American Pharoah is a Breeding Machine

[caption id="attachment_192696" align="alignnone" width="780"] AP[/caption] A horse had never won a Breeders' Cup Classic after taking home the Triple Crown, putting the people around American Pharoah in unfamiliar territory. The stallion manager at his new Ashford Stud home told Tim Sullivan of The Courier-Journal that he was worried the friendly and photogenic colt wouldn't be the same once he began breeding.  Testosterone can have a strange affect on the animals when they're mating three times a day.  The Phoroah's doing what he's always done -- win. There's no official winners or losers in breeding, but AP is the exception.  Normally stallions breed 80 colts a year.  In less than three months he's successfully knocked up 90 females in 130 attempts.  That's an insane success rate, almost one Baby Pharoah a day.  It also makes his $200,000 stud fee seem a lot more reasonable. In the words of Justin Zayat: “He is as fertile as they come." Should you be amazed?  Probably not.  You should probably be more weirded out because how they breed horses is one of the strangest things in the world.  I've been to a breeding barn, luckily I never stayed for a session (most have three a day), but it's the most intriguing/bizarre/I don't even... There's "teasers" to get the process going.  In the middle of the barn is a big box; the stage I presume.  A series of harnesses and straps hang by the box for I don't know what. A team of men in the room make sure everything goes where it's supposed to.  The mare has a massive rubber blanket that weighs approximately eleventy thousand pounds that she must wear or else the stallion could hurt her.  And I still don't even know the half of it. Horse breeding is a strange, but profitable business.  Who knows, maybe one day I'll hit the lottery and throw $200,000 to the King Pharoah of horse racing.