Stud: Adventures in Breeding

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
From the very title of the book, readers get the sense that Stud is about more than just horses. New Yorker essayist and editor Kevin Conley shows there is money to be made from horses having sex -- or just getting inseminated artificially, for that matter. The sophisticated world of happy horsemanship is a fascinating one indeed -- that is, if cooled horse semen shipped via FedEx in Styrofoam boxes does not make you queasy.

Predicting which horses will have fast offspring is not as easy as it may seem. Though champion thoroughbreds are of undoubtedly good stock, it is sometimes the also-rans that breed Kentucky Derby winners. Stud fees escalate wildly from year to year, with the seed of the top studs sold at exorbitant prices to an exotic international cabal of millionaire gamblers and farm owners. Once the horses' services are bought, the act itself is painstakingly manipulated by human helpers, and even videotaped for protection against potential problems or lawsuits.

Though less inhibited than humans, horses are no less confounding in their mating behavior. The topic is unique, and Stud takes a multifaceted look both at how the horses are primed for the pump and how their humans handle them. Stud does suffer slightly from simple repetition: The underlying humor of the writing is based on the anthropomorphic gaze at horse behavior, and the "tee hee hee" of equine sex is a running joke that tires by the end. Then again, with lines like "Hershey sums up the neighborly disagreement with a fecal briquette" and "This poop-off is followed by a volley of snorts," perhaps we can all afford to chuckle. (Brenn Jones)

Publishers Weekly

Funny, insightful and surprisingly engaging, this part travelogue on Kentucky bluegrass country and part guide to equine breeding offers far more than one might initially expect. The world's priciest stud, Storm Cat (a direct descendant of Secretariat), earns a whopping $500,000 per tryst. The randy stallion's "muck" is used by Campbell Soup to fertilize its mushroom fields. Conley, a New Yorker staff writer, takes readers to an auction where two camps a stoic group of Irishmen known in horse circles as "the boys" and a modish collection of sheikhs inexplicably called "the Doobie Brothers" square off on fillies and colts fetching upwards of $3 million. But Conley doesn't stop there: he considers the advancement of civilization through the history of horses. He argues that through horse trading the nomads of Kazakhstan brought their proto-Indo-European language to most of Europe and South Asia. "History had begun," he writes, "built on the way a horse can cover ground." Conley also illustrates the racial and socioeconomic backdrop of horse country with rather telling accounts of the interactions between black and white, blue collar and blueblood that shape the equine community. The upshot is a vividly equine-centric view of social, cultural and economic human history. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This book was not written to meet massive pent-up reader demand, but it does offer an engaging lay reader's introduction to the business of breeding Thoroughbred horses. Conley, a staff writer with The New Yorker, takes us to high-profile horse auctions; to picturesque big-money farms in bluegrass Kentucky, the Mecca of Thoroughbred breeding; to second-tier farms in California and a remote stud-farm-of-last-resort run by old hippies in New Mexico; to a preserve for semiferal Shetland ponies where nature takes its course without careful human intervention; and (many times) into the high-stakes bedroom, so to speak. We meet Storm Cat, the stud's stud, whose services are sold for up to $500,000 per breeding and whose offspring earned more than $21 million at the track in 1999 and 2000; the old warrior Seattle Slew, coming back to his duties following delicate surgery; and Distinctive Cat, a son of Storm Cat and now a stud himself, who, through a "telepathic animal communicator," grants the author an interview (Distinctive Cat is happy with his job, thank you, and he doesn't even take into account the sexual aspect). A nice buy for libraries with big budgets or that are located in horse country. Jim Burns, Jacksonville P.L., FL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Thoroughbred stallions are an aloof lot, so they don't make a big fuss over being graced with early retirement, plentiful sex, and an enviable cash flow. New Yorker staff writer Conley provides all the needful color commentary with cool brio and a heart-gladdening display of language. His prose displays an easy grace, lightly worn intelligence, and unbeveled enthusiasm that makes you plain like the guy rather than envy him. He can nail physical appearances: one horse has "a sharp crescent moon way over near his left nostril, a curious marking that makes him look moody and dangerously attractive"; another's "lips were covered with an unsightly green froth that made him look louche beyond redemption, like a pasture-grazing Henry VIII." Or he can skewer a whole era: "harebrained conclusions based on zoological minutiae were as typical of the nineteenth century as weird facial hair." One suspects this writer could tackle any subject with aplomb, but thoroughbred horse-breeding, populated by violent, menacing subjects boasting competitive streaks that border on the criminal, certainly offers a fine canvas for his brush. The horse world is awash with entertaining characters, from bookies and grooms and bloodstock agents to kings, sheikhs, and tax exiles; Conley takes their measure like an expert tailor. He captures the horses' personalities too, elevating them above the status of sex machines (not that it's so terrible to earn $20 million annually, as top stud Storm Cat does) and inviting them into the story as genuine characters. Mostly, Conley sticks to the rarified air of thoroughbred farms in Bluegrass Kentucky, that unfussy rolling landscape with its own referents: thoroughbreds must benaturally "covered," and any offspring produced by artificial insemination will not keep their bloodline. Stud ends, however, with the author standing amidst a herd of wild horses during a driving rain, the whole pack serving as a big weathervane by shifting to keep their butts to the wind. Simply wonderful. Author tour