GOBSMACKED at what I saw today! I had no idea it was THIS bad

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JadeWisc

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I went to a large horse auction today and honestly in my life have never prices like I did today. Not even this time of year.

It was not a low quality auction by any means. It was mainly nice (mostly young) registrered stock of Quarter horses and paints. There were a truckload of Draft horses from Canada and a several Tennesse Walking gaited horses from the south.

I have heard rumors of how the horse market had crashed in the US badly this year, but I had no idea how bad until today.


MANY MANY MANY nice weanlings went for $50 some with no bids and some for $20. I was in shock. Most stock sold right around $100 a head. Good thing I had no trailer and limited land or I may have been tempted to clean up there.

These poor owners were so upset and one was even crying as she lead her mare around the ring.

There were not nearly as many "No sales" as I thought there should be. People were just letting them go.

Even the nice trained ones.

One was a beautiful AQHA 5 yr old mare that was shown pleasure and would do it all in the ring .....$250
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The one that did "No sale" was a beautiful gaited Tennessee Walking horse mare that was just dancing in the ring. She was amazing and watching him ride her around was breathtaking. He laughed at the final bid and said forget it. He had already lost too much on his babies and decided to haul her back home.

After getting blood drawn for coggins tests and paying for gas and the auctioneer, many lost money. The man from Canada lost the most as I think I overheard that he had to pay $200 per head just to get them across the border and they went for about $100 ea . Sorry if I upset some of you by saying this, but they were nice draft paint crosses and I imagine he could have gotten more for meat for them in Canada when you take travel into consideration..

It was really sad tbh and I have had people tell me that it may take a couple of years for it to start to bounce back.

I could have bought almost ALL of the stock there for less than I paid for the three I have on my property now.
Again, many were VERY nice horses!

One 2 year old pretty buckskin mare with the same grand daddy as my two geldings (Sterling Count) went for $300. She was one of the best filled out 2 yr olds I have EVER seen.

It was sort of depressing and you could not help but feel sad for the horses and people.

I got a few good deals on tack and equipment though
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Got a very nice brand new New Zealand rug for $35
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a pink whip too
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That's just terrible for the owners. Ever since horse slaughter was banned, the market just dropped- especially after the droughts this summer.
 
yep...most people here think it was the last slaughter house being shut down that has done this, but I think it is a sad combination of things.

Too many people breeding with not enough buyers for one as well
 
That's just too bad. Do you think that they should have outlawed slaughter or not? Unfortunately, now the horses are just being sent to Mexico for even more inhumane slaughter. Prices have stayed solid around here. Certainly no drastic drops.
 
I have said this many times before on here.


NO I do not think the slaughter houses should have been shut down!

I think the same fate will be handed to them with longer harder travel, OR they will all waste away with more cases of starvation or neglect.

I think they should just have made them more regulated and humane is all.

My problem with horse salughter here was how inefficient and inhumane the process was.
I hate to say this, but I suspect t what happens to them in Mexico may be even worse.

The Happy sappy Americans should be more open minded to it as well as they are all hypocrites if they eat beef etc.

but only OUR way is the right way you know
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thats such a shame...blimey im happy I wasnt there...I would have bought the lot...Im a sucker for that sort of thing...especially beautiful horses...!!
Really sad to read ;0(
 
That is so sad, I can't even imagine letting a horse of mine go like that. I guess most of them went to kill buyers to take them to Mexico
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That's awful Jade
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. Poor little blighters. It's got to make you wonder though - why in the world would Canadian breeders take their stock to an auction in the States to sell for peanuts, when they could have made so much more for them in Canada? Crazy! I guess if there were barely any no-sales then these people really had to sell.....perhaps they'll learn their lesson and stop over-breeding but something tells me that they won't. Were these weanlings PMU foals? Sounds like they were to me if they were selling at such rock-bottom prices.
 
It isn't just about the closing of the slaughter houses, although that has affected the low end market for sure. Many of the "problems" have to do with real economic and social factors as well. And it's not just an "American" situation they are just ahead of the curve a bit. The editor of Horse & Rider, an American, magazine wrote a VERY good article on the future of the horse industry awhile back - interesting reading for anyone involved and many of the trends she discussed are evident even on this board if maybe not so obvious.
 
[ QUOTE ]
It isn't just about the closing of the slaughter houses, although that has affected the low end market for sure. Many of the "problems" have to do with real economic and social factors as well. And it's not just an "American" situation they are just ahead of the curve a bit. The editor of Horse & Rider, an American, magazine wrote a VERY good article on the future of the horse industry awhile back - interesting reading for anyone involved and many of the trends she discussed are evident even on this board if maybe not so obvious.

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I would love to read it, do you know of a link to it?
 
Spiral,
I am not sure where these horses went. My hope is that a few lucky people just got some really good deals and still have alot of hope things will change soon.
I am not sure how many horses here are going for meat now as shipping them must raise the cost so much more now

MagicMelon,
This is not normally a sale like that and many very good quality horses find very good homes from some of the better horse auctions....especially very young horses are often sold this way. There ARE awful low end auctions here as well. (sad to observe) but this sale is not known to be one of them


Tia ,
I am not sure if they were PMU foals tbh. As I said before, all I know is that they were all paint draft crosses and weanlings so I suppose they could have been. I think a few people that came from far away knew this to be a profitable sale for them in the past and this year was just different. There are many Amish around here and they were sending them through in closely matched pairs so I assume their strategy was to target the Amish market here? I assume they were shocked too and wished they had never come and realised they would just let them go so cheap as they would not want to take them back after the trip.??




