Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley will relocate nearly all of its Australian stallion roster to the operation's purpose-built stallion farms near Aberdeen, New South Wales, and Seymour, Victoria, for the 2009 Southern Hemisphere season. As a result, the Denman property in New South Wales, which was acquired under the Woodlands banner earlier last year, will cease to operate as a stallion farm.
Approximately two-thirds of the roster will stand at Aberdeen. The others will be split between Seymour and the Cootamundra stud. A list of each stallion’s location next season will be released in the near future. The Denman property will become home to Sheikh Mohammed’s breeding operation, meaning that it will no longer be open to third-party mares.
“We have decided to relocate the Woodlands stallions, chiefly those that have stood at Denman, to our studs at Aberdeen and Seymour, with the aim of streamlining our commercial stallion operation,” said Henry Plumptre, managing director of Darley Australia. “Foremost in our minds is our desire to continue to provide the simplest breeding options for our clients so standing our stallions at two main farms instead of four is ideal.”
On the closure of Denman as a public stud, Plumptre said: “During recent years there has been an emergence in the Hunter Valley of a number of very professional boutique broodmare farms that offer a quality and complete mare service which have more than satisfied demand.
“We also discovered that the numbers of third-party mares residing at Woodlands has been exponentially declining and with Darley's broodmare band in Australia now numbering approximately 450, Denman will focus in future on Sheikh Mohammed's private breeding concern.”
Stud manager Peter Flynn will leave his role at Denman and Cootamundra to become a stud consultant at Darley. Taking his place at Denman is John Sunderland. Barley Ward-Thomas becomes the stud manager of Aberdeen.