To Buy or Breed a Foal? |
How often has this question been reflected upon in the mind of a prospective owner or been directed to horse? It is a difficult to answer as there are so many variables that will affect the outcome. When you go into the nitty gritty of breeding and look at it from the commercial breeders aspect, then buying would be the recommended way to go to obtain a weanling foal. For the person who has a mare and wishes to replace a much loved riding horse or family pet the answer is, of course, the opposite. This answer is only true if the foal is purely as a replacement for their own horse. Breeding a foal is an awesome experience but
In the case of the person who simply wants to replace a much loved horse rather than produce a horse for a specific sport the questions are different. What this person needs to do is find a stallion that compliments their mare in bloodlines, conformation, temperament, results in sport and progeny. Hopefully if the right stallion is chosen the progeny will fit the requirements of the breeder and if not 100% what was hoped for then at least the success in getting a foal from the loved mare will be enough. If however the desire is to breed a high quality competition sporthorse from the mare the chances are much more in doubt. You may be lucky if your mare is a high quality performer and you are prepared to retire her or embark on an embryo transfer program. If she is not sporthorse bred herself then you also have to take into account what she was actually bred for and how it will add or detract from the chances of breeding a suitable offspring. Let us also look at some statistics. There are almost 20,000 thoroughbreds bred in Australia each year and it is estimated that less than one tenth will ever get a start in a race. It is the same for the harness racing breeding. If not suited many of these horses hit the sporthorse market at greatly reduced prices as they are not prepared for any other activity. While you might know plenty of ex-racing horses that have been used in equestrian sport how many out of almost 150,000 bred in the racing industry and discarded in the last ten years have actually proved suitable for the average rider to enjoy training and participating on in equestrian sports. This goes for the mares being suitable to breed riding horses. There are hundreds of years of selective breeding for speed and endurance behind the thoroughbred, not the criteria for being a suitable riding mount. During the last ten years at least 20,000 warmbloods have been bred in Australia of all types and descriptions, many of them of inferior quality and certainly not suitable for high level competitive equestrian sports. The requirements for soundness of conformation and temperament have often been overlooked to create a particular size, movement or look. Choosing a weanling or a yearling gives you a
Advertising spiels would have you believe that the majority of the horses bred in Australia are going to be Olympic champions yet very few reach FEI level competition, well below the top level of the sport. If you believe half of what the advertising splurges claim, which in most cases are extremely exaggerated and sometime downright untruthful, then you will be ripped off paying too much for the average quality that is actually being presented. Everybody should be aware of the worldwide saying that if something sounds too good to be true it usually is, even more so in the world of horse breeding.
People who are looking to replace their competition horse in the near future in order to save costs will look at a young horse or even a foal. The possibility of buying a young horse of particular bloodlines could be thousands of dollars cheaper than a trained mount. A weanling foal will save you 18 months of time and you see what you are purchasing. If you feel that it does not please or suit you in any way than you can choose one that does. When you breed your own foal you are committed to at least one and a half years until weaning and you are stuck with what you. If the resulting progeny does not suit you it will have to be sold and you will start again which will take up another year and again all the costs and risks. By this time you could be riding the young horse if you had bought a yearling or two year old. 18 months
The romantic notion of breeding your own performance horse is in many cases a wishful dream. It can turn into a hellish nightmare when the foal or dam gets sick. If the illness is serious the vet costs could run into thousands with either the loss of useful horses or the death of one or both. In either case you are left with some extremely large veterinary expenses to pay. 30 months
Most of the time the weanling you choose, because of the bloodlines it has will also be more easily trained and educated. It should be more receptive to other horses as it most likely has been raised with others. This could well save you a couple of years of training at the far end of the scale. So as mentioned before it takes a lot of thought and research into the horse you wish to purchase, all I can do is guide you towards a common sense approach, I cannot choose for you, so pick your young horse after a lot of study and thought. |
Therefore the purchase of a weanling foal that already meets the buyer’s requirements minimises many of the risks and is nearly always the best path to pursue. You can by studying the records of performance of the bloodline and the genetic makeup of related horses get a better idea of the capabilities of the yearling. The other thing that is required of a competitive sporting horse is the training it receives. This is another matter with which we will deal at a later date.
We have just lost a mare leaving us with a day old orphan foal. It took three people looking after the foal for the first weeks. The first ten days around the clock, before we were thankfully successful in getting one of our own mares to be a proper foster mother.