I’m about to start marketing my youngsters (weanlings), wondering what the best way is?
I posted on Facebook but not really any serious reactions there, what are other good places to advertise?
What do people want to see in a video/pictures/description?
Just wanting to make sure I do this right 
Are they registered? If so market with breed specific groups.
Are they not registered? If so good luck. I don’t think there’s a big market for grade weanlings of uncertain breeding, no idea how they will turn out.
People buy well bred weanlings and carry the expenses until they can be used if that allows them to spend less in total for a fantastically bred horse they couldn’t other wise afford.
If you can keep a weanling for $2400 a year on pasture and it would cost $40,000 as a four year old, that’s an incentive.
If it’s going to grow up into a $2000 horse you would just buy it’s adult version.
Yes, Registered KWPN-NA out of good lines. FEI quality.
Wondering if people have good luck with sites like Dreamhorse.com or Warmbloods-for-sale, since placing an ad is expensive. Or if there are other sites I do not know about…
When I have looked at young horses, it’s generally been the bloodlines that hooked me. Generally I have 3-4 stallions I really like, who have consistently stamped offspring with the characteristics I’m looking for. I do like the ability to do bloodline searches on Warmblood-sales and similar sites, but I also google “sale by [stallion name]” and have found many smaller breeders with nice youngstock that way. If the stallion is well marketed, often you can have the SO offer the offspring on his/her webpage.
While not youngsters, I bought my last two horses from FB ads, so using the regional and discipline -specific pages is a good idea, and free.
I think the challenge is, that if you’re a small breeder without a well-marketed history of producing successful FEI horses, it’s going to be hard to convince potential buyers that your weanlings are FEI quality unless the sire is well known and dam is either bred in the purple or has a tremendous performance history herself. Too many people out there advertise their in-uteros-thru-2yos as FEI quality, or Grand Prix prospect, or Future derby champion. Most of them are not.
Nowadays I either breed my own or buy something 3/4yo and lightly started. Too many horses are superstars on paper (e.g. bloodlines) but are temperamentally difficult, or too-big/too-small, or try to kill themselves before maturity. I’d rather get something lightly started, but going enough that I can get a better idea of what’s it’s like to ride and work with. I think most people feel that way, especially if they don’t have a place to keep a youngster at home/for cheap for a few years until it’s ready to start its career.
So maybe don’t sweat low-interest as weanlings and yearlings. Let the babies grow up, do solid groundwork with them, and then market them as late 3yos or early 4yos where shoppers can see them w/t/c undersaddle.
I think social media is playing a larger and larger part in horse sales these days. I bought my current gelding off a FB post, my trainer found her yearling in a breed-specific FB group. I sold my mare through a group. These were all free to post …
Get online and get active – make a lovely post showcasing your yearlings, complete with photos, videos, a compelling text writeup – and be ready to respond to PMs and emails that come in a timely fashion.
Where are you posting on FB? Your personal/farm page or on sales groups? I bought my now 7 y.o. on Warmbloods-for-Sale back when he was a yearling but I don’t know how much those sites get searched any more. FB seems to be the spot for most people’s sales these days, myself included.
Take a look at your photos. Do you have really good, flattering photos that allow for a good evaluation of conformation? Do you have video? Video is a must, I will just scroll right on past if there’s no video, as will most people. Don’t make people request the video, just post it. Make sure it has walk, trot, canter footage. No slow motion, if you do stills keep it to one good conformation photo.
Good photos and good video are mandatory. You need a photo that grabs the attention. Either a gorgeous conformation shot or a dynamic action shot. Then video to back it up. If you don’t have those things, and you aren’t already a big name, it really doesn’t matter where you advertise. With so many horses on the market, you need that edge
Then I do think WFS is still a valuable advertising site, a lot of people I know search it regularly. I don’t think it is expensive, the ad lasts forever, and you can do unlimited updates to it, for $50-$60. We have a regional ad site that charges that much for a 90 day ad. And they charge extra if you want to change the picture or add video!
