I cannot STAND when people try to use “I’m just honest” or “I’m just blunt/straightforward/tell it how it is” as an excuse to be an absolute a$$ to others. If you don’t know how to be “honest” without tearing others down, you need to keep your mouth shut.
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Aren’t my braids pretty?
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Apparently you don’t think so when you intentionally attribute the work to someone else. So who really did the braids in that photo? You or Haleybot?
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Back to the DHH breeding discussion: I’m curious if anyone would spend $50,000 on Kate’s new foal. The filly is adorable and by For Pleasure, and out of a harness-line mare. Even if the foal was out of a GP-winning mare, I would be hard pressed to spend that kind of money for a foal prospect. Maybe if the mare line had been consistently producing GP horses? Thoughts??
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I never understand why people selling things justify their asking price by mentioning how there’s “many others” making offers.
If there’re so many offers, what the heck are you doing here babbling about it and not sealing the deal?
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Here is a question that applies to this thread - Why do people use a middleman to contract or offer braiding? It seems like the braider would make more money just getting paid by the horse owner and posting signs at the showgrounds, on FB, etc. And the horse owner would pay less skipping the middleman. But I really don’t know how A shows are run.
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That is insanity. Even from a top, proven and relevant damline (that is not harness bred), 50k is a stretch. While DHH is KWPN, the breeding directions are so different it is essentially a cross breed. I don’t know any DHH competing GP jumpers.
I also saw a Welsh filly that is very heavily inbred being marketed.
You sell a foal for what it is worth. Not what you think the sire’s semen is worth or how much you stupidly spent trying to get the mare in foal.
ETA: For Pleasure’s semen sells for 7500 from Global Equine Sires, not 15k. I know Kate bought it less in a private sell because if she had actually purchased from GES, she’d know it’s 7500 per dose/straw of semen. GES just recommends using two straws.
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I wouldn’t pay $50k for almost any foal. But certainly not an off-breed with no record or proven siblings 
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There is a breeder locally with nice registered WB foals, long-standing enough to know how the mares match up with the stud and have siblings going and doing. They’re consistently ammy friendly and nice, but not world-beaters (these are hunters and Eq types). The $20kish price tag seemed high to me at first, but buyers have a reasonable amount of confidence that these babies will be as advertised. That’s a whole different ballgame than the subject of this trainwreck 
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A dose is actually two straws ma’am. So yes 15k for a dose of For Pleasure. And absolutely you do what you want and buy what you want. I actually took the filly off the market because I did get the asking price but chose to keep her for the breeding program as I have many buyers that would like embryos out of her down the road. But yes you keep doing your research and not understanding what a straw versus a dose is 
Look, I get that you struggle to comprehend a lot of things, but there really is no need to lie about things.
Sold PER STRAW - $7500
Suggested dose is 2 straws.
Also not buying that you got an offer for 50k for that foal or that you have people lined up to buy embryos from unproven harness lines but ok. 
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As I’ve said before, it’s an interesting business model. You collect a lot of surrogate mares. You get eggs from mares with names in their pedigrees, and you buy semen straws from trendy available sires. You find a low cost backwoods farm to park you surrogate mares, pre sell the foals in utero, and then get them off your hands before they require much care or training investment.
Each year you are just mix and match available eggs and sperm into that years surrogate mares.
It’s not the kind of breeding program where a farm develops a herd and a stallion over time, tracks the youngsters, and has an actual thought out plan and direction. It is however an efficient way of mobilizing modern repro tech to make use of the work done by responsible breeders at lowest possible cost and investment.
We never ever hear where these foals end up or what they are doing now.
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Right so a suggested dose is 2 straws. The semen is pretty weak. I would suggest 3 to be honest. Which is why I did ICSI. But again if you are not a breeder dealing with this kind of semen and money then you would not know.
The top breeders are going to sell embryos from proven mares and relevant lineage. This whole DHH cross angle is quite unheard of - for a reason.
@Kasheare, I do breed and I do buy semen. That is why I know the difference in cost per straw and the recommendation for number of straws used.
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I will not ever own a stallion. I do not take eggs from random mares. I have one donor mare that I take oocytes from. Then I have other mares. I guess when Spy Coast backs the Royce colt I have saying its one of the favorites of all breeding season. And yes I lease a ton of surrogate mares but there is no mixing and matching lol! You really have not done your research on my program at all. I have a lovely base herd of mares and the breedings are well thought out. When Olympians back me and private message me that they would like to use a stallion on my big ICSI producing mare I would say I have what it takes. But heck you Scribbler know so much more about what I am doing than I do I guess LOL
Generally a barn has a relationship with a specific braider that attends a similar show schedule to theirs, and that braider stays busy enough with their clients who use them regularly that they don’t take on much/any additional work. This works just fine until you are going to a show your braider isn’t going to, and now you have a bunch of horses needing braided and all the braiders there are booked with their regulars. Normally your braider will network you someone there with availability and vouch that your horses aren’t feral and you pay your bills, but that doesn’t always work. The thought of getting to the horse show and not knowing if anyone would be able to braid the horses that night and just calling phone numbers or flagging down people holding a ladder is pretty stressful, since most people can’t braid their own horses and showing unbraided isn’t really an option at most A shows. The idea of someone with staff at multiple shows on a given weekend to make sure you have coverage is great.
It does beg the question for me of whether these people are being paid as employees or independent contractors but I don’t really have the bandwidth to sort through all the commentary.
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If you know the difference then you would know no one in their right mind would use just one straw lol
You are correct. I have a team that is how we are able to keep our clients happy at whichever location they go to from texas to florida to virginia to chicago. My clients enjoy the ease of not ever having to worry about finding a braider.
Oh and they are 1099 independent contractors.
People do it all of the time. They will also combine single straws from multiple stallions to try to get a foal.
But hey, you spend 30k to get a foal from an unproven DHH mare. That’s absolutely something I would not do so it sounds like our breeding decisions are quite different.
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While this braider may post under her own name on FB, in this forum, it’s doxxing to leave this post up.
For the good of this forum, please ban the poster who is the subject of all this drama and insanity and close this thread.
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