Economy

[angelsdream]

Thought Id check in with everyone and see how they are doing with this economy. I hear stories everyday around here. I thought it was picking up some but it doesn't seem so. Shane bought a finished cutting horse ( sad I couldnt get him switched to a kiger) but the guy has some amazingly bred horses and he's giving some of them away just to make it thru winter he said. I see that everywhere with the horse's - no one can sell what they have and they are giving them away. And you do have people out there buying but they don't want to pay anything for them because they know how the horse market is right now. Sad Sad Sad - I think there is still a market for riding horse's - but they have to be pretty broke and calm - the babies and yearlings or non started horse's arent selling as good. Those are the ones people are giving away. I do hope it picks up.

[lilnagy]

It is certainly a challenge here! We have one left for sale, who is three, and I wouldn't necessarily feel I had to get her started under saddle, but I do this year, hoping it will help her sell. So we are riding lightly, and she is super under saddle, as I knew she would be. But it takes time I didn't think I would be spending on this horse, and money thorugh another winter to feed her. . And I keep seeing horses for sale that I would love to have , for almost nothing. Currently there is a grulla pinto mustang mare, over 16 hands, on Portland's craisglist,, for $500. sigh.

[fantasykiger]

It is pretty much the same here, I can't seem to sell what I got for any semblance of the horses true value but drop the price way down or mention your giving them away and folks come from all around. I only know this from my experiences with friends giving away horses or getting horses for free. Mind you everyone of those horses had some issue, though in a differant market would have had value.
Yet, this is cause for worry on my part regarding my horses. As I see folks picking up these freebies because they have never been able to afford to buy a horse but always wanted one. I hate to be one to squish the dream of horse ownership, but if you can't afford to purchase a horse for even a couple hundred bucks. How can you ever afford to maintain one. So I keep my prices at a point where you have to be able to afford to buy, in hopes I only get calls from those who can afford to care for them as well.
I just had a friend sell a mini with cart after only 1 day advertising for a nice price, enough to turn right around and by a kid broke show pony that both rides and drives, plus some extra for tack. As well as matching pink helmet and cowboy boots for her little daughter. That show pony may have cost more in a differant market, but she got a great deal.

I myself and my band of ladies are hanging in there. It got scary last winter, but Spring came and so did work. We were one of the lucky ones our mortgage company worked with us and we are back on top of the farm payments. The horses are all well and some were sold with only one left to go. Our business has lots of work ahead, but I am not sure I am ready to relax yet. Winter is on it's way, I want to be prepared this time.

[Michelle Clarke]

Up and down here in Central Texas....horse market pretty much way down. It seemed to be picking up, but seems to be dropping again with no rain. My husband has taken some of his F1 Braford cows to the market, plus two bulls - an angus and a wajou (sp?). He is keeping most of his braford/angus crosses along with his few purebred wajous (the kobi beef cows) for his customers who order the natural beef. The cattle auction usually has 500 head go through on wednesdays - last week they had almost 1,000 and today they said they were expecting over 1,500.

Since we only had one colt this year, I have to actually BUY another one for Fabio to have a boy-buddy, so I am off to the auction saturday. I am dreading going. I have had to put them off limits for the past few years because I always come home with a trailer full of horses and that is probably not the smartest thing to do right now. I am leaving my checkbook home and only taking a couple hundred dollars for a colt. Usually they send in the mare and foal, sell them seperate and then instant weaning. Breaks your heart. There is a nice Oldenburg weanling filly for sale out here for only $1,500.00 - the breeding fee on the stallion had to be way more than that. If it were a colt I would snatch it up at that price.

I found a nice looking colt on CL the other day. Went to see him and it was like I was in someone elses' nightmare. The house looked abandoned (boarded up windows and trash everywhere), but no, that is where they lived. Beer cans and cig butts all over the place. I dreaded seeing the horses. The colt was in with another colt and the stallion in a small dirt (well, manure) area; he was pretty thin but very sweet. Lame on one leg, but not tame enough for me to look at his overgrown feet or run my hands down his legs. She also wanted to sell the mare (250 bucks); the mare was out in a corn field - is all she had to eat was brown corn stalks; and she was just a bag of bones. Sweet as could be - I could not look the mare in the eye. I wanted to pack them both up...I made her an offer, but she wanted the full amount in cash. I had to leave and not look back. I called the next day and made her another offer, but she said her boyfriend did not want to come off the price. So there you go. I figured if I did not find anything at the auction, I might give her another call and see if I could talk some sense into her. There was not a hay bale around and some crappy looking pellets kept in a tupperware box was what they got to eat. My heart aches.

We have no hay around here already and round bales will get up over $120 real quick (we do about 15 per month); not to mention the square bales (average 200/month). Hopefully oil does not go up so grain does not sky rocket....

Lots of free horses and ones going under saddle for 500 bucks...usually I have half my yearlings sold by now, but none so far this year. Lots of interest, but no commitments. I bred Sycha, Morgan, Leza and Nesa only. Sycha is on her second covering - she can be hard to keep in foal and if she shows heat again, I won't rebred her anyway. She is on 21 days right now and so far so good, but she has carried into her second trimester and still lost them, so who knows. Someone said the other day it is because she only keeps the best ones...! I am still not sure if Leza took, she is shy with her heat cycles and I usually don't do ultrasounds on the wild ones because it seems to upset them and they abosorb afterwards sometimes. So, we'll just have to wait and see. Morgan passed the 21 day mark and is still giving Charro dirty looks when I try to tease her, so I am betting she is a done deal. Nesa is not at the 18 day mark yet, so we are still waiting to see on her. I won't cover any of the mares again if they did not take, so what we got is what we got.

