BY SARAH WELK BAYNUM
Janice Woods, a small Thoroughbred breeder and owner in the name of her Woods Thoroughbreds in Ocala, Fla., had her introduction to the Thoroughbred business come quite by chance.
“It was purely by accident that I’m in this business,” Woods said. “I was involved with motorcycle racing, and that’s where I met Bobby Jones. He has been my mentor and my advisor ever since. Without him, I wouldn’t have known where to begin getting into the horse business. After a while of visiting his farm, I fell in love with the mares and the babies. He called me one day saying he had a really nice mare that was going through the OBS sale back in 2011, and I bought her.”
After that, Woods said that one broodmare quickly led to another.
“I bought another broodmare through Bobby Jones and then started breeding. That has pretty much been my business model all the way through—breeding and having a couple go to the racetrack. It was like some type of disease—I just kept buying mares. Now, I have four broodmares and they’re all in foal and my three babies from this year are out here too,” Woods said.
So far, all of her foals have broken their maidens, and some have even started winning a few races. While Woods prefers the breeding part of the business versus the racing aspect, she does keep a few and sends them to the track.
“For me and my business, I prefer breeding and raising the weanlings up. Then, I sell them as yearlings. When it comes to sending them to the races, it can be really make or break financially. So I don’t do it a lot.
“Sometimes, we will have a yearling that didn’t sell and then we have them trained and race them.”
Currently, Woods has 2-year-old Why Not Him with trainer Kenneth Black in Kentucky. By Union Rags out of Allusion, by Street Cry (Ire), Why Not Him has one race, finishing fifth after a slow start in a mile-and-a-sixteenth maiden special weight won by Major Dax at Keeneland on Oct. 11.
“He is a really nice colt,” Woods said of Why Not Him. “He’s actually beginning his journey in the racing world at Keeneland right now, in fact. I’m hoping for the best for him.”
All of Woods horses are at her Ocala farm. At the beginning of her racehorse journey, Woods says she quickly realized how the racehorse ownership “game” works.
“It’s kind of a comical story, and it shows how naive I was then. Not long after I bought my first mare, Bobby Jones came to me with a partnership idea. I went into partnership on this nice Old Fashioned. I was such a rookie, and this horse did well over what I invested in him. We probably had him a month before we put him in a sale, and the profit was fantastic. I thought, this is so easy. I don’t know why everybody doesn’t do this—it’s just money in the bank. I had a glorious time and I even bought a new car. Well, that happened only the one time, and I learned quickly that business will have its ups and downs.” says Woods.
Other than that first successful partnership, the foals from her small breeding operation have been the most special.
“My first broodmare was very special to me, and the first baby she had was too. But each foal that’s born on my farm is still special.” Woods said.
Woods moved to Ocala from Orlando eight years ago and hasn’t looked back.
“I think Florida is the ideal place for breeding because the grass is better and you don’t have the terrible winters. When our babies are born here, they’re usually out in the paddocks with their mamas during the day, which I think is so much better for them. That way, they don’t have bacteria and everything else that can be in the stalls. I think just the climate alone is a vast improvement over anywhere else. I know everybody talks about the Kentucky bluegrass, but the winters are terrible. And they’re having to keep new babies in stalls over extended periods of time. It really seems to be a detriment to the horse, because here, within the day, they’re out in the fresh air,” Woods said.