LEXINGTON – Into Mischief is a breeder apart. Unusually fertile and enormously popular, Spendthrift Farm’s star stallion mates the way Secretariat moved: like a tremendous machine.
Day after day, and sometimes four times a day, the 14-year-old father of at least 1,172 registered foals follows the red brick path between his stall and the breeding shed to create new thoroughbreds.
He is just, in every way, a truly remarkable sire,” said Ned Toffey, Spendthrift’s general manager. “He rarely spends more than a minute or two (at breeding), and his libido is such that he’s able to do that throughout the breeding season. He only averages a little more than one cover per pregnancy, which allows him to breed a large book.
He breeds once, and they don’t come back.”
As the only American stallion to have bred more than 200 mares in each of the last seven years, Into Mischief is a horse that also qualifies as a cash cow. With a 2020 stud fee of $175,000 per live foal, his services next year could be worth $35 million or more to Spendthrift.
This helps explain the farm’s resistance to a Jockey Club proposal to cap the annual breeding of individual stallions at 140 mares beginning in 2021.