About Breednet

Breednet

Overview

Breednet is an Australian thoroughbred breeding news and results website, published at breednet.com.au, that has served the Australasian bloodstock industry since 2005. Sydney-based and independently run, it combines daily breeding journalism with a deep statistical toolkit: race results reported with full pedigree detail, stallion directories, sire premiership tables, a sales results database and a hypothetical mating service for breeders planning matings.

The site is edited by Tara Madgwick, whose name has been synonymous with the service for most of its life; industry participants routinely describe Breednet as her website, and syndication businesses and stud farms treat her daily output as a first draft of the Australian breeding record. Where its two Sydney trade rivals in this batch of profiles are daily email editions built around a newsletter, Breednet is a website first — a continuously updated news and data service that breeders, stud farms, agents and sales companies check through the day as results come in from race meetings across Australia and New Zealand.

Breednet is free to read. Its commercial model rests on advertising and on paid "premium stallion" listings, under which stud farms present their stallions with enhanced profiles, progeny results and media, alongside the site's hypothetical mating tool that lets breeders test their mares against those stallions.

History

By the site's own account, Breednet started in 2005. The date was stated plainly in a February 2019 article marking the death of Widden Stud's Golden Slipper-winning sire Sebring, when the site wrote that "in the history of Breednet, which started in 2005, we have never had such a reaction to the passing of a sire" — an indication of how central the service had already become to the daily conversation of the Australian breeding industry fourteen years in.

The service grew out of the first generation of Australian racing websites, when pedigree and results information that had previously been locked in printed stud books and form guides began moving online. Breednet built its reputation on speed and pedigree depth: winners were reported not as bare results but with their breeding, their sales history — vendor, buyer and price where a horse had passed through a sale ring — and the implications for their sire and family. Editor Tara Madgwick became the public face of the service; a 2012 Dynamic Syndications tribute described her as "without peer as the Media Queen of the Australian Breeding Industry" and Breednet as "the premier source of industry information", language that reflected the standing the site had achieved among commercial breeders by the early 2010s.

Through the 2010s Breednet chronicled the era of the great Australian sires — the rise of Snitzel, I Am Invincible and Zoustar, the final seasons of Redoute's Choice and Encosta de Lago, and the shuttle-stallion traffic between hemispheres. Its archive records the industry's rhythms in fine grain: daily lists of stallions with winners throughout Australasia, first-season sire watches, juvenile trial reports and sale-by-sale coverage of the Inglis and Magic Millions calendars. In 2025 and 2026 the site carried the news of the passing of champion sire Snitzel, whose career at Arrowfield Stud from 2006 almost exactly spanned Breednet's own history, and in 2026 it was reporting a redesigned homepage, a 2026 foal gallery and the Tara Talks Racing podcast among its offerings.

Content and Coverage

Breednet's daily output is anchored in results. Every day of the Australian racing calendar, the site publishes winner reports from metropolitan and provincial meetings, each written up with the horse's pedigree, its trainer and jockey, and its sales history where applicable, together with a running list of the stallions that sired winners throughout Australasia that day. Stakes races receive extended treatment — previews built on pedigree angles before the race and detailed reports afterwards, such as its coverage of the 2026 Golden Rose barrier draw, the Group III Blue Sapphire Stakes at Caulfield and the Group III St Leger Stakes at Randwick during the 2026 spring carnival.

Around the results core sits a full breeding news service: stallion announcements and service fee movements, stud farm news, sale previews and reports from the Inglis, Magic Millions and New Zealand Bloodstock calendars, international breeding news affecting Australasian pedigrees, and obituaries and tributes for significant horses and people. Regular features include Juvenile Trial Watch, which reports barrier trial performances by unraced two-year-olds at Sydney and provincial tracks, pedigree update pieces tracking the families of current stallions, and seasonal series on first-season and second-season sires.

