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As a stallion owner, the most important
thing you can do for your business is to
manage mare owners’ expectations with a
clear and comprehensive breeding contract.
Every spring, Equine Legal Solutions
receives numerous inquiries from anxious mare
owners who want to know what their rights are
under a stallion service contract.
Inquiries typically involve fees,
rebreeding rights and live
foal guarantees.
Often, the mare owner is concerned
because they have spent what they consider to
be a large sum of money and their mare is not
pregnant.
When
ELS reviews the breeding contract in question,
we usually find that the contract does not
adequately address the mare owner’s area of
concern. In
particular, breeding contracts are not always
clear about what fees are refundable and what
fees are not, what procedures must be followed
to order shipped semen and what happens if the
stallion or mare is sold before the contract
is complete.
What happens if the stallion owner
receives a bunch of requests for shipped semen
all on the same day and cannot honor them all?
These types of ambiguities can lead to large
disagreements between stallion owners and mare
owners, the kind of disagreements that result
in bad reputations and complaints to breed
associations.
As a breeder, the last thing you want
is an industry rumor that your stallion is not
producing viable semen or that you won’t
honor your live foal guarantee.
Live
foal guarantees should be much more detailed
than “Stallion owner guarantees that mare
owner will have a foal that stands and
nurses” (a real-life example from a contract
that ELS reviewed).
For example, most stallion service
contracts do not specify when the breeding
season ends AND how many breeding seasons the
mare owner can keep trying to breed the mare.
Savvy breeders will have a contract
that requires the mare owner to have a
veterinarian check the mare’s fertility
before breeding and check her fertility again
if she does not become pregnant within a
certain number of breedings.
In addition, breeding contracts should
be very specific about what pregnancy checks
are required – when they must take place,
who must perform them and what type of
documentation must be submitted to the
breeder.
Live
foal guarantees should also attempt to cover
the spirit of what a “live foal” means and
not just rely the old standby of “stands and
nurses,” which is a somewhat outdated
concept. A
foal that stands and nurses is not necessarily
a viable foal. For example, a foal with lethal
white syndrome may stand and nurse, but it
will die a few hours later.
In contrast, a foal that does not stand
and nurse may indeed be quite viable. For
example, a foal whose dam will not accept her
and is bottle-fed by people may grow into
quite a large, healthy filly.
In
the modern era of interstate and even
international breedings via artificial
insemination, your breeding contract should
specify what state’s law will apply and
where the parties must bring a claim.
Otherwise, a mare owner in a distant
state (or even a distant country!) could sue
you in their home jurisdiction and even if you
are able to remove the suit to your own home
jurisdiction, it would likely be quite
expensive to do so.
To
help provide stallion owners with a
cost-effective but high-quality breeding
contract, Equine Legal Solutions now offers downloadable
shipped semen and on-site breeding contracts.
Additional
Information:
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