APRIL 1999 California Thoroughbred Magazine
Association officers, to serve for the coming year, were elected at our most recent board meeting. They are John Barr, President; Weston Fitzpatrick, Vice President; Leigh Ann Howard, Vice President; Myron Johnson, Treasurer and Keith Card, Secretary. I will be serving a second term as President and am flattered by the board’s continued confidence. I consider myself fortunate to be serving with such a dedicated group of individuals and was glad to welcome newly elected Joan Rogers and Frank "Scoop" Vessels to the board. They bring just the kind of total involvement and fresh ideas that we need.
I also want to take the opportunity to use this forum as a means of thanking retiring board members Monty Roberts and Carol Anderson for their many years of service and the countless contributions they have made over the years to your association. Should you see either one of them, be sure to thank them personally. Our recent annual meeting in the Santa Ynez Valley has been acclaimed by many to have been the best annual meeting in over a decade. It could not have been made possible without the help and support of Monty and Pat Roberts.
In reviewing the disbursements of the 1998 incentive awards to breeders and to stallion owners during the first part of March, I could not help reflect on how bright the future is for racing in California and in particular for the owners and breeders of Cal-breds. This year we will distribute $7 million to breeders and over $2 million to stallion owners whose progeny have earned these awards by virtue of their "on-track" achievements. This is not some benevolent endeavor by the CTBA, we are merely the conduit by which these awards are distributed to those who have worked hard and produced winning horses, which compete at the highest levels of equine competition. Furthermore, these awards for the past year do not yet reflect the increase in purse levels, which will be achieved in 1999 resulting from the passage of SB 27 nor the increase in owners’ awards negotiated by our mutual friends at Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC).
We now have five stallions, which stand in California for over $10,000 and they are booked full for 1999. These stallions are being bred to many mares, which have been going out of state in past years. This kind of pedigree influence when coupled with the many other fine proven stallions standing in California assures a continuation of successful Cal-bred participants on into the future. The number of graded stakes wins and placings by Cal-breds thus far in 1999 are truly remarkable to say nothing of the achievements in other open stakes and of course the restricted Cal-bred stakes program of over 60 races annually with purses of nearly $6 million. For instance, in 1999 Hollywood Park will offer the Snow Chief Stakes on Kentucky Derby Day (the first Saturday in May) for California-bred three-year-olds.
The California breeders continue to provide over 50 percent of the inventory of horses to the tracks in California and the Cal-breds continue to win over 60 percent of all races and over 50 percent of all open races. Purses are at an all-time high in all categories at each track in California and it appears that the successful results of full card simulcasting thus far in 1999 will cause the purses to go even higher. The NTRA is in its second full year of nationwide promotion and SB 27 is providing in excess of $6 million a year to be used solely in the promotion of racing here in California.
On April 6, your association is going back into the business of selling two-year-olds in training at Hollywood Park. The sale will be limited strictly to Cal-breds and those selected seem to be precocious and ready to bring a prompt return on investment. We haven’t sold two-year-olds in training in a while so we are "testing the water" with this sale but feel very confident there is a need for a sale of Cal-breds "ready to run". We are also currently receiving nominations for our yearling sale at Del Mar in August and the entries thus far are really exciting not only in numbers but quality with strong sire power. As a breeder, don’t you miss out on the opportunity to participate in the rewards, which await the owners/breeders of Cal-breds.
APRIL RACING DATES
April–May 1999 Race Meetings
Los Angeles Turf Club, Santa Anita, Arcadia Dec. 26 - April 19
Pacific Racing Association, Golden Gate Fields, Albany March 31 - June 20
Hollywood Park Inc., Hollywood Park, Inglewood April 22 - July 19
by DEBRA GINSBURG
He has his Thoroughbred horses; she has her prize-winning purebred Havana Brown cats. Sometimes their interests seem worlds apart; other times they are oddly intertwined, naming foals for their kittens and kittens for their stakes-winning horses.
Larry and Sheila Ullmann have been Thoroughbred breeders and members of the CTBA for about 20 years. Residents of the Northern California town of San Ramon, they race their horses under S LU Inc., a reflection of their names. It would have hardly been surprising, though, if they called their horse business Kapalua Stable or even Mango Farm.
