PrintWith tongue firmly in cheek, the author describes the perils of selling a homebred horse.
So, you want to breed event horses and sell them? It sure seems like a promising and profitable goal, but the reality is sometimes much different. Here’s how to go about it.
Start off in the usual way of selecting a mare and stallion of merit and breeding them. Wait a year for the foal to arrive, not forgetting to pay lots of vet bills and to feed, house, and pasture the mare until she delivers. Write down all of your expenses to date.
Because the foal will not sell, keep it another year, or two, or three, until you can break it and sell it as greenbroke. Keep track of all these expenses as well.
The average agreed-upon fee to keep a horse alive per year is between $5,000 and $6,000. Use $5,000, as it rounds out nicely. Bear in mind you have thus far put $15,000 into your 3-year-old, plus the year in the mare, plus the stud fee.
At this point, it’s a good idea to toss out the expense sheet, as you’ll never recoup the bottom line to date, and having all that money detailed in black and white will just anger you sometime in the future.
Is Anyone Out There?
A greenbroke horse is very hard to sell, as everyone wants a “packer.” An off-the-track-Thoroughbred will cost between nothing and $5,000, and is roughly at the same stage as your horse, only physically and mentally banged up.
Whoever can ride “greenbroke,” however, knows how to hang on and is likely to have learned that the hard way (probably from lack of lessons on suitable packers) for monetary reasons, and their budget will aim for the OTTB.
So, you put in more time and more money to transition your sales prospect from “greenbroke” to merely “green.” The 4-, 5- and 6-year-old years are full of promise as the horse is now able to compete!
But keep in mind that he’ll need shoes, entry fees, and stabling. You will need to pay for fuel for the truck, hotels, meals and days off to compete.
Meanwhile, you have been moving the prospect up the levels to the point where he’ll certainly appeal to some talented young rider. The trouble is that the TALENTED young riders have—you guessed it—gone to get a $5,000 OTTB, leaving the financially gifted young riders a crack at your horse, who is still not a packer.
Show your horse, who is in his first year of competing at preliminary level, to at least a dozen potential buyers, and have him go well for all of them. For a multitude of reasons (another chapter in itself) they will not call back, which is fine (mentally, not financially) because most of them don’t need a $35,000 horse; they need a $1,000 horse and $34,000 worth of lessons.
It’s Murphy’s Law
Continue to enter events to the tune of $500 per (see previous paragraph outlining expenses), just to keep his name out there and get results, as well as risking bad goes and injury. Eventually someone will want a second look.
If someone is interested in your horse, and scheduling the first visit went smoothly, it is a guarantee that the second one will not. Coordinating the parent with the child (in school) with the coach, and lastly, with your plans, is not possible. Continue to feed and compete and shoe the horse for another two or three weeks until the planets align.
