Donamire Farm’s quality-first breeding pays off with three Derby day runners

Donamire Farm arrived at Churchill Downs with the kind of Derby-week presence that money alone cannot buy: three runners on the Saturday card, including Chief Wallabee in the Kentucky Derby and Crude Velocity and Trouble Calling in the GII Pat Day Mile. For a Lexington operation built on patience and breeding judgment, it was a rare public reward for work that usually happens far from the spotlight.

The farm, founded by Don and Mira Ball in the late 1960s, has long leaned into quality over quantity, a philosophy that has continued under Mira Ball, Mike Ball and Katherine Ball after Don Ball’s death in 2018. Guy Mogge, who manages the operation and also breeds from within it, has been central to that approach. In an industry where scale often wins the headlines, Donamire’s Derby-day lineup showed what a smaller, more selective program can still produce when placement and development are handled with care.

Chief Wallabee was the headline horse, and he came into Derby week with the kind of form that kept him on the bubble until the final days. He had earned 50 qualifying points and sat 18th on the Kentucky Derby leaderboard in mid-April, then sharpened further with a five-furlong move in 1:00 on April 20 with Junior Alvarado aboard while wearing blinkers for the second time. Churchill Downs’ April 29 update said he had backtracked to the finish line and then galloped 1 1/2 miles, a last tune-up before the biggest start of his career. Owned by Michael and Katherine Ball and trained by Bill Mott, Chief Wallabee gave Donamire its rarest stage, the Derby itself.

The farm’s reach did not stop there. Crude Velocity, by Beau Liam out of Sweetn Sour Kitty, entered Derby Day undefeated in two starts with career earnings of $84,000. Trouble Calling brought the most seasoning to the trio, with six career starts, three wins in 2026 and earnings of $326,039. He had already stamped himself with a stakes victory in the Lafayette Stakes at Keeneland, then returned to Churchill Downs for the Pat Day Mile, a race for 3-year-olds that offered Donamire a second high-profile shot on the card.

The broader family backdrop made the moment even sharper. Ball family coverage has noted that Chief Wallabee was the family’s second Kentucky Derby horse in 55 years, a reminder of how seldom a program like this gets to stand in the center of the sport’s grandest day. For Donamire, Derby week was not a fluke or a marketing push. It was the visible return on a long, disciplined model that chose careful breeding and patient hands over commercial volume, and then watched three colts carry that work onto the Churchill Downs stage at once.