Sign a Stallion Breeding Contract Online: The Farm's Own Contract, Signed on the Mare Owner's Phone

By Brian Bickell, who builds HorseBook from a ranch in Oklahoma.

A stallion that books to thirty outside mares has at least that many contracts to chase down, and usually more. A mare isn't booked until her contract comes back signed, and some of the owners who ask for one never return it, so a thirty-mare book can mean sending close to forty contracts. Many of them still travel one of two ways: a PDF attached to an email, printed at the other end, signed, scanned or photographed, and sent back, or a paper copy in the mail with a deposit check. Each one sits somewhere between sent and returned until somebody asks about it. On a full book that is a standing list of who signed, who hasn't, and which version each of them has.

As of this week, HorseBook's Business plan sends that contract as a link. The mare owner opens it on her phone, signs it there, and a signed copy goes to each side by email. The agreement is filed on the booking the moment she signs.

The Farm's Own Contract

Many programs already send a contract of their own, and it is the document the farm wants signed. HorseBook works from that document.

The stallion owner uploads the contract once, as a PDF, on the web. HorseBook finds the blanks: the mare's name and registration number, the mare owner's name and address, the stallion, the fee, the dates. The owner checks where each blank landed and approves the contract once. From then on every booking fills it in from what the booking already knows, and asks only for what it doesn't.

Some blanks belong to the mare owner, a mailing address or a registration number she hasn't sent yet. On the farm's own contract, those can be marked for her to fill in. Anything the booking already knows is filled for her; whatever it doesn't, she fills in on the sign page, and her answers are printed into her copy of the PDF.

Programs without a contract of their own can start from the built-in stallion service agreement. It is written from the booking: the stallion, the mare, the mare owner, the stallion fee and deposit, the guarantee and the breeding method, with every clause editable and a per-stallion season template so a change is made once for the year. What belongs in each of those clauses is laid out in the stallion breeding contract template. HorseBook is not a law firm. The built-in agreement is a starting point, and an attorney licensed in the governing state should read it before it goes out to a book of mares.

Signed on the Mare Owner's Phone

The stallion owner signs first. Sign & send records the signer's name as it appears in the farm's contract details, with the date and time, and locks the text, so the agreement she opens is exactly the agreement the stallion owner signed. HorseBook hands over the link (copied on the web, a share sheet on iPhone), ready to paste into a text or an email, the way the farm already reaches that owner.

The link opens in her web browser. She needs no app, no account and no subscription. To sign, she:

• types her name and the email address her copy goes to,
• says whether she is the mare owner named on the agreement or signing as the owner's authorized agent,
• confirms she is 18 or older, or the owner's parent or guardian,
• ticks two consent boxes and taps Sign agreement.

Her signed copy is emailed to the address she typed, with a last page recording how and when she signed. The stallion owner's copy arrives by email with word that it is signed, and the booking shows Signed with her name and the date. If she signed as an agent, or under a different name from the owner on the booking, the email says so.

Filed Where the Season Lives

The signed agreement stays on the booking, next to the mare, the fee schedule, the shipments and the payments. The season list counts it as signed, and the daily email stops listing it as waiting on a signature.

When terms change after she signs, a different mare or fresh to frozen, Replace this agreement writes a new one from the booking as it stands. The first agreement stays in force until she signs the replacement, and nothing is deleted. Revoke link turns a link off. Download all signed contracts in Settings saves every signed agreement with its signing record in one zip file.

Paper Still Works

Some deals still get signed in ink, and paper has its own path in HorseBook. Print for signing prints the contract with blank signature, printed-name and date lines for both sides. Once it is signed, Signed on paper files the signed pages on the contract, as a PDF or as photos of each page, and on iPhone the pages can be scanned with the camera. The booking then counts as signed everywhere an e-signed contract does. A contract signed on another farm's paper can be filed on the booking the same way with Upload signed copy.

Set Up for You

Setting up the farm's own contract takes one upload and one careful read of where the blanks landed. For an operation that would rather not, the setup can be done for it: email the contract to brian@horsebook.app and it gets loaded into the account, ready for the stallion owner to check and approve. Approving it always stays with the stallion owner.

On the Business Plan, on iPhone and the Web

Contracts are part of the Business plan (called Breeder in the iPhone app until its next update), at $39.99 a month or $399.99 a year, alongside the stallion book: bookings, collections and shipments, fee schedules with deposit and balance parts, and invoices that carry the farm's own payment link. HorseBook never processes or holds the money. Making, signing, sending and replacing contracts works on the web and in the iPhone app; uploading and approving the farm's own contract is done on the web. The mare owner pays nothing and needs nothing installed.

The same system runs a book of three outside mares as well as it runs a book of eighty. A one-stallion program sending a handful of contracts from a phone gets the same link, the same signed copies and the same filing as a station standing a barn full of studs.

The step-by-step, including every check that runs before a contract can be sent, is in the help article Send a contract to sign.

I built this because contracts were the last part of a breeding season that still lived in an email thread and a stack of paper. If something in how your farm sends or signs contracts doesn't fit, tell me at brian@horsebook.app. That's how most of the stallion side got built.