Sheila has named her cat business Kapalua Cattery after their vacation villa on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The Havana Brown is a man-made breed that originated in England by crossing a Russian Blue with Seal Point and Chocolate Point Siamese. She had one favorite Havana Brown female named Mango Madness, after the Snapple drink Mango Madness Cocktail. When Mango Madness had her first litter, the kittens were named Forever Mango, Takes Two To Mango and Last Mango In Paris. Sounds familiar now, doesn’t it? At a loss for ideas about some horse names, Larry attached these very same names to three foals by Bold Badgett. They all became stakes performers.
"It just escalated from there," Larry explained. "Sometimes it’s difficult to come up with names that really fit the pedigree, and we seemed to have hit on a word (mango) that is rarely used for Thoroughbreds. Takes Two to Mango is out of a mare named Dynamic At Night, so it kind of fits. Aloha Mangos was named for a painting we saw in a Hawaiian Airlines magazine. It’s mango and Hawaii all rolled into one."
Of course, it kind of helps that an ancestress of the Havana Brown breed was a cat that just happened to be named Baroness Von Ullmann. Larry and Sheila have used various forms of the name for horses like Baroness V Ullmann and Baron Von Ullmann. They also have horses sporting names like Havana Brown and Havana Native and a cat named Baron Von Ullmann.
The Ullmanns’ first experience as horse owners came in 1975 when Larry claimed a five-year-old Dr. Kacy gelding named Tana Kacy. The horse won for his new owners first time out and Larry and Sheila became smitten with the racing bug for life.
"That’s what did it," he said. ‘We were hooked before we knew it."
Tana Kacy ended his racing career at Caliente and never climbed out of the claiming ranks. He proved himself a tough, durable old campaigner, nonetheless, winning or placing in 17 of 68 starts for earnings of $36,466. After campaigning a few claimers, Larry and Sheila did climb the ladder to try their luck with a much better horse. At the Keeneland September yearling sale in 1978, they paid $80,000 for a son of Our Native out of Argentine classic winner Settimana. This was He’s Our Native, who would eventually become the cornerstone of their breeding operation.
What attracted them to He’s Our Native was that he was sired by a high class racehorse who won 14 races and bankrolled nearly $450,000 in earnings. In addition to victories in the grade I Monmouth Invitational Handicap (now the Haskell Invitational) and Flamingo Stakes, Our Native finished third behind Secretariat and Sham in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. Our Native was also proving to be a promising young stallion, and a full sister to Larry and Sheila’s colt, from the horse’s first crop, brought $102,000 at Keeneland in 1977, the highest price of any of the Our Native yearlings sold at auction that year.
He’s Our Native was the highest priced Our Native yearling from the stallion’s second crop. Much further down on the list was a colt out of the Cavan mare Beanery which sold at auction for $26,000 in 1978. That youngster was later gelded and named Rockhill Native. He won the Sapling, Futurity and Cowdin Stakes as a two-year-old in 1979 to earn the Eclipse Award as the champion of his generation. He’s Our Native, on the other hand, was unraced at two and slow to come around at three. He finally broke his maiden by seven lengths at Beulah Park in Ohio as a four-year-old, won two more allowance races at River Downs and Bay Meadows at five and six, and retired to stud at Rancho Del Charro near Pleasanton in 1983 with earnings of $24,820.
Although lightly patronized as a stallion, He’s Our Native did sire five stakes winners, including homebreds Native Wood and Margaret’s Native for the Ullmanns. More important, though, many of his daughters have become fine producers. The stakes performers Forever Mango, Takes Two to Mango, Aloha Mangos, Barrett’s Bullet, Hip Slick and Cool, Pickapeckofpeppers, Rajalaw and Last Mango Inparis are all out of He’s Our Native mares. He’s Our Native was euthanized last December at 21 years of age, after spending several years as a pensioner at Old English Rancho. He is buried at the Sanger ranch.
In the beginning, Larry and Sheila bought and bred mares in partnership with Dr. E. W. Thomas of High Point Farm in Kentucky, He’s Our Native’s breeder. The partnership yielded them Five Percent, a stakes-winning son of Banquet Table with nearly $150,000 in earnings. They also owned He’s Our Native’s full brother, Our Kapalua, but the horse proved a disappointment and they eventually parted company with him.
