in a certain way. Usually, however, Taylor explains the reasoning behind his preferred way of doing things. Although these are his opinions, Taylor repeatedly urges readers to think about their particular situations and to modify or refine his way of doing things to suit different circumstances.

For his insistence on following basic precepts of safety and sense and then having the flexibility to suggest that people adapt to their situations, Taylor has made a valuable contribution to the literature of farming and the sport of racing with this book.

Return to Joe Taylor's Complete Guide to Breeding and Raising Racehorses