The data services are as much a part of the editorial product as the journalism. Breednet maintains profiles for Australasian stallions, premiership-style tables ranking sires by runners, winners, wins and earnings, a sales search covering sales history and relations entered in upcoming sales, and the hypothetical mating tool for premium stallions, which lets a breeder model the pedigree of a proposed mating. A foal gallery, to which stud farms submit photographs of each season's newborn foals, has become a seasonal fixture — the 2026 gallery was receiving entries dated October 2026 when this profile was prepared.

Audience and Reach

Breednet's audience is the Australian and New Zealand thoroughbred breeding industry: commercial and hobby breeders, stud farms and stallion owners, bloodstock agents, trainers who follow pedigrees, pinhookers and yearling buyers, and the sales companies whose catalogues its data supports. Its results-with-pedigree format is used as a working tool during sales season, when buyers research the families of catalogued lots, and its sire tables are a standard reference for stallion performance through the season.

The publisher does not release an audited traffic figure, and no audience number is asserted here. The clearest evidence of reach is behavioural and reputational: stud farms pay for premium stallion presentation on the site, sales-related businesses quote its editor's analysis, and third-party profiles of Madgwick describe the site in terms such as "the premier source of industry information" for Australian breeding. Its editor's byline also appears beyond the site, with Madgwick contributing pedigree analysis to national sporting media — for example, Sporting News engaged her to identify the horses bred to run the 2500-metre trip in its 2016 VRC Crown Oaks pedigree form guide — and her work is tracked by journalist databases such as Muck Rack, which lists her as editor of breednet.com.au.

Digital Presence

Breednet operates from a single domain, breednet.com.au, and publishes continuously rather than in editions: news and results appear through the day as meetings unfold, with the breeding news index showing items dated the day of checking, Saturday 17 October 2026 — including Randwick's King Charles III Stakes day and the Caulfield Cup meeting — in the week this profile was prepared. The site was crawled by search engines within hours of that date, and its 2026 foal gallery carried stud submissions dated 10–11 October 2026.

The homepage combines the news feed with the data services: stallion search, results, sales search, sire tables and the hypothetical mating feature sit alongside the day's headlines, and a banner inviting reader feedback on a "new homepage" marks a recent redesign of the site's front end. Premium stallion pages carry multimedia presentation for subscribing studs, and the Tara Talks Racing podcast extends the brand into audio, with episodes built around major races such as the Golden Rose. The site maintains the deep archive accumulated since 2005, with historical news and results searchable back through its earlier designs.

Ownership and Organisation

Breednet is an independent, editor-led publication. It is not part of a media group, a sales company or an industry body, and it should not be confused with the two other Sydney bloodstock titles profiled in this series: ANZ Bloodstock News, a daily newsletter title acquired by its editor-owner Charmein Phelan from Britain's Spotlight Sports Group in 2026, and TTR AusNZ, the daily edition founded by Gary King and Vicky Leonard. Breednet's identity is distinct — a results and data service built around one editor's byline.

Tara Madgwick is the editor and the dominant editorial voice; third-party profiles describe the site as hers, and her analysis is the product subscribers and advertisers buy into. The operation is deliberately lean: the journalism, results processing and stallion data are produced by a small team around the editor, supported by the site's automated results and pedigree systems and by contributions and photography supplied by studs and industry participants. Commercially, revenue comes from advertising and from the premium stallion programme under which stud farms pay for enhanced presentation of their stallions, including placement in the hypothetical mating service.

Contact and Availability

Breednet is published online at breednet.com.au and is available free of charge, with no subscription required to read its news, results and sire tables. The premium stallion listings and hypothetical mating service are commercial features presented within the site. The service is based in Sydney, New South Wales, and covers racing and breeding across Australia and New Zealand daily, including weekends and public holidays when racing is held. Editorial enquiries are directed to editor Tara Madgwick through the site; stud farms and advertisers deal with the site directly over premium stallion listings and advertising placements. No public business email field is recorded for this listing.