While the couple initially built their broodmare band with mares plucked out of Kentucky bloodstock sales, their greatest success came with fillies claimed right off the racetrack. That’s how they got Woodlynn, the dam of Native Wood, and Glitter Ice, who produced their blue hen mare Icy Escapade.
Glitter Ice, a striking gray daughter of Icecapade, was picked up at Golden Gate Fields on a $16,000 claim. The Ullmanns sent her down to Caliente, where she won two small stakes and was voted outstanding older filly or mare at the border track in 1984. Icy Escapade was her first foal, the result of a 1984 mating with He’s Our Native. Icy Escapade had two seconds and two thirds from four starts, and retired to the Ullmanns’ broodmare band with earnings of $1,764.
She hit paydirt with her first foal, Barrett’s Bullet, a Bold Badgett colt who ran second in the Fairplex Breeders’ Cup Stakes at two for earnings of $35,938. Later foals included 1996 Bam’s Penny Stakes winner Forever Mango and multiple stakes-placed Last Mango Inparis, both by Bold Badgett. Icy Escapade’s latest runner is Aloha Mangos (also by Bold Badgett), who broke her maiden at Santa Anita in January and then ran a close second to California-bred champion Controlled in the Boo La Boo Stakes on Feb. 20. Aloha Mangos will eventually join her dam in the Ullmanns’ broodmare band when she retires from the track.
For a brief time, Larry and Sheila leased a farm in Sanger and decided to go into the commercial breeding business. During that period, they sold a Bold Badgett filly out of Glitter Ice at Keeneland for $4,000 and saw her earn nearly $84,000 for a different owner.
"Fortunately, that arrangement didn’t last very long," Larry said. "The leasing operation was costing us an arm and a leg, and the promised boarders never materialized. And we found that the prices we were getting for our babies at the sales were not even coming close to what we were paying to produce and raise those foals. It was Buddy Johnston (of Old English Rancho) who advised us to race the foals ourselves–and we did, quite successfully."
Now, most of their mares are boarded at Old English Rancho in Sanger, where they also stand Bold Badgett and State Performer. Bold Badgett, the sire of most of their current homebreds, is an unraced full brother to millionaire and California sire Desert Wine. Bold Badgett was one of three California stallions to make the national list of leading sires by lifetime median earnings per runner in 1998. His half-brother Menifee is a promising contender for the 1999 classics. Larry and Sheila own State Performer, an eight-year-old stakes-winning Seattle Dancer horse, in partnership with Old English Rancho. His first foals arrive this year.
Larry and Sheila still have their good old stakes producers Glitter Ice and Woodlynn. Glitter Ice is back in California for good after spending several years in Kentucky. She is 19 years old now, but has a three-year-old California-bred Corporate Report colt named Diamond Report and last year foaled a gray Bold Badgett filly. She slipped a 1998 breeding to State Performer and will have no foal in 1999. Woodlynn is the dam of Bold Winwood, a 1996 Bold Badgett gelding who broke his maiden second time out and was recently sold to Saudi Arabian interests for $175,000.
After retiring from his partnership in a flexible packaging company five years ago, Larry has found that the horses occupy most of his free time these days. He goes out to nearby Pleasanton Race Track several times a week–sometimes even twice a day–to visit and supervise the young horses in training there. Every few months or so, he drives down to Old English to visit the stallions, mares and babies.
"We may have spin off and try a new avenue of names, though," he said. "Sheila showed a male Havana Brown last year that advanced to number 21 in the country who went by the name of Kapalua Rothschilde–after the fine Cuban cigars."
"Lucky"
Baldwin
A Legend Larger Than Life
by DEBRA GINSBURG
It has been nearly a century since Elias Jackson Baldwin lived and breathed as a successful California businessman, horse breeder and adventurer. He put the San Gabriel Valley communities of Arcadia and Baldwin Park on the map, and other towns and thoroughfares in the area owe their existence to the man known to thousands simply as "Lucky." Had he been alive today, though, Baldwin would have been very proud of the structure that stands across the street from land that was once part of his vast estate.
Modern Santa Anita Park was erected 25 years after Baldwin’s death, but it is a monument to a man who had realized the dream of building and operating his own racetrack. Baldwin’s Santa Anita was built on his ranchland in 1907, just a few blocks east from where the modern version stands today. Not very many people alive today know it was a dream realized in Baldwin’s twilight years. Having recovered from financial ruin that might have defeated any other man, he started all over at age 72 to build what he believed was his crowning achievement.
