Cairo Prince Yearling a Legacy for Highclere Farm

At the 1992 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Mixed Sale, Jeffry Morris purchased a $21,000 mare from Hillbrook Farm on behalf of his son, Carson Morris. 

Named Raise a Holme, the winning daughter of Marshua's Dancer earned close to $175,000 in 50 starts and, at the time of her sale, was 15 and already the dam of two stakes winners. With that record in mind, Morris bought the mare in the hopes that she would continue to be successful as a producer. In turn, any money earned for her progeny could be put toward savings to provide Carson with a college education. 

"What my father did was, when we all got to middle school, he bought each of us a mare," consignor Stuart Morris said. "All the income from that mare, all the profit in terms of foals sold, went into a college fund for us. My youngest brother Carson, that's who he bought that mare for. All the income that mare produced paid for my brother's tuition in college."

Raise a Holme produced seven more foals, each subsequently sent through the sales ring with varied success except for one, a filly named Lapuma. Unsold in two trips to auction, Lapuma went into training with Alton Quanbeck, under whom she won five of 23 starts for earnings of $269,869. 

Lapuma produced her first foal in 2004, a mare by Elusive Quality named Lady Lapuma who—like her dam—remained with the Morris Farm at Highclere. Finally finding the success that eluded her at auction as a juvenile, Lapuma was eventually sold to Katsumi Yoshida for $600,000 in 2006 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky November Fall Mixed Sale. 

Lightly raced at 3, Lady Lapuma proved to be another top-quality producer for Morris. She is now the dam of eight foals, and her latest, a colt by Cairo Prince , hit six figures Jan. 8 at the Keeneland January Horses of All Ages Sale when he was knocked down to BBN Bloodstock for $230,000.

"I foaled the second dam and the current dam, and my father's had the family and been working on that project for 30 years," Morris said. "It's been a very good family for him and he's had a lot of success with it, and had a lot of good runners out of it—and we anticipate this colt to be the next one.

"It's been a good family for my family and it was very rewarding to have a horse that we've been making the pedigree with him for 30 years be received that way. He's always been a very nice horse since he was born at my dad's farm at Highclere. I'm sure the folks that bought him today are going to have an even better horse by the end of the year."

Consigned by Morris as Hip 404 to the January sale, the colt brought the third-highest price paid for a short yearling during the Tuesday session. Lady Lapuma's progeny have brought a total of $412,000 for Highclere at public auction. 

Morris said his father continues to nurture the pedigree he has built over the last three decades. And although Morris no longer has the mare Jeffry purchased for Stuart, they do own the female family of the mare Satin Promise, who was purchased for his other brother, Jackson. 

"My dad's been doing this for a long, long time and he probably has four or five pedigrees out there that he's been developing and that we have daughters of," Stuart said. "It's been a very rewarding. It's a 30-year process and my father is out there with 14 mares of his own and two guys that work for him and he does it all himself. So for my dad it's even more rewarding because he does it all himself. He's up every morning at 5:00 a.m. feeding horses and still going at the age of 70."