Just hoping for the best and planning for the worst like most folks are.

[angelsdream]

Yes right now is the perfect time to buy if you had the money and land to put them on,. You can get some really nice horses for cheap right now. But theres no telling when the market will pick back up. It has to eventually, but who knows if it will 1, 2 or 3 years. I think more people bred this year tho - our vet said she had a lot of breedings during breeding season, alot more than last year. I just hate see'ing all those horses's out there that people have and cant feed or dont want. Its really sad - I guess it's a good thing I can't get any more horses or I'd have all those. We just found out today that the mare shane bought is preg. YIKES. When we bought her we didn't know she had been exposed to there stallion until a few days after - She is very big but she had been out in the pasture and we thought it was just a grass gut - NOPE. SHe is 8 months along - But the mare is bred amazingly and the sire to the foal is as well, but now days dont mean too much - alot of people dont want babies to raise...so we'll see. We'll keep it until the right home comes along.

This same guy is trying to give us a 3 year old gelding as well. He's out of genuin doc, not sure if you guys know who that is but he's the sire to Shining Spark...big time stallion. He just wants to get rid of some and that was part of the package he offered with that mare. We havent taken him yet, not sure what we want to do....but now since she's preg, we may take him and start him and go to sortings and pennings on him and sell him next spring when he can start riding this mare again. Cause he wont have a cow horse now that she's preg and due soon.

I dont think anyone around here as ever seen the horse industry this bad. I hear a lot of old guys talking and they said its never been this bad of course theres not been this many horses out there either. The breeding has gotten out of control, in all breeds. People aren't breeding with the intention to keep if they cant sell it, they are only breeding for the money and dont care about the end result. Ok - dont get me started on this subject

I have also heard from a lot of boarding facilities that the people are just leaving there horse there and not paying the board anymore and never coming back. so the farm is left with there horse .

[sbutter]

It has definitely effected us, but not as bad as other TB farms. Thankfully all the boarders that we have at our place want to keep there horses and they aren't horse poor. Over the years we would give our clients advice on whether they should breed there mares or not. We will even give advice to people that call in to see if they can bored at are place. They always end up saying that they have a mare that they got off the track and they used to own her mother...99% of the time we would tell them just to find the mare a nice home a don't try to squeeze money out by breeding her, because inevitably they would lose money. So, it may have cut our throats at the time,but ultimately was a good choice, because all of our clients have horses that they are attached too.

On some of the bigger TB farms, they did not have the same luck. Most of them just let their client do whatever they wanted to do and then they got horse poor. The horses that the clients were breeding weren't worth anything as far as money goes and since the client could no longer pay for them, they just leave them at the farm with a huge bill that will never get paid.

We haven't bought any TB mares for us, since we don't have the kind of money to buy a really nice mare. Another problem is trying to figure out who to breed to in California. Stud fees are down, but there are very few TB stallions we would breed to in California and we aren't too excited about those. There are some really good ones back in Kentucky, but keeping a horse back there is extremely expensive. Everything has to be live cover, so we are kind of between a rock and a hard place as far as that goes. On the up side, the clients that we have bought mares for are doing really well! One of the mares we bought for them cost 65K and the foal that she was caring may end up being a real high seller! She is back in Kentucky and the inspector came out to see the weanling and he said that it should bring yearling prices. Just a couple weeks later, there was a sale with a weanling filly that is by the same sire and had about the same weight of pedigree. That filly sold for 250k! Needless to say, we are very excited for him. So it is kind of bittersweet for us, because all the horses we have been buying for our clients are doing really well, but we just don't have that kind of money to swing it on our own. We are hoping to find someone or a group of people that are all interested in the same type of mare we like and do some kind of partnership. It just gets kind of tricky when there are multiple owners all with different ideas on who to breed to.

[mustangdara]

We have done well through this time (knock on wood)my hubby got layed of 1 week before x- mas but i was able to call my old vet clinic and get my job back right away, so i have been pluging away at work while my husband is going back to school....i do miss being home with my two boys.
I am still waiting for the perfect horse to be given to my family, i always here of all these horses being given away....some not broke and some REALLY broke.I just want another good family horse. I see a trio of horses on my way to work getting thiner and thiner every day, they get fed the yellowest corse bales of hay i have ever seen and nothing in the really small pasture....sad.
I dont understand people like Michelle was talking about...that you know dont have the money to care for their horse they have but they want you to pay WAY too much for them. i just dont get it!

[DianneC]

One of the vets I use is an independent. He was complaining that he is having to put money into his practice instead of making money as so many places are late or no pay. So far we're OK although I'm not working at the moment. Glad I didn't have any foals this year and we only have Mojito and Quil from last year. People with money are still buying, but it has to be a unique horse with talent. My impression is that the QH industry is way overbred, much like the Arab world was a few years ago. Don't want the Kigers to get that way, being unique is what they have going for them still. I'm still planning on getting down to 2-3 horses and will get everyone old enough under saddle by this winter.