Yulong targets ‘significant’ broodmare band reduction in 2024

Yulong general manager Vin Cox has revealed that the burgeoning Victorian breeding outfit will reduce its broodmare band significantly this year.

Yulong has made a heavy splash in Australia since it purchased its Nagambie farm in February 2018, to the point where its principal, Yuesheng Zhang, is the biggest bloodstock investor in the world.

For the past five years, Yulong has increased its presence in Australia to the point, where it stands seven stallions and houses a broodmare band that numbers around 650 on four farms. 

Prolific southern hemisphere mare purchases have included the multimillion-dollar acquisitions Melody Belle, Isotope and Baggy Green, In Her Time, Unforgotten and Viddora.

Among the eye-watering prices Yulong has gone to for elite mares is the $4.1 million paid for Forbidden Love, the $4 million paid for Away Game, and the $3.2 million paid for Snapdancer.

At the 2023 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale, Yulong’s splurge made world headlines when the operation spent more than over $33 million on 60 broodmares across three days of trade. It obliterated Yulong’s own 2022 record at the same sale when it had outlaid $29 million.

With this degree of spending comes scrutiny, in particular the questions of quantity and quality. 

 Cox revealed that the farm will be shaving its broodmare numbers in the constant quest for quality.

“Quality is something we’ve got to address and keep being aggressive about,” he told The Straight. “We can’t just be complacent and keep mares for the sake of keeping them. You’ve got to keep the quality as high as you can, so it’s a case of balancing that out.

“You’ll see in the next little while that we’ll be paring back those numbers and taking off from the bottom end, just clearing out things that probably don’t suit our profile at the moment.”

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Yulong will be selling through digital and physical sales, spreading out what Cox describes as “a significant amount,”  

“Probably towards 100, something like that.,” he said. 

The bigger farms in Australia are no strangers to culls like these, where often large drafts will appear in the broodmare sales as reductions. 

Whether this will happen with Yulong remains to be seen, but, either way, 100 mares is a substantial figure for any farm, let alone one with the buying profile of Yulong.

“You’ve got to be aggressive about your numbers,” Cox said. “You’ve got to maintain the quality. But quality is relative. Some people’s quality is at different levels to others’, so relative to where we want to be, those are the horses we’ll look to move on.”

“Quality is something we’ve got to address and keep being aggressive about. We can’t just be complacent and keep mares for the sake of keeping them” – Yulong general manager Vin Cox