QR

The economy is getting bad here and I think that is a big influence too as said above. Many people are losing their homes and having financial difficulty atm. Someone said abave they would never sell a beloved horse at an auction...well if you are desperate and cannot feed or keep them I suppose you will do whatever.


I just hope it changes soon as it was sort of sad to me.

I suppose the sales come spring will show how the trend is going.

This one sale could have been a fluke of bad timing and the wrong buyers. Frankly, once a cheap low priced tone gets sets at a sale it really puts people off of bidding them up after that.
 
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Spiral,
I am not sure where these horses went. My hope is that a few lucky people just got some really good deals and still have alot of hope things will change soon.
I am not sure how many horses here are going for meat now as shipping them must raise the cost so much more now

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I would hope not, although I suspect if they could buy the horses for under $100 in most cases, meat price is what, $400 ish usually, and they could pack a bunch of horses in a lorry in bad conditions to take them to slaughter they'd probably still make a profit.

I'm a strong believer that people should not breed unless both the stallion and the mare are good sound horses themselves, who have decent conformation to do a specific job. I get the impression that the reason these types horses are selling so cheaply in the US is because they are just bred indiscriminately with no real regard to the actual purpose of the breeding and as such you end up overloaded with masses of nice enough but nothing special mediocre horses - many of which are completely untrained. You see this to an extent over here but far less, mostly because I think its more expensive to breed here, few people have their own land etc.

Its a great shame for the horses.
 
No, there are many many quality horses here with wonderful breeding from great parents. The horse market has taken a turn here and what we saw yesterday was unusual.

I agree that too many peopl eare needlessly breeding though. Horses do not sell like they used to and more and more people are getting out of horses.

I agree with you. If our country was as small as your country we may not have these issues. I imagine you still have plenty of problems with unwanted horses though there.

The fact that you have so much less land and it IS more expensive to raise them there can backfire in other ways. Less than perfect performers , a bit past peak older horses, un rideable horses (etc) are prob cast off much quicker as not many can afford to keep them around like perhaps they would here . I suspect all of these horses are given the same fate...especially considering how close you are to the meat consumption market.
 
Not saying you don't have many quality horses Jade, just that there seems to be a lot of rubbish around too, mainly from the uneducated who think that any horse is a candidate for reproduction. And it seems to be pretty widespread from what I see on FHOTD.

I think we have something like 5000 horses a year going to slaughter over here. The fact that we do have less land etc probably raises the number of horses who meet this fate but I don't think its actually that widespread. Its more likely for a bad horse/unrideable horse to be put down than in America perhaps, but generally speaking in my experience there isn't really a culture of just getting rid of anything thats not 100%. There are ways to find cheap retirement grazing or loan horses out as hacks or companions.

In any country you get ignorant people who breed horses, or who get rid of anything thats no longer fit for purpose - but I'd imagine its more of a problem in America than it is here because more people have land and so can afford to keep and breed these horses that few can afford to do here.
 
You guys would be shocked at the UK market!! Around here a pretty unspecial, but sane horse with no breeding would fetch around $6,000. If it can jump a little and hunt, its more like $10,000
 
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If it can jump a little and hunt, its more like $10,000


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Now you see that sounds incredibly cheap to me, judging by our market here. A hunter jumper over here will cost easily 50,000 where I live.

A showjumper which can jump a little with no particular breeding, well you'd very often see these for well over 10,000.

There are very many levels of horse sales over here - it is a far more complex situation than you guys have in England.

Not sure what Jade's market is like though - although from previous discussions with her, it appears that the market in Wisconsin doesn't see the sorts of figures we see over here in Ontario.
 
Yes I've noticed that from American forums - little hunter ponies jumping 2ft6 courses selling for upwards of 100k and on the other hand you have those that sell for 20 bucks?! It baffles me.
 
Yes, exactly the same here; particularly with little kiddie ponies who can jump. Some parents will pay huge sums of money for these types of ponies.

This is one of the reasons I stick to the sales of QH's and APHA's. I know my market pretty well now and I know the breedlines which appear to be wanted; so I stick with better the devil you know, even though my sales figures for one horse are nothing like the 50,000 - 100,000 mark for doing pretty much the same thing; raising youngsters. I like my QH's though so I'm not complaining at all and I do make high-end prices for my ones so I am happy.

Also, these are the prices around my area - bear in mind I am an hour and a half from Toronto, so you can imagine the scary prices they have down there!! Waay more than we see advertised up here.
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Dont get me wrong, there are many horses here that go for a kings ransom as well. Even now...they are "asking" tens of thousands for them...not sure if they are "getting " it though right now

Horses my family bought 25 years ago were $10,000 as youngsters .


I think this year was especially odd.

It is inevitable however that the horse markets around the world will just continue to drizzle away.

There may always be passion for them, but as society changes it will become less and less practical.
They are not dogs after all...we cannot keep them in our city apartments.



could spark an entire thread "the future of the horse in this world"
 
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