"Made In America" Paige Cade claims US bred is inferior to European

Most breeders I know don’t keep their young stock that long - or not on purpose, at least. That’s probably a big part of the difficulty you’re having. The oldest one I’ve sold yet was about 10 days old at the time the check cleared. :wink: My coming two year old was a planned keeper from the start and isn’t available at any price - not good business, maybe, but I adore her.

Good luck in your search, though! I’m sure it will all be worth it once you’ve found “the one”.

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If you aren’t interested in listening to feedback from customers

Even the breeders who do listen to their Clients have great greater demand for their foals than availability. These products are not mass produced by some machine

The successful breeders do have greater demand than stock

If you want a purposed bred foal that requires commitment that many of today’s consumers are not willing to wait for as they expect their demands to be met without reservation not in a timely manor but NOW,

maybe read thread in H/J forum about worth/price of a horse as those that have a desirable foal/horse have more buyers than stock

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@Amberley - feel free not to answer this, but I’m curious what price ranges you are shopping for this prospect? If these are borderline hobby breeders then I’m not surprised the customer service is a bit wanting. I know plenty of top jumpers being bred in the US, but if they’re still holding on to a “top” 3 year old prospect, it’s going to be a very expensive 3 year old. It’s less than a year from being under saddle, at which point they can basically double the price. Having paid for it to live and learn for 36 months they’re not likely to abandon ship 12-18 months before the real dollars start rolling in.

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Have you tried doing a search on warmblood-sales.com? Cuz… i just did, with the parameters of “prospect” in the Jumping category and foaled in 2021 or 2022 and got pages and pages and pages of nice young horses… :face_with_raised_eyebrow: (granted a bunch are in Canada, but still… lol)

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Reporting back after querying said breeders and the consensus is: They’re gone. They were sold 3 years ago as foals or in utero, usually privately with no marketing, or are in partnership with a pro. A couple that hung around till age 3 sold around the 50k mark (few years ago), which is the number I had in my head in my head for this type. Seller of one of those has a friend who recently bought a very similar black-type 3 yo in Europe, un-started, for 75k before import.

Europe isn’t the deal it used to be, but you can certainly see a lot more horses for a lot less effort, which is a value in and of itself.

So you are correct in that it is hard to find high quality 3 year olds in North America (I searched 2021 jumper prospect and could only make it through the first page at the link above…). The supply (because Breeding in America) is extremely limited and— the truth of the matter is, amateur riders with proper facilities & 35K+ to spend on an unbroke horse are few & far between. Successful breeders have learned there is no buyer at the end of the 3 year old rainbow. They need to sell well before they sink $20k+ and tons of risk into getting baby horse raised & backed.

It’s a literal hole in the American market— buy very young or buy the 4/5 year old that’s got expensive starter horse show miles built into the price.

They also note that the yards in Europe are (generally) not breeders, but young horse mills where they buy tons of babies to bring along and sell off for various amounts, occasionally getting lucky. So the non-VDL type breeders are also selling early, but they’re selling into buyer-friendly programs where Americans show up by the van-load to shop.

But the leap that the author took, to equate that to mean we are not breeding top talent, is a complete conflation. We are breeding top quality talent, we just have terrible promotional skills.

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If you expect to pay 25k for a 3yo AO jumper prospect, your budget is about half what it should be. I also agree that most of them were sold as foals.

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Very intresting: A 3yo jumper prospect would be between 15 and 30k here (Germany). Nobody would pay 50k.

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Dear lord, we can all use ehorse. The ones in the sub10k category undoubtedly have a significant vet finding. Please remember to add 15k in import fees +- castration on to the prices you’re quoting, which then puts you very much back to the 50k USD ballpark that I quoted. Hmmmm.

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Prize money is terrible in Spain though