I know very little about the TB auctions but was wondering what information is provided as part of the auction information. Are horses vetted prior to the auction and if so is that information available to the public? I am trying to track down some info on a gelding that I own. He was sold at the Fasig-Tipton KY yearling sale in 2010 for only $1k which is a bit surprising given he has pretty nice breeding (by Johannesburg out of a Skip Away mare). Just wondering if there is something to be learned about him. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
I hope he is doing well and is sound. Xrays are available for viewing at the auction by the veterinarians, and the potential buyer can also vet the horses prior to the auction. I don’t know how fashionable Skip Away is as a brood mare sire, but if your horse was going through an awkward phase at the time of the auction, he may not have generated much interest.
Since you found him in the sale, you should also have information about who his consignor was (it’s the name at the top of the page.) You might try contacting them and seeing if they remember him. If so, they could probably tell you why his price was so low.
As Palm Beach said, he would have had xrays available for viewing at the sale and interested buyers could have done other tests: scoping, heart scan, xray hooves, etc. His price does suggest that either something was wrong or that he really did not have the look of a potential racehorse on the day.
There were only 4 Johannesburg yearlings at that sale; two did not sell with high bids of $18,000 and $1,000. The two that sold went for $2,500 and $1,000 (yours).
The market was still in recovery in 2010. While the total gross and number of horses sold were both up at that sale from the previous year, the median was lower. That makes me think a lot of consigners may have been willing to let horses go cheap due to the economy.
Johannesburg had just been sold to Japan the year prior, which can scare off buyers.
Skip Away doesn’t really help or hurt his value, but the mare does have a nice page. She was sold in foal for $140,000 two years prior. That was also before the market crash, and earlier in her broodmare career. It doesn’t seem her foals have done much of anything on the track. Not sure if the family has done anything exciting since then without more digging. All of that international blacktype can go either way, though. Sometimes it excites people, other times it may as well be invisible ink. FWIW, as good as your horse’s page was, the $2,500 yearling had an even more impressive page IMO, but still sold for peanuts. The $18,000 RNA was from the family of Toussaud. :eek:
http://www.fasigtipton.com/ci/result…Fall-Yearlings
Maybe it was a something major upon vetting, but it’s very likely it may have just been the perfect storm of a bad economy, a sire who was recently sold out of the country, and a yearling who wasn’t particularly eye-catching at that moment. Unless he is having strange issues now, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. 
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Thanks for the replies. I hadn’t really been thinking of the recession but that could have been a factor for sure. That said, we all know that one can’t breed a decent foal and bring it to yearling stage for $1k. Thus my interest, which is more than casual curiosity. I bought him from a trainer on a training track about a year and a half ago to develop into an eventer. He passed the PPE but the vet thought that his back was a little tight from running and that a little chiro would go a long way with him. Unfortunately he has something yet to be diagnosed going on in his pelvis or SI that causes him discomfort. I have tried saddle fitter, chiro, accupuncture, massage, Robaxin, Si injection, etc with some results but nothing long lasting. I’m at the point where I have to do one of the following: retire him to a field, put more money into further diagnostics (potentially on something that cannot be fixed), or euthanize. The latter would be sad because he is a good looking fellow, nice mover and jumper, and has the sweetest personality. He’s just not a beginner or low intermediate ride and those who have skills to ride him want to do more than he is comfortable doing. I don’t want him to end up in a bad place and am just weighing all of the options. When I saw his auction price it made me wonder if there was anything to be learned about him there.
Re: pelvis/SI issues.
LaurieB and Palm Beach have far more experience than I do… but, I’ve never seen films of the pelvic region in a sale horse’s repository. Nor have I ever seen anyone pay a ton of attention to that area specifically during vetting of a yearling.
My experience may or may not be typical. But my gut instinct would be that his low sale price probably was not because of a diagnosed issue in that specific area.
That region is highly susceptible to compensation type injuries, though.
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Texarkana is right, there are no pelvic films in the repository at the sales. The reason for that is simple–as we discovered with one of ours last week–you can’t reliably xray the pelvis. (We nuke scanned the whole back half of the filly, and when the stifle lit up we xrayed the crap out of that. Fortunately, we were left with the diagnosis of a bruised muscle and the assumption that she whacked herself leaving the gate.)
Anyway…a pelvic injury unless it was causing the yearling to be lame at the sale (which is highly unlikely) shouldn’t have caused that low price.
My experience is a little dated, as I haven’t dealt with a pelvic injury in 10+ years. But at that time, you couldn’t even take pelvic films on the farm; they had to be done in the clinic with the big overhead machine. And we also had to do nuclear scintigraphy to truly diagnose anything in that region.
Even MRIs at that time could not do that type of imaging on horses; not sure if the newer ones can. Even if they do, I imagine it would require full anesthetization of the horse because I have yet to see an MRI that could do the pelvic region while standing. But technology is constantly improving.
Glad your filly’s diagnosis was straight forward!
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Texarkana’s explatnion of his sales prices is spot on. It may have been a recession in some people eyes, experience at the time. But for a lot of other people, it was much more like the second “great depression”. ESPECIALLY for those of us who made our living completely with horses. Breeding and selling TBs. We bred for the market, our matings on based on market trends, historical market conditions. In 2006 the yearling market was or pretty much at an all time high. As were stud fees in general. A the resulting foal from a 2006 mating will be sold in 2008. Roughly 3 years of expenses. The yearling market started slipping pretty good in 2007 and pretty much a free fall for the next several years.
It cost a breeder roughly $15,000 to $30,000+ in expenses from last cover to the sales ring. Depending on their boarding cost if they have to board. This number does not include stud fees, amortizing the purchase of the mare.
The average value of most yearlings drop by more than 60+% for several years. We were screwed along with a LOT of other breeders that didn’t have deep pockets and a lot of over head. We are still owed over $100,000+ in boarding fees and other expenses, Came close to losing our farm. People walked away from their bills and their horses. Partners screwed us, “just give the horse away”, keep the horses to cover what we owe, etc. Yea right, thanks.
I am 61 and grew up in the business been through a number of “recessions”. NOTHING like that one. Calling it a recession is putting it mildly at best. We have never recovered and never will. I know countless people that lost everything. The value of our farm that we bought in 2004 has just gotten back to what we gave for it. Not including a ton of money we put into renovations infrastructure soon after. And we are located in a highly desirable area.
In 2010 breeders were lucky to sell a moderate horse with no vet issues for $1,000. If you look at the sales results there were a LOT that did not sell. There were a LOT that sold for $1,000. If the horse had ANY vet issues it would not have sold for anything I promise you.
We took a nice enough Johannesburg filly out of a much nicer mare to the sales that year. We were lucky to get $4.500. Thank god it was bred on a foal-share with Coolmore.
Hard to read into anything about his race record other than he was useless as a racehorse. He started at the bottom of the claiming ranks at a bottom level race track. They smartly cut their loses after several starts.
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