Then FB has some very active sales pages. Dressage Horses for Sale, Weanling to Grand Prix (I think that is the name of it) is one of the biggest. Search FB, there are a lot of options. But again, if you don’t have good photos and video, you are at a disadvantage. Pay for professional media at the inspection or breed shows, or hire a local photographer, it is money well spent
There are several KWPN specific pages and several pages specifically devoted to young sport horses that have a lot of members and traction.
Many, many foals being marketed these days come from strong and successful FEI competitive breeding, with certain lines being more popular and thus valuable than others. I’m sure you understand that it’s quite easy and common in the US for breeders to over value their own babies without regards to the realities of the market.
Young young horses are a hard sell given that most people, including FEI competitors do not own their own properties, so years and years of money and risk before they can even hope to sit on them.
I have great friends who are breeders, they each have different approaches to selling babies; some of them price the babies such that they sell quickly, others such that they don’t because they really prefer to sell them as older started youngsters, and others still who overprice and don’t understand why their babies don’t sell. Without exception these are all horses from FEI bloodlines, some of which are popular, others less so.
Thank you all for your replies!
The stallion is young and not that well marketed, but great bloodlines. Dams also come out of strong marelines but are young.
For some reason I thought WFS was way more expensive, will look into that then!
I have video but it is not recent (at 3-4wks of age) and it is really hard to get the babies to show a decent trot! Any tips getting them to show off their gaits? Seems they either want to stand still or gallop around…
I posted on FB again, we will see how that goes.
Nice bloodlines are one thing, but if the parents don’t have the performance you are saying your youngsters will have, it will be a hard sell. I personally wouldn’t buy a weanling without knowing about the performance of the dam and sire. On an unproven match, I would be somewhat more interested if the horse was older and you had put the training in so that the buyer can get an idea of what they are buying, since they can’t evaluate the foal from the parents. That’s how I would market them. And I certainly would only show a video within a week of the foals’ age. No, no one cares how cute they were when they were a few weeks old. If you are asking people to buy a performance horse, you need to prove they are performance horses, and studs and mares who don’t have performance records are a mark against a foal to start with. I would reconcile myself to needing to put the money and work into the horses to prove they deserve the consideration I am asking for. I’d sell them as lightly backed 4 year olds, polite, fabulous movers, well shod and in good condition, excellent ground manners, something a person could purchase and bring along with reasonable confidence. Good luck.
Trot the mare in hand. Do it somewhere unfamiliar, and the foal will stick closer to her. Basically recreate an inspection situation. You’ll need at least 2 people, 3 if your mare responds better with a whip person.
I bought a foal this year - I didn’t search any of the websites, it was solely through facebook groups (the dressage breeders’ group, the WB foals for sale, and the dressage horse sales groups). The only sales site I’ve looked at in the past year or so has been warmbloods for sale because I can search by pedigree. Ads themselves were highly variant and I developed some things that really stood out in a positive way, and things that immediately turned me off ads.
The cons: the biggest pet peeve for me is advertising a horse as “(SOMEHOW RELATED TO) (A BIG NAME HORSE HERE - Sandro Hit/Donnerhall/Weltmeyer/Jazz/Ferro/Etc)!” It makes me feel like the only way they can sell this baby is based on the biggest-named connection in the pedigree - regardless of how close the connection is. (If one of the above is sire or damsire, fine. But if it’s an oblique relationship? No.)
Everything NA-bred/marketed seems to be an FEI prospect, per the ad. At this point, saying it’s FEI quality or has main ring potential means nothing. A majority of ads say something to the effect (“Professional quality” “FEI quality”) and it lost meaning.
The ads I liked a lot: Straightforward information that wasn’t emotive.
Sire/Damsire/Dam’s Damsire with height and performance records given on all three stallions, height of dam & performance record if she had one. I also found it helpful when ads gave information & photos of the dam’s other offspring (I can search foal crops by stallions pretty easily, so didn’t really find this information necessary). Height, performance record, trainability & temperament on the dam’s other foals if you have that information = super great!
Frank assessment on personality/handleability. How do they react to new things? How easy are they to teach new things?
