Pulling into the driveway of his farm on a winter day in November 2008, Jay Hayden knew he had some explaining to do to his wife Christine. Hayden and his nephew Cody Kelley were returning from a trip to the Keeneland November Breeding Stock sale in Lexington. Jay wanted to get into the thoroughbred breeding business and went to look for a mare.
He bought six.
“It was a bit touchy for a couple of months,” Jay said with a chuckle. “Our friend [standardbred owner] Joe O’Brien took them for us and we scrambled to put up fences and a barn.”
What started out as a hobby has become quite a bit more for the Haydens of Lucan, ON. They have sold several six-figure horses at auction, have bred and raced a stakes winner and two products of their breeding could be Queen’s Plate contenders in July.
It was Jay’s father Charles, who, in the 1960s, got the thoroughbred bug. He bred and raced horses, and also raised dairy cattle, as a side to the family’s water well business.
“I remember when I was seven or eight, we had a horse named Lets Go Son. He won races and it was very exciting. I always wanted to get back into it one day.”
Jay’s grandfather, Lorne, founded the Hayden Water Wells drilling business in 1944 with a drilling machine he bought for $1,200. When business started to boom in the 1970s, Charles had to leave the thoroughbred industry.
Charles, who lives near Lucan in Granton, retired in 1992. Jay and Christine have worked the business with a small staff since then, drilling over 2,000 wells over the last 23 years.
The conversations about horses originally concerned future plans.
“We discussed getting into it when I retired,” Jay said. “But I thought there was so much to learn about it that it would be too late by then.”
When the half-dozen well-bred mares arrived at the Hayden farm in 2008, Charles got the itch again too, and started building up his own broodmare band again.
With the invaluable help of Bernard McCormack of Cara Bloodstock and American bloodstock agent Chad Schumer, the Haydens have a small, blue-blooded collection of mares that never grows to more than 10 in number.
One of the first foals born at the Hayden farm was a giant Indian Charlie colt born to the Cherokee Run mare Major Idea.
The colt was so large that he did not realize his $70,000 reserve as an auction yearling in 2010. The Haydens kept the colt and sold him the following February in Florida as two-year-old in training for a whopping $300,000.
It was Schumer who picked out the mare Banga Ridge at the 2010 Keeneland November sale for $130,000. The daughter of Snow Ridge was in foal to Grade 1 winner Lemon Drop Kid.
“I remember when she foaled, it was hard to tell if the foal was a colt or a filly,” Jay said. “It was above average size and looked like a middleweight boxer.”
It was a filly and they had high hopes for her when she went to auction a year later for the Keeneland September sale.
“She x-rayed with a spur in her knee,” Jay said. “And people just could not get past that. They wanted perfection.”
Once again, the Haydens took one of their horses back as she did not reach her $90,000 reserve. They tried again at the Fasig Tipton October yearling sale a month later, but the filly went unsold at $59,000.
“We had an offer from someone from Illinois for $35,000 for her, but I just wasn’t happy about it. So, we kept her.”
That filly, which the Haydens, with tongue-in-cheek, named Unspurned, has gone on to become a graded stakes winner of over $460,000. The first — and currently only horse to race for the couple — is trained by Hall of Fame conditioner Roger Attfield. The filly won this year’s Whimsical Stakes (Grade 3) at Woodbine and last season’s Bison City Stakes.
“We have been very lucky to have Roger as our trainer,” Jay said. “He has this great mind of archives of horses he has trained and lessons he has learned over the years.”
The Haydens have four two-year-olds — one owned by Charles — to race this year. All four wintered with Webb Carroll in South Carolina.
“They didn’t sell for whatever reason. A blemish here and there,” Jay said. “One had a cyst so we named her Sonic Cyster.”
The ones that the Haydens have sold, Charles included, have gone on to do big things.
One of Charles’ mares, Higher World, produced Conquest Curlinate, who was a close second in the Grade 2 Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont and the Grade 3 Illinois Derby at Hawthorne this year. The grey son of Curlin is a favourite for the Queen’s Plate.
Jay and Christine are the breeders of Breaking Lucky, a $100,000 weanling purchase by Gunpowder Stables who is also a Plate hopeful. Another colt, the promising Dion owned by Regis Racing, was a $300,000 yearling purchase in 2013.
There are plenty of trying times in the breeding business, as well and the Haydens had their share early in 2015. Two of their top mares, Tell Seattle and Endless Journey, passed away after foaling.
“We were very down for a while,” said Jay, who is involved in all the horse and farm work along with Christine. “But we had our other mares and foals, plus Endless Journey’s orphan foal by Blame that needed taking care of.”
The Haydens, when not busy with the family business and raising their two daughters Rachel and Chelsea, pore over stallion pedigrees and race results and compare notes with McCormack and Schumer before each breeding season. Their farm vet, Dr. Katie Crossan, is just a few furlongs from their farm and state-of-the-art equipment such as barn cameras allow them to manage their horse business as a family.
“I remember Dr. John Brown of Spring Farm telling me that I would not realize how much work 10 mares would be,” Jay said. “It is a ton of work with the contracts, paperwork and the hands on chores.”
Personable and very much down-to-earth folks, the Haydens hope to sell half a dozen yearlings this fall, including two at the prestigious Saratoga summer sale in August.
“All you can do is shine them up and hope,” Jay said. “It’s a lot like the water well business: it’s a specialist business and a bit odd at the same time. But it’s exciting.”