Baldwin was born in April of 1828 in the village of Hamilton, Ohio. He was the fourth of five children in a family that moved often because of their father’s work as a migrant farmer and part-time preacher. It came as no surprise, therefore, that his formal schooling was very minimal. Instead he acquired a love and knowledge of the land that worked to his advantage during his adult years when he became a business and real estate tycoon. He also developed a thorough knowledge of good horseflesh.
As a youth growing up in South Bend, Indiana, Baldwin built a sizeable business for himself buying and trading fine-blooded carriage horses. He even raced a few against his neighbors and won a $200 wager on the first race he ever entered. Later, during his trek west to California, he invested in horses and mules and sold them to prospectors heading into the gold fields around Sacramento. He made quite a handsome profit from that trade and settled down in San Francisco a wealthy man.
But it was not his success in business that earned Baldwin the nickname Lucky. It was for the uncanny success he had at gambling–be it at cards, on the stock market, in real estate, or with horses. Baldwin always resented the moniker. Years later, when asked how he had gotten the nickname, Baldwin always replied, "That’s a hard one. I’ve always worked hard for everything I’ve gotten in life."
Yet, the legend still persists to this day. In 1867, shortly before he tried his luck in the silver mines of Nevada’s Comstock Lode, Baldwin locked his certificates of seemingly worthless real estate stock in his safe and instructed his broker to sell if they should ever reach $800. But he forgot to leave the key to the safe. Baldwin struck it rich in the Comstock and, when he returned from Virginia City with a new bride two years later, another pleasant surprise awaited him in San Francisco. Unable to open his client’s safe without a key, Baldwin’s broker helplessly watched the stock soar to $12,000, and that was the price at which Baldwin was able to sell. The story of his "luck" spread to the press, where Lucky Baldwin was popularized and soon became larger than life.
While passing through the San Gabriel Valley in 1875 to check out rumors of a possible gold strike in the San Bernardino Mountains, Baldwin had with him his precious tin box full of "mad money" he had accumulated speculating in mining stock. Taking out $200,000 in cash, he bought the 8,000 acre Rancho Santa Anita property that encompassed an area which included present-day Arcadia, Sierra Madre, Monrovia and Duarte. He later foreclosed on 54,000 additional acres in the San Gabriel Valley. It was said to be the largest real estate deal ever recorded in Los Angeles County at that time. Rancho Santa Anita soon extended from the Sierra Madre Mountains in the North to Puente Hills and Whittier in the South and from East Pasadena (near Cal Tech) in the West to the Merced Hills in the East, some 62,000 acres acquired for $6.61 an acre.
Baldwin spared no expense to turn his expansive property into a showplace. Since other wealthy men of his day had their own racing stables and sets of silks, Baldwin also yearned for a string of Thoroughbreds. He believed that here, in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, he could breed and raise horses equal to any in the world. He was right, as usual, and over the next 30 years some of the fastest horses ever seen in America came from the pastures of Santa Anita Rancho.
Unlike other early California breeders, Lucky Baldwin purchased his bloodstock from Kentucky or New York rather than import the finest horses that Europe had to offer. On one particular horse-buying trip to Kentucky, he acquired two stallions, Grinstead and Rutherford, and seven well-bred fillies that became the cornerstone of his breeding operation. Within a dozen years, the broodmare band at Santa Anita Rancho had grown to 54 head. Baldwin’s first crop of Santa Anita homebreds was foaled in 1880, and he was well on his way.
Credited throughout turf history as "the most successful racing man in the country," Baldwin was also one of maybe a handful of owners at the time who actually turned a profit. Racing under his black and red Maltese Cross silks, Baldwin-owned runners averaged $100,000 annually in earnings. He owned and raced four winners of the American Derby when that test for three-year-olds outranked the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes as the classic test for Thoroughbreds. One of his American Derby winners, Emperor of Norfolk, compiled lifetime earnings of $72,400 and the reputation as the greatest California-bred runner prior to Swaps.
But, as the years went by, Baldwin showed to everyone that his much-hated nickname was perhaps a misgift after all. He spent money liberally to develop, improve and advertise a host of projects in his post-Comstock days, and it was his Arcadia ranch that both supported and suffered from his many financial obligations.
