Te Akau Weekend Update

David writes:

There is a well known saying that farmers are hard to keep happy!  It is probably true! I want rain for the farm but I want a good track at all three venues where we have starters tomorrow.

There are three prestigious three year old races this weekend and Te Akau is well represented in all three - north, central and south.

We have King's Rock in at Trentham where it can't stop raining for the Group 2 Wellington Guineas day tomorrow!  All Decked Out and King Savinsky line up in the Listed Holloway Builders Stakes (formerly known as the Canterbury Stakes) tomorrow at Riccarton and on Monday, we take Spellbinder to Te Rapa to contest the Group 3 James and Annie Sarten Memorial Stakes.

We have won all of these races before - with five of the last 10 editions of the Canterbury Stakes being won by Te Akau horses and in fact one year, Te Akau's Mark Walker trained the trifecta in the event.  Now that is an unbelievable achievement!

Tomorrow we have runners at all three New Zealand venues.  On at least one other occasion that I can recall, we have won races at three different venues on the same day.  Jason has the team in top form so anything is possible.

Tomorrow we have three two year olds having their first start.  One each in both of the Ellerslie 2YO races and one at Riccarton - Flaming and Darci's Dream in Auckland and Appellation in Christchurch.  They have all shown promise.

We have had a very busy week on the farm - for the last two weeks, my head stockman Luke Copeland (who has worked for me for 14 years) has been on holiday.  Luke got married in Rarotonga and this week has been on his honeymoon.  Sadly due to my operation, we were not able to attend the wedding but we have been told it was a very happy and lovely occasion (but gee I can't wait for him to get back to work next week)!!

In the last six weeks we have been buying a lot of store bulls - these are bulls we will farm for 12 months and fatten for next year.  They are weighing about 275-300kgs and we are averaging just under $700 which I consider to be great buying.  All our cattle are in great order and putting on lots of weight at present - around 2kgs per day - (lucky they are not jockeys - Ed)!

We have just finished dagging the ewes and drenching the lambs and we start shearing in ten days' time.  We will wean the lambs at the same time.

I hope you all have a great (long in NZ) weekend and as many of you as possible come to Te Rapa on Monday for the day's racing there - it will be fantastic racing and the feature, the Listed Sarten Memorial is a ripper of a field.  Hopefully I will be up to joining the Chairman (K Fenton-Ellis) on the day!