As someone who has bought local, bought in Europe, bred local and bred from European stock, I’ll chip in my 2 cents.
Americans view horses as pets. As someone pointed out, foals are expected to be handled daily. There is no expectation of increase in price for this handling, no matter what age or how trained.
These buyers expect a weanling to walk a trail horse course by itself by voice commands and E.S.P., or it’s not considered “handled enough”.
Once it’s fully trained, people will then decide that you screwed up the foal because it was pushed too hard, too fast. This, of course, is your fault because you’ve now ruined it.
If you wait to work and “back” it, because it’s too young, the window between too soon and too late is about half a nanosecond, depending, of course, on who’s opinion you are currently listening to.
After the horse is broke to saddle, People expect to buy jaw dropping (but never ever ever ever ever hot) movement, correct and pretty to look at, kid safe in the barn, trained and maybe even shown training or 1st level, but the minute it leaves your farm it will go around in 20 meter circles at training level for the rest of it’s life.
In short, the buyers, especially as they learn more, are picky. I think that’s great, actually, because they should be able to more clearly see what horses are great and what horses are average. Yes, a stunning horse should command a high price, but an average horse should correspondingly be priced less. Our breeders need to evaluate and price accordingly, too.
In Europe, I think more people have a trained eye and more realistic expectations. Overall, too, correctly starting young horses under saddle simply isn’t the same challenge to them as it is to us. They have more young horse riders, and, frankly, more (sport) horses.
Then, support and promotion. They have it, we don’t. Our breed organizations are only minimally supportive of foal sales. Our riding clubs, auctions, we don’t have a network of trusted agents or established sales venues. Our GMO’s, magazines, etc… nobody has pulled it together yet on a large scale. Good horses here, bad horses there, exaggerated claims here, lame horses there-- buyers hate that. So, every breeder is an island. A very expensive gambling island.
I think it’s fair for breeders to expect home team support, but I think we need a major shift–our whole industry needs to raise it’s standards-- for the breeders to be accurate and realistic, for the buyers to be educated and civil, for the agents to active and honest, for the breed organizations to be supportive, for the riders and trainers to align talent and goals with appropriate mounts.
It’s about what is it worth TODAY compared to horses in the same category.[/QUOTE]