David writes:

It's been a busy week at Te Akau Stud.  I arrived home from a trip to Singapore yesterday and was thrilled to see how everything looked.  During the week I was away the grass has really taken off and I was amazed at the difference a week had made.

We had a really good frost at Te Akau Stud this morning, just to remind us that the cold spells are not over yet.  The scenes coming through from the South Island certainly support that thought!

Our team at Te Akau Stud has done a great job - the horses look incredible, and their winter coats are all on the move or completely gone!  It's a stunning day today at the farm as well and they are loving lazing in the sun.

We start selling our first cattle in two weeks and will then sell four units a week until February.

While the high rainfall has been great for the farm, it's a nightmare for our racing stable with the cancellations and venue changes meaning we have a good number of horses we are being forced to run at Matamata tomorrow, simply to get them fit for their main targets coming up.  It's not ideal, but it's a rare occurrence and we just have to work with it.

It's just great to see our stable rider Opie Bosson in such great form, currently on top of the Jockey's Premiership.  Tomorrow he has 12 rides - that's the most I can ever remember him having in New Zealand.

With such a large team engaged on Saturday, we are pleased to welcome South island based jockey Jason Laking back north to ride for us tomorrow.  Jason is a very good horseman and of course won the Group 1 NZ Oaks on Belle on Rouge for us in March this year.

Jason has been working full-time for Te Akau since our team arrived in Christchurch and also rides race day there for us, and with good success too.  Last week he was in great form winning the Guineas' Trial aboard Cognito. Jason also rode Prise De Fer to victory in the Group 3 Canterbury Gold Cup for us and Noverre to win the Group 3 War Decree Stakes last season.

Karyn and I are looking forward to being on course at Matamata tomorrow for what will be a great day's racing, 12 races no less!

As I said before, I have just spent five days in Singapore visiting our Singapore stable, inspecting our horses, and meeting with owners as well as the Singapore Turf Club.  I am thrilled at what a wonderful job Donna Logan is doing running our Kranji stable.  She is very well supported by her partner Peter Woods and they are a first-class team and very popular in Singapore.

We have a great crew of staff in Singapore and it is no wonder the horses are racing so well - Donna is currently leading the Trainers' Premiership and there are only seven race meetings after this week until the end of the season (Singapore runs to a calendar year).

While I was in Singapore, I had a meeting with officials of the Singapore Turf Club and it's obvious to me it has some exciting news to be released very shortly so all in all, it was a very successful trip.

We will be buying a couple of horses for Singapore at next months Ready to Run sale so if you are interested in racing a horse in Singapore, let us know.  A maiden race in Singapore is worth about NZ$90,000 currently and there are starters' incentives if your horses finishes 2nd-8th so it's a very good place to race a horse.

While I was at the races in Singapore, we won two races with Charminton who Karyn syndicated and Fortuna's King Arthur.  Charminton has raced five times for three wins and two second placings and has earned just on NZ $135,000 from those five starts. King Arthur, who won the feature race on the night has won approx. NZ $525,000 in his 22 starts, which include nine wins and eight placings.

Best of luck to all our owners with runners this weekend and ... REMEMBER to catch Hamish, Sam and Reece on this week's edition of Te Akau TV!

GO THE TANGERINE!