According to Sandra Snider in her book, Elias Jackson "Lucky" Baldwin, Baldwin was actually spending borrowed money for the last 30 years of his life. His mortgage on the Arcadia property, effected in 1878 in the aftermath of his $1.5 million stock loss, was never fully paid off. Interest payments and land taxes were regularly met, but all remaining cash was continually put back into other investments. By the late 1880s, most of Baldwin’s wealth was land-based. When real estate values were high, Lucky Baldwin was lucky indeed, but when depression struck, as it did with great regularity in the nineteenth century, he was left land-poor.
On January 24, 1896, "Baldwin’s big mortgage was headlined in the Los Angeles Times:
"The heavy mortgage effected by E. J. Baldwin with the Hibernia Savings and Loan Society was not a renewal of a mortgage, nor was it an original one, but rather a concentration of mortgages heretofore held by individuals at various rates of interest," the article explained. "With the exception of the acreage immediately surrounding the Santa Anita homesite, all of Baldwin’s Los Angeles and San Francisco properties were tendered as security on the blanket mortgage, a $1,625,000 debt bearing 6.5 percent annual interest."
He was dealt the final blow on Nov. 23, 1898, when the Baldwin Hotel and theater complex in San Francisco caught fire in the early morning hours and burned to the ground. The fire practically ruined him, because the losses amounted to somewhere around $2.5 million and his insurance covered only $185,000 of the damage. With the Santa Anita Ranch and his other properties heavily mortgaged, he had nothing left to compensate for the loss of his showplace hotel.
He did what his financial condition required him to do and sold his Market and Powell Street properties in San Francisco to James L. Flood for $1.1 million. The purchase price was $200,000 above the mortgage held on the site and gave Baldwin some much-needed capital to start over again. In the summer of 1900, at the age of 72, he set sail for Nome in hopes of recouping his dwindling fortune in the Alaska gold rush.
Baldwin actually did little prospecting in Alaska and was quite ill when he returned to California the following spring. But the Alaska venture also helped him to clear his slate and turn his attention toward a long-planned project of the heart.
For years, he wanted to build a racetrack on his ranch in Arcadia. With the exception of a few short-lived county fair meetings scattered here and there, horse racing had never really caught on in Southern California during the nineteenth century. Rose Parade chariot racing in Pasadena’s Tournament Park provided Baldwin with an amusing pastime for a few years, but it was no comparison to the thrill of Thoroughbred racing for the veteran horseman. He had even drawn up plans and blueprints for a track on his Santa Anita property, but after many unsuccessful attempts to promote the idea, he put them aside for a later day.
Then Ascot Park came into being in 1903. Built just outside the then-existing Los Angeles city limits at Slauson Boulevard and San Pedro Avenue, Ascot operated for just a little over three seasons and offered top quality racing. Then, in 1907, the Los Angeles City Council incorporated a long stretch of land, which included the racecourse, into its new city limits. Ascot fell victim to a city ordinance that prohibited gambling and was soon forced to close its doors.
Even before city elections took place that year, Baldwin jumped at the chance to have a new racetrack built in his own backyard. On Sept. 30, 1907, the Los Angeles Racing Association was incorporated to serve as the operating club for Santa Anita Park. Leon J. Rose, James C. Holland, Barney Schreiber, Franklin Randle, Dr. J. S. Gardner, and other men of wealth and power contributed the funds and became its board of directors.
Snider writes that the corporation purchased 151 acres of land (located at the site of today’s Arcadia Golf Course on Huntington Drive) from Baldwin at $1,000 an acre and immediately contracted with A. M. Allen, "the hurry-order racetrack builder" for construction of what would be billed as "the newest and most modernly equipped of all racecourses west of the Missouri River." Among its amenities was a fully-equipped hospital for jockeys and other racetrack personnel, an electrically-lighted stable area, and in-house accommodations for stablehands, jockeys and exercise riders.
The Pacific Electric Railroad built a spur track from the Monrovia line to Santa Anita Park, and Southern Pacific, which normally made only occasional stops at Arcadia, arranged to run two excursion trains a day from the Arcadia Depot direct to the rear of the grandstand at Santa Anita. Both railway lines, forecasting peak attendance, offered premium rates on their round-trip specials, and neither lacked for business.
