The Stallion Book: What to Keep on File Every Breeding Season (2026 Guide)

By Brian Bickell, who raises paint and quarter horses at Bickell Ranches in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Standing a stallion taught him that the horse is the easy part — the book is the business.

If you stand a stallion, the horse is maybe a third of the job. The rest is a book: who booked, who's confirmed, whose contract you're holding, what shipped where, who owes you what, and how every one of last year's matings turned out. Mare owners are trusting you with a breeding season and real money, and the thing that makes you look like a professional — or doesn't — is whether you can answer their questions without hunting.

"Did my deposit come through?" "When did the semen ship?" "Is she counted as confirmed in foal?" "What's my balance and when's it due?" A stallion owner who can answer those in ten seconds keeps mare owners coming back. One who says "let me dig around and get back to you" doesn't, for long.

This is a guide to the book itself — what a stallion owner keeps on file every season, and why each piece matters. It's the stallion side; for the mare owner's records I wrote a separate breeding documentation guide, and the two fit together like two halves of the same breeding.

Educational, not legal or veterinary advice. Breeding contracts belong to an attorney and reproductive decisions to your vet. This is a record-keeping framework — what to capture and keep, not what your contract should say or how to manage a collection.

In This Guide

• The Mare Book
• A Contract for Every Mare
• The Collection and Shipment Log
• Deposits and Balances, Per Booking
• Live Foal Guarantee Tracking
• The End-of-Season Report
• Reading the Season Back

The Mare Book

The heart of it is the list of mares, and the trick is that a booking isn't a yes-or-no — it moves through stages, and your book has to show where each one stands.

A mare might be pending (interest, maybe a deposit, contract not signed), confirmed (booked, papered, on the schedule), completed (bred, season done for her), or cancelled. Keeping that status current is what lets you answer "how many mares am I actually standing him to this year" honestly, and it's what keeps you from double-promising a collection week.

For each mare on the book, you want the basics on file: the mare's registered name and number, her owner and their contact info, the breeding method you agreed to (live cover, cooled, frozen), and her booking status. That's the roster. When a mare owner calls, you should be able to pull up their mare and see the whole arrangement without asking them to remind you who they are.

HorseBook keeps this as a booking record under the stallion, with the status right on it, so the mare book is a live list rather than a page you rewrite every time something changes.

A Contract for Every Mare

Every mare on the book should have a signed contract behind her, and a copy of it should live in your records — not just in the mare owner's file.

The contract is where the terms live: the stud fee and how it's paid, the booking fee, collection and shipping charges, mare care if she boards with you, rebreed provisions if she doesn't settle, and the live foal guarantee definition. I don't write contracts — that's an attorney's job — but I keep every signed one scanned and attached to the booking it belongs to. The number of disputes that evaporate when you can produce the signed page is worth the thirty seconds it takes to scan it.

The practical move: when a contract comes back signed, scan it into the mare's booking that day. A contract you can find is a contract that protects you. One in a pile on the desk is a contract you'll be looking for in the middle of an argument. If keeping documents findable is the part you struggle with, the best-way-to-keep-track-of-horse-records piece is the deeper version of this argument.

The Collection and Shipment Log

If you ship cooled or frozen semen, the log of what went out is both an operational record and a customer-service record.

For each collection, note the date, the volume, a quick quality read, and how many doses it made. You don't need a lab report in your book for every jump — that's your vet's territory — but you do need enough to know what you produced and what you have on hand, especially if you're managing frozen inventory across seasons.

For each shipment, log the date it went out, which mare and mare owner it's for, the carrier and tracking, and the shipment status — shipped, reshipping, that kind of thing. This is the record that answers the single most common in-season phone call: "did it ship?" Being able to say "went out Tuesday, here's the tracking" instead of "I think so, let me check" is the whole difference. HorseBook logs collections and their shipments right under the stallion, tied to the mares they went to, so the answer's always one tap away.

Deposits and Balances, Per Booking

This is the part that separates keeping records from running a business. A stud fee usually isn't one payment — it's parts, and the parts come due at different times.

A typical booking splits into a booking deposit up front, then one or more balances that fall due later — some at shipment, some when the mare is confirmed in foal by a certain date, some only on a live foal. Add collection fees, a chute fee, shipping, and mare care board on top, and a single booking can have half a dozen line items on different due triggers. Track that loosely and you will lose money — a balance nobody invoiced, a deposit you can't remember collecting.

The clean way is per booking: each charge, what triggers it (at signing, at shipment, in foal by the fall, on a live foal, at sale), and whether it's been paid. That's exactly what HorseBook's Breeder plan is built for. You lay out a fee schedule on the booking — deposit and balance parts, each with its own due trigger — attach your own payment link (Stripe, Venmo, PayPal, whatever you already use), mark each part paid as the money lands, and share a read-only invoice with the mare owner so they can see what's due and what's settled. One thing it deliberately does not do: touch your money. HorseBook never processes or holds funds — the mare owner pays you directly through your own link, and the app just keeps the books. I wrote about why I drew that line in the Breeder plan announcement.

Live Foal Guarantee Tracking

Most stud contracts carry a live foal guarantee, and the guarantee is only as good as your record of which mares it covers and how the season came out.

The common industry standard is that the foal stands and nurses — the exact wording lives in each contract, which is why you keep the signed contract on file. What you track through the season is the outcome per mare: settled or not, carrying, and eventually the result. A mare who doesn't settle, or a pregnancy that's lost, or a live foal on the ground — each one has consequences for what's owed and whether a rebreed is on the table next season.

Keep the guarantee type and the outcome on the booking, not in your head. When a mare owner comes to you next spring saying their mare lost the foal and they're due a rebreed, you want to already know that — from your own records — before the conversation starts.

The End-of-Season Report

The most important deadline of the whole book is the one you file with the registry: the annual stallion breeding report, listing every mare you bred that season with dates and method.

I'll say this the same way I say it everywhere, because it's the piece that hurts people: if you don't file the breeding report, foals from your stallion can't be registered — no matter how perfectly the mare owners do their part. That's your obligation as the stallion owner, and it lands on the mare owners' foals if you miss it. The deadlines and forms are set by each registry and they change, so check yours directly rather than trusting a date you remember. The general shape of stallion filing requirements across registries is in the breed registration guide, and the mare owner's side of getting each foal registered is in the foal registration paperwork guide.

The good news: if your mare book is current all season, the breeding report mostly writes itself. Every mare, every date, every method — it's already in the book. The report is just reading your own records back to the registry.

Reading the Season Back

Here's the payoff for keeping a real book: at season's end you can actually read it. How many mares you booked, how many settled, your conception rate, which mares came back easy and which fought it. HorseBook rolls the season up into a program summary for the stallion so you're not tallying it by hand — settled versus decided, the outcomes, the whole picture on one screen.

That summary is next year's brochure and next year's pricing conversation, backed by numbers instead of a feeling. A stallion with a strong, documented season sells his own book. And when a prospective mare owner asks "how'd he do last year," you answer from data, which is exactly the answer that gets you the booking.

Standing a stallion is a business, and a business runs on its book. HorseBook keeps the whole thing — the mares, the contracts, the collections and shipments, the money, and the outcomes — under one stallion, one season at a time. Keep the book current as the season runs, and every hard question a mare owner or a registry can ask you is already answered.

The horse does his job. Make sure the book does yours.

---

Brian Bickell is the founder of HorseBook and raises paint and quarter horses at Bickell Ranches in Stillwater, Oklahoma.