OUR VISION
Our Vision for Ed Bailey Bloodstock and Upton Court Stables is to be the leading bloodstock agency buying the best racehorses available alongside growing the stud farm to be foaling, rearing and producing some of the best racing prospects in the UK and abroad.
We believe in intricate attention to detail in every step through a horse’s life from soil testing the ground they stand on to testing all our home-produced hay, haylage, alfalfa, and straw. The horses are looked after to incredibly high standards from conception through to their retirement when they are in our care.
We very much believe in nurture being as important as nature when it comes to producing thoroughbred talent. Statistics such as these illustrate the benefits of early education especially with national hunt youngstock:
In the 2022/23 and 2023/24 season the French Breds made up 63% of the horses rated 170+ RPR in the UK/Ire, 91% of which have jumped in a race by the age of four.
9/10 of the highest RPR’s in the 23/24 NH season ran over an obstacle before the end of their spring 4yo season.
The last 7 Gold Cup Winners ran over an obstacle before the end of their spring 4yo season.
Development
Program
With these statistics in mind, we offer a young horse development program, lightly educating horses as yearlings before gently breaking them in before they turn 2 if they are mature enough. We loose school our horses as 2yos and get them jumping under saddle at two before they head to Chris Barber’s purpose built pre training yard for youngstock, offering exceptional schooling facilities to get horses on the gallops and jumping both in a school, out on an all-weather strip and on grass.
We aim to get our 3-year-olds pre trained and able to visit a racecourse for an educational day out as spring 3yos before having a good summer at grass to develop before heading off to their respective trainers in the late summer as 3yos having got a received a huge amount of education. The program is completely defined by the development of the horse, and we are well aware that not one shoe fits all.
We believe that this program aids horses to be much more physically developed and robust heading into training relative to their age group who may just be going through a sale as an unbroken store at this time.