Lucky Baldwin’s $151,000 land sale price was paid to him in 1,000 shares of capital stock in the Los Angeles Racing Association, making him the largest single stockholder, plus a bank note for $51,000 in cash. Rose and James Holland advanced the operating funds necessary to keep the corporation afloat, but it was Baldwin, as major stockholder, who was elected honorary president of the Los Angeles Racing Association, and it was he who presided over opening day ceremonies.
Santa Anita Park opened for the first time on Dec. 7, 1907, drawing to it with its lure of rich purses, most of the top horses, trainers and stables in the country. That afternoon, 80-year-old Baldwin may have felt a tinge of mortality when he came out to survey his racing empire and to address the packed stands.
"I desire no other monument," he said when the first day’s races at his new track had been run. "This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done and I am satisfied."
Santa Anita operated for just two seasons, but those meetings were an unqualified success and revolutionized the concept of winter racing in the West. Lucky Baldwin died on March 1, 1909, a happy and wealthy man once again.
The puritanical element in Los Angeles saw Baldwin’s death a convenient excuse to pass some anti-gambling legislation in the city. On April 17, 1909, the gates slammed shut on Santa Anita Park. A wave of anti-gambling sentiment was spreading its influence over the country then, and put a stop to racing in all states, except Kentucky and New York. California was the last to be hit by this epidemic–and the last to recover. Horse racing was absent from the Golden State for 23 years!
Racing did not make a reappearance in Southern California until December, 1934. Several months earlier, Dr. Charles H. Strub, a dentist from San Francisco, formed the Los Angeles Turf Club, and approached Baldwin’s daughter Anita to buy some of her land for a new racetrack in Arcadia. Ground was broken in 1933, and a modern Santa Anita Park opened for its inaugural meeting on December 25, 1934.
The operation was first class from the very start. Not only did Dr. Strub offer high purses to lure the best horses in the country, but he quickly established an identity for the new track by featuring a championship race. From its inception, the Santa Anita Handicap was a $100,000 race–a record at that time–and its inaugural running was won by Azucar over a 20-horse field that included Equipoise, Twenty Grand and Time Supply. Today, the Big ‘Cap sports a $1 million guaranteed purse and has become synonymous with class.
The new track was built directly across the street from Baldwin’s old Arcadia ranch–or what was left of it. Only 127 acres of the huge estate survived the lure of twentieth century subdivision, but it is the heart of the ranch, the Queen Anne Cottage at the lake, which has been preserved within the boundaries of the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum. The horses and livestock are gone, but the gravesite of Baldwin’s four American Derby winners–Emperor of Norfolk, Volante, Silver Cloud, and Rey El Santa Anita–was transferred to the racetrack and now graces the entrance to the beautiful paddock gardens at Santa Anita and rests under a huge Maltese Cross. The present-day Santa Anita has been a winter racing paradise for 64 years now and serves as a living testimony to this early California breeder and pioneer. Lucky Baldwin’s dream does live on.
by HEATHER THOMAS
Cancer occurs occasionally in horses, and is defined as an unusual growth of cells that multiply without any particular arrangement or control. The growth, or tumor, is classified as either malignant (spreading) or benign. The latter grows slowly and does not spread to other pats of the body. Malignant growths multiply more rapidly and eventually spread, traveling to other sites by infiltrating the neighboring tissues or getting into the bloodstream or lymph system and migrating.
"The incidence of ovarian tumors is relatively common in mares, compared with other domestic animals. The two most common tumors are granulosa-thecal cell tumors and teratomas, both of which are usually benign. Teratomas arise from reproductive cells (an egg in the ovary) and are usually made up of epithelial tissue (membrane or skin–the tissue that provides a lining for internal or external surfaces of the body). These strange growths may also contain cartilage, skin, bone, hair, nerves, or even teeth. They generally do not interfere with the fertility of the mare, since the other ovary functions normally, and are most often discovered during a routine rectal palpation. Occasionally they become quite large and interfere with the workings of other organs.
GRANULOSA CELL TUMOR: Granulosa cell tumors are more common. This type is generally large, producing steroids affecting the mare’s behavior and fertility. It does not generally become malignant, but can cause serious problems. These tumors can develop in mares of any age. Occasionally a tumor will rupture, spreading cancerous cells that can then travel to other parts of the body.
