The Jockey Club today reported that 3,364 stallions covered 59,090 mares in North America during 2002, according to Reports of Mares Bred (RMB’s) received by The Jockey Club as of October 10, 2002.

The report includes the number of mares bred to each stallion and represents approximately 90 percent of the mares bred in 2002. Although RMB’s are to be submitted by August 1 of each breeding season, The Jockey Club will likely receive an additional 800-to-1,000 RMB’s from the 2002 breeding season.

The number of stallions declined 2.7 percent from the 3,457 reported at this time last year, while the number of mares bred rose 1.3 percent from the 58,318 reported at this time in 2001.

“The returns indicate a continuation of the trend toward larger stallion book sizes,” said Matt Iuliano, The Jockey Club’s vice president of registration services. “This trend tends to be accompanied by an increase in live foal percentage which supports our earlier projection of 37,000 registered foals of 2003.”

The number of stallions bred to 100 or more mares increased from 77 last year to 93 in 2002. Grand Slam led all stallions with 215 mares bred, two more than Giant’s Causeway who was the only other stallion to cover at least 200 mares this year. States in which a stallion covered at least 100 mares were Kentucky (72); Florida (11); California (3); New York (3); Maryland (2); Pennsylvania (1); and Texas (1).

RMB statistics for all reported stallions in 2002 are available on The Jockey Club web site at http://home.jockeyclub.com/maresbred/2002/index.html.