Gaits was more of a “video preferred” thing (there’s no uniformity to how people describe gaits, I found!) but if horses are uncooperative and video was hard, then information on rhythm (natural cadence or no?) balance (sit/drive from behind or no?) and way of going (flat/sweepy, or more articulation?) Descriptions of suspension in young horses is especially variant so turned into a bit of a white elephant on most ads, but I know some people appreciate seeing it included.
As far as imaging goes, two or three quality images - a portrait, a conformation shot (flat ground, feet unobscured), and if it exists, a really exceptional trot or canter photo. Quality video (in focus, smooth) that covered the basic gaits. It could be 18-20 seconds with just a few strides of each, but quality. In focus, not grainy/fuzzy/shaky.
And definitely keep updated images/video - it can really help buyers see how horses are developing.
FWIW, i got tons of really positive feedback on my warmbloods-for-sale ad (way back when my last homebred was for sale in 2011), specifically praising the handling video I posted of the filly i had for sale. Video is still up if you want to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpGIJTLTfmc
Thank you, both! Very helpful. I will try to get a new video as soon as I can, will have to organize some helpers
Great advice in many posts above. Try all the suggestions you can and see what works for you.
If you post in FB groups update and “bump” your ads periodically so they don’t get outdated. Something that was posted four months ago is so far down in the feed, it is likely to get buried.
If you use Warmbloods for Sale or a similar site, keep pictures updated and recent.
Good media cannot be over-emphasize. Post it with the ad. Try not to use a phone to take video, the quality is poor. Camcorder video is preferred.
You might want to pay a professional photographer to take really good quality photos and video.
I don’t breed or sell, but I do keep an eye on the market as I would like to buy a foal in the next couple of years. My recommendation would be to do a few specific ads on warmblood.com and FB (those are the sites most people I know browse), but if you are planning to breed a few every year - think about getting your farm name out in the marketplace as well.
I have a short list of farms that I will check out first when the time comes to buy. I’ve gathered those names based on the type of horses they are producing, of course. But most of the farms have come to my attention because they put considerable effort into promoting their “brand”. Get a website, get on social media, post pics and videos, sponsor some events locally if there is a market for your horses there, etc. I think it is much easier if you aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel with every foal!
Interested in this thread as I have been on a hiatus from breeding (my last foal is now 9), but am thinking about breeding again next year for a foal that I will ostensibly be for my next riding horse as I can make one and grow it until riding age for far less than what I can buy a nice 4 yo for, but that I will also advertise in case someone wants to make it worthwhile for me to sell it.
I have been in a similar position to you in the past, breeding good horses (little brag here - a judge who spends time in Europe recently asked if said 9 yo was an import, that he was just the type of horse she was seeing in Europe ) but an unknown in the business, and my showing budget went into riding, not showing my mares and foals.
I found it very difficult to sell babies by advertising. The one I did sell through an ad on a website turned into a train wreck. My 12 yo Art Deco mare on the other hand I got TONS of responses to both from FB and Equestrian Connection when I advertised her in May. Less response to ads placed earlier in the year. I don’t know if time of year is so relevant in selling a weanling, but certainly I noticed a big difference in the number of serious inquiries I got about my mare in May vs. March. My feeling is when selling a foal, certainly the well-known breeders will get them moved, but as a relative unknown you will likely be hanging on to them for a couple of years. I have one friend who was quite a successful breeder and she didn’t try to sell them until they were 3 ish. She made a good profit on all but one of her youngsters selling them that way.
I will echo everyone else who say don’t bother unless you have good photos and a video link. People don’t want to have to ask for a video, and a good photo will catch the shopper’s eye. When advertising on FB post your general location at least, even if you don’t want to be precise. I hate getting interested in a horse to find out it’s so far away that shipping puts it out of the budget. I like Warmbloods-for-Sale, it’s a beautiful website, and when I used it in the past I did get queries from it. The only reason I didn’t use it for my Art Deco mare was because her price tag didn’t warrant the cost, but for a bigger money horse I wouldn’t hesitate. No harm in keeping your ads up on FB because it’s free.
@Suspiria Aww thanks! She turned out amazing - a total pet! My aunt (an adult ammie intermediate-level rider) bought her and is enjoying her immensely. This is a pic of her from 2017.
http://i496.photobucket.com/albums/r…psi4so3gm9.jpg
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