The granulosa cell is part of the ovary, and normally produces the female hormone estrogen, which is necessary for the mare to come into heat and conceive. If this cell becomes cancerous, it changes the mare’s hormone balance, causing a personality change. She may become irritable or aggressive and vicious. She may show stallion-like behavior around other mares, especially when they are in heat. Some affected mares will tease and mount other mares.
As the tumor grows and the ovary becomes enlarged, the mare will not come into proper heat. Clinical signs in mares with granulosa cell tumor are varied. Some show no signs of estrus, others will show frequent or very irregular estrus cycles, or continuous signs of heat. The most common history is a barren, anestrus mare (never coming into heat). The mare cannot become pregnant, since the tumor interferes with her normal hormone cycle. Mares with granulosa cell tumors are almost always infertile because as the tumor grows, the other ovary (the normal one) then becomes small and inactive; follicle development ceases due to the hormone imbalance caused by the cancerous ovary.
DIAGNOSIS: A tentative diagnosis of granulosa cell tumor can be made by a veterinarian, based on clinical signs and rectal palpation or ultrasound. The affected ovary is generally a lot larger than the unaffected ovary. The size of the cancerous one will depend on the length of time the tumor has been growing; some tumors become as large as a basketball and weigh several pounds. Diagnosis can usually be confirmed by a combination of palpation, ultrasound and hormone analysis of blood samples. The tumor (as felt by palpation) may have a smooth surface, a knobby hard surface, or sometimes a soft surface with obvious follicular development. The other ovary is generally small and inactive. Ultrasound examination can help differentiate between a tumor and other large masses, such as an abnormal follicle or an ovary that is in a transitional period with multiple, non-dominant follicles.
Dr. Patrick McCue, Veterinary Department of Reproduction, University of California, Davis, conducted a study of ovarian tumors in mares and presented his results at the 1992 meeting of the American Association of Equine Practitioners. He had determined that the presence of granulosa cell tumors can be detected about 90 percent of the time by measuring concentrations of the hormone inhibin in the mare’s blood.
Inhibin is normally produced by the granulosa cell in the ovaries, and its function is to regulate the secretion of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) from the pituitary. FSH is one of the necessary hormones in the mare’s heat cycle and reproductive process. Mares with granulosa cell tumors have high levels of inhibin and low levels of FSH. The decreased levels of FSH may be responsible for the decreased activity of the follicles in the opposite ovary. When using the hormone test for an aid in diagnosis, the measurement of inhibin levels can also help the veterinarian distinguish between the existence of granulosa cell tumor and ovarian hematoma–another cause of ovarian enlargement in mares, but one which is associated with low levels of inhibin.
Dr. McCue’s report showed that the concentration of testosterone (a hormone that is also out of balance in many cases of granulosa cell tumor, and one which is also used to treat this condition) as elevated in only 54 percent of the mares in his study. He concluded that inhibin is therefore a more sensitive "marker" for the presence of a granulosa cell tumor than is checking testosterone levels.
Granulosa cell tumor can occasionally cause death of the mare. Normally each ovary is suspended from the roof of the abdominal cavity, but an ovary that is enveloped in a growing tumor can sometimes become so heavy that it pulls down its attachment and ruptures a blood vessel, causing fatal internal bleeding. This can be prevented if a problem is suspected and dealt with before the tumor grows this large and heavy.
TREATMENT: Surgical removal of tumor and ovary is usually the only effective treatment. The surgery can sometimes be performed with the mare standing, using sedation and local anesthetic. In these cases the tumor is removed vaginally or through a flank incision. But this technique can only be used if the tumor is small. A large tumor requires that the mare be completely anesthetized, using a lower abdominal incision for removal of the tumor.
Most mares will return to normal reproductive ability within two to 16 months after surgery. Removal of the ovary will not interfere with a mare’s reproduction; she can function quite well with one healthy ovary, and will start cycling again if the remaining ovary is normal. The abnormal behavior will also cease. Normal follicular activity in the remaining ovary will usually resume within about six to eight months.
If a mare ever shows dramatic change in behavior, granulosa cell tumor should be suspected as a possibility, and the mare’s ovaries should be checked by a veterinarian.