Te Akau Thursday Update

David updates:

What an exciting time of year it is racing wise. Derby Day at Flemington on Saturday is such a great day's racing. Over 100,000 people go to Flemington each year.

This year our youngest daughter Julia-Rose is going to Melbourne for the weekend with her partner Hamish Hayes. I am sure they will have a great weekend racing.  JR will be back on Monday as she works for the Auckland Racing Club and they have a massive day planned for Tuesday. So she won't be staying for Melbourne Cup Day!

Te Akau will have some nice runners at Ellerslie - Abidewithme in the Ellerslie stake's race and Imperium in the maiden 1600 metre.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to see Imperium do so well on the anniversary of his mother Ethereal's big Melbourne Cup win in 2001?

One thing I wish the programming committees would do is to put on more three year old races. Imperium for example has to race against four, five and six year olds next Tuesday and its very hard for a three year old.

The following week the Riccarton carnival starts, Te Akau will have eight horses racing - Bronte Lass, Darci's Dream, Flaming, Costa Viva Chambord, Wolfwhistle. Longbeach and Rockfast who travelled down yesterday from Otaki and has settled in really well. He is at the improving stage and provided the track isn't too firm, he will start in the Group 1 2000 Guineas.  Jamie Richards and Pam Gerard are looking after the horses at Riccarton.

This week on the farm we have been busy selling six units of cattle - a unit is a truck and trailer which takes 35 cattle.  The first load of bulls weighed 361 kgs and the first load of ox (steers) weighed 398.5 kg which makes them worth over $2200 each. I never dreamed I would sell cattle for this in my lifetime.

I have also been very busy buying cattle and already this week have bought over 300 cattle, both bulls and steers, so the team here at Te Akau has been flat out loading, unloading, ear-marking, drenching etc.

I really enjoy watching the Ttrackside programme “Weigh In” each week, the programme is starting to gel and I can now see it has the makings of being an asset to the industry. It is on channel 62 and is well worth watching at 7pm on a Monday night.

It has been a busy time for us with Karyn away in Wellington last week on Arts' Council of New Zealand and New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing Members' Council business including attending the Prime Minister's Awards for Literature at Premier House in her role as a Board member of the Arts Council.  She has been in Christchuch all this week with Arts' Council business and is due home tonight (if she can find her way home)!

Today we also have Sam Boyd coming to stay for the weekend. There is a golf tournament on at Te Akau tomorrow that he is playing in - we are all looking forward to Sam's arrival.