University of Maryland Equine Program Breeds Success
University of Maryland Equine Program Breeds Success
2-Year-Old Maryland’s Best Provides Latest Win
LAUREL, MD – Over the years, the University of Maryland’s equine studies program has continued to provide its students with the knowledge and hands-on experience to move on to successful careers in and around the thoroughbred industry.
Yet the program’s success isn’t limited to its human graduates. Maryland’s Best, a 2-year-old gelding owned and trained by Javier Contreras, became the latest horse bred by the university to earn his racing diploma.
Favored at 2-1 in a field of 10, the juvenile son of Rock Slide out of the Salem Drive mare The Best Sister cruised to a 1 ¾-length victory Sept. 10 in a 5 ½-furlong maiden claiming event on Turf Festival Day over Laurel Park’s main track.
Maryland’s Best was foaled in the middle of a snowstorm on Feb. 12, 2014 at the university’s 4-acre farm a short distance from the XFinity Center, home to the men’s and women’s Division I basketball teams.
“I thought he ran a huge race. I dropped him in for a tag and he was very, very game,” Contreras said. “When we bought him at the sale I didn’t really know too much about the history behind him or anything. It’s amazing. All the hard work they put in to get him there and then to see him win, it’s a pretty neat story.”
Maryland’s Best won despite missing his left eye, an injury that occurred when he scratched the eye as a weanling. It was an injury Contreras disregarded when the trainer paid $5,000 for him at Fasig-Tipton’s Midlantic Eastern Fall Yearling Sale last October in Timonium. The horse was originally sold for $1,000 as a weanling at the company’s December 2014 mixed sale.
“The reason we liked him when we looked at him as a yearling was when the young girl had him and walked him around and showed him, he just walked out like an old horse. He had his head down and just stood there,” Contreras said. “We walked up to him and looked at him and touched him and pet him and he never turned a hair. He stood there like he was a little statue. And, he still trains that way. He walks up to the track and back with his head on his chest and nothing really bothers him.
“He’s got only one eye. They tell me he lost it when he was a really, really small baby. It doesn’t affect him at all,” he added. “Nothing bothers him. He could be standing there and you walk up to him and touch him on that side and he doesn’t flinch. He’ll just turn and look at you. He never ducks or shies away from anything that moves on that side. Never. And he never has, not even when he was a yearling.”
Maryland’s Best was one of two horses foaled by the university’s breeding program in 2014 along with Fear The Fire, a Friesan Fire gelding out of the mare Daylight Lassie that has yet to race but is currently in training at Laurel.
Diamondback Fire, a full brother to Fear the Fire, became the first horse born on campus in nearly 30 years when he was foaled March 8, 2013. He won his debut on Sept. 4, 2015 at Timonium during the Maryland State Fair, and has gone on to finish second five times and third once in eight subsequent starts.
In 2015 the breeding program produced Blazing Terp, a colt by Buffum out of Daylight Lassie, and Maryland’s Miracle, a filly by Baltimore Bob out of the mare Amazin. The lone thoroughbred foaled this year is an unnamed colt out of Daylight Lassie by Nicanor, a stakes-placed full brother to ill-fated 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, born April 1.
“The Nicanor colt is awesome. He’s probably the best-looking colt we've had,” said associate professor Dr. Amy Burk, coordinator of the Equine Studies program in the Animal and Avian Sciences Department (ANSC). “We’ll try to keep the Nicanor colt until he's a yearlings so the student's can show him in the yearling shows. Usually the horses are sold as weanlings because they get too big for the students, especially for the ones that don't have much experience. I hope to hold onto him longer until Nicanor's offspring are doing something and we can sell this guy for a little more money. It would be nice to have one black-type mare for the program. That’s all I want.”
Money from horses sold at auction goes directly back to the program, where Burk’s students number around 50 in the introductory course management classes to 20 to 25 in upper-level instruction. Burk said she has 20 to 25 students that are equine specific and another 30 in pre-veterinary study that are equine specific.
Burk was tasked with building an equine breeding program upon her 2001 arrival in Maryland, where she teaches courses in equine management and advises equine studies undergraduates as well as students in the Equestrian Club and Eventing Team in addition to overseeing the breeding program.
Students learn all aspects of the breeding process and also explore a wide range of topics including anatomy and physiology, nutrition, exercise, law, insurance, facilities, health and disease, pasture management and more at both the Clarksville facility and the on-campus farm, located near the ANSC building and the Xfinity Center.
As a graduate student at Virginia Tech, where she earned her MS in 1998 and her PhD in 2001, Burk got experience on a working 420-acre thoroughbred breeding farm in Middleburg, Va. She learned about pedigree analysis and how to show horses and talk about their conformation during the school’s annual yearling sales.
“I think we’re pretty different from other breeding farms. You’ve got your pregnant mare barn and foaling barn and all these different barns, and we’re trying to create it from scratch on a University-owned farm used for research,” she said. “[The Clarksville facility] was developed as a rotational grazing demonstration site. We have a couple of smaller paddocks where we’re testing out new warm season grasses or we use them for lame or new horses. We bring horse farm owners out here to show them what a productive pasture looks like and train them how to evaluate pasture quality, and we throw in equine nutrition because it’s important.
“There’s an educational component. The breeding program has a lot of layers and the training of students is important,” Burk added. “I wanted to get the industry involved in the academic program because sometimes there’s a discourse between what is happening in the industry and what you teach students in class from books. There has to be a merge of the two. I think the industry appreciates that, and now we have a lot of industry support. People start calling me now and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this stallion you might want to breed to.’ Before, I was begging everyone.”
Burk said the breeding program has met its educational goals of providing students with the necessary skills to be sought-after and productive workers, as well as helping them realize the dedication required to be successful both in and out of the industry.
“The educational component has actually been life-changing for some of these students. After they see a live birth, some of the students cry, and that’s truly nice,” she said. “A lot of people agree that managing horses teaches you life skills. You have to drag yourself out of bed in the middle of the night and check the mares. Our students realize you can’t just not show up. These are animals. Their lives depend on them. It teaches them leadership skills.
“From the administrative side, the program needs to be sustainable,” Burk added. “Right now we’re working on trying to get sponsorships, trying to build new pastures to expand. I’m hopeful we can get to a point where the quality of the racehorses we produce are good enough that they make a decent amount of money at the sale and then the breeders’ fund supplements as much as it can. I’m trying to keep financially viable and still teach students, get them internships, and make them better prepared for the work force. They come out of here after selling babies at a sale and they gain confidence to be able to go into an interview and explain what they can do."
The breeding to Nicanor and Baltimore Bob were both donated by Shamrock Farm in Woodbine, Md. Country Life Farm in Fallston, Md. provided the season to Friesan Fire that produced Diamondback Fire. Long-time trainer Katy Voss, a board member of the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, convinced Marilyn Doetsch to donate Daylight Lassie, who has now produced four foals to the program. Also, breeders like Allen and Audrey Murray of Murmur Farm in Darlington, Md. and Northview Stallion Station have also generously donated mares.
“I really appreciate the industry’s support. Some of those people are so generous, and recently more and more people are helping,” Burk said. “We’ve taken students out on the backstretch at Laurel. We’re trying to give students a better impression of racing. I love it, breeding thoroughbreds. It’s in my bones.”
