A wise person who flips horses for a living once told me they always get three at once assuming they’ll lose money on one, break even on one, and profit on the third. The profit on one out of three horses keeps the whole enterprise going.
With that in mind, if you got three horses this month with the goal to flip by June, what would your sale prices for the break-even and profit horses have to be? Is that in line with the local market? What would you do with the one who vets badly, has a pasture injury, etc?
GMAB…got any idea how many ranch horses are actually mustangs? And i stand by my comment regarding body type of quarter horses…with those thick bodies and thin stumpy legs. They are not built right for much of anything over rails with those diaper butts.
How much familiarity do you have with hunter showing, either local or rated? Or jumpers? And how many horses have you trained to jump that have then competed successfully?
Please just do a Google image search or video search on “Quarter Horse jumping.”
Probably a lot, but that’s still not relevant to the OP’s question.
Last I checked most of the working ranch quarter horses do not look like the halter bred quarter horses. What you describe is the halter bred critters, which I think most people here will admit are not overly functional.
they pretty much all have that slumped hip and most i see have small circumference cannons. There are degrees of course…sure the halter ones are just grotesque, but most i see have the same general build. I mean…IF you can recognize the horse as a QH, it’s going to have breed phenotype.
If you do the Google search I recommended, or go on BigEq and do an advanced search on Quarter Horses, you’ll find a lot of evidence that contradicts your statements above.
I understand you may not wish to do that.
I will be engaging my favorite feature of the new board software now.
Someone in this area does it. They find some really cute ones and re-sell them when they are jumping small courses but generally don’t have lead changes and haven’t been showing yet. They tend to sell in the low to mid 4s around here. Something taller (16.2+) with a good lead change and show miles would sell for more but without a lead change and show miles I don’t think you’d break the upper 4s in this area unless it was really, really fancy, big and young.
You really need to look at your own local market. Especially at the moment with COVID related travel restrictions, many people aren’t traveling as far to see horses. At least right now I wouldn’t count on many buyers coming from far away to try a green 8 yr old jumping 2’ so I would focus on what horses are selling for in a 1-3 hour radius of your location but at least in the area I live in now and the area I am from, I would expect that type of horse to be in the mid 4s. If you find a big, fancy one and put show miles on it, I think maybe low 5s could be conceivable but you’d need to make sure it vetted very well with very good x-rays. You will possibly find some buyers on a budget that are willing to overlook some vetting issues but if you need to sell quickly to protect any profit margin you have, especially while you build a network, I wouldn’t gamble on something that didn’t vet well.
I love QHs and have seen some NICE ones. There are some very nice ones showing successfully around here and they sell for good money. However, they have flying changes, are usually on the bigger side, are very fancy, and usually have extensive show experience to back up those prices.
Honestly, I don’t know enough about gaming horses to answer that question. But a hunter change needs to be quiet, from a relaxed, forward pace and cued invisibly - is that something a gaming horse is likely to have?
Since budget friendly packers are in such high demand I would think it would be worth a try with a select few to start.
Despite the feelings of other posters about “type” which I disagree with. Take a look a Ranch World classifieds and it is amazing how many phenotypes, sizes, and attributes make up modern ranch horses. Warmblood, draft, TB lines are crossbred into foundation and modern stock horse lines to make horses with brain, bone, stamina, trainability and endurance.
If you have the means to bring 14.1 made stock horses to the east coast, get an auto change and jump an advanced beginner around, you can probably do very well. A/O’s are also looking for uncomplicated, easy keepers, that are a joy to ride. Ranch horses fall very well into this category.
To make the assumption that a western ranch horse is anything like your showring W/P or halter horse is incorrect. Ranch horses are bred for utility, adaptability and long term soundness. They tend to be a “jack of all trades”. These are not pampered pets, they are tools. They round up cattle one day, ride endurance the next and might pull fence the third. I like the idea, I hope you give it a try!
Side note, I ride a Montana bred, ex ranch horse at my lesson tonight. He was brought to the East Coast to be a cowboy mounted shooting mount. Sadly his owner passed away unexpectedly and he ended up taken in at a A rated hunter barn. He is not for sale ( I know, I made a generous offer). He is leased currently and has a waiting list of future leases. I get to ride him because he and I understand each other. I know his “buttons” and he gives me confidence. He gets a good school in transitions, collection, extension and lateral work every couple of weeks. He goes better for his junior who is just now learning those principles. He and the Junior did pretty well this season, hopefully they will continue their winning ways. To me that is the best proof that a ranch horse can come east and be successful, valuable and sought after (even if he has three freeze brands and AQHA papers).
This may have been true years ago, but it is just not true now.
The AQHA phenotype has changed substantially over the last 20 years with an increasing amount of TB in the breed generally. QH’s are looking more like useful horses, smoother body transitions and more balanced. The giant round butt and the teacup muzzle are going away. And they are much, much taller than the old stereotype. QH’s of 16h-16.2h are very common now, and frequently seen in the show ring. (Excluding ‘halter bred’ (which also tend to be taller these days).)
This lovely mare is much more typical of today’s QH. Many do tend to have a longer back than this mare.
There is a typey downhill-working-type QH gelding in my board barn. He is the same height at the withers as my uphill-racehorsey-looking TB, 16.2h. It is very interesting to stand the two horses next to each other, because they are the same height but so different in look and carriage.
There are subsets of QH’s bred for reining/cutting that vary somewhat from the more popular riding/showing type. Smaller, mostly, most are chunkier, but not misshapen like the halter horses.
The change in the QH body is controversial among the subset of fanciers who idolized the old small traditionally-typey version, and despise TB’s. A group actually broke away and set up their own “American Quarter Pony Association”. Although they don’t seem to be sticking to the traditional stereotypical body. http://www.aqpa.com/
Very true. “Ranch horses” are becoming more the preferred mount of the general lot of ‘trail riders’, meaning casual weekend riders, who don’t show or game, who just want to enjoy their horse without a lot of pressure and stress.
Ranch horses are often not stereotypical QH in type. They tend to generic useful horse. Anything that generally looks something like a traditional QH tends to be referred to as “quarter”, and everything else is “ranch”.
It’s so difficult to explain. But stride is everything in a show horse. Yes I have tried to take quarter horses around a course, they can’t make it. You won’t get a show horse price, but to some, a great mind is invaluable. So, 5-6k is a possibility, especially for a great mind, but don’t expect 5 figures
I have no views on whether you can make a profit (I doubt the numbers will work in your favor unless it’s a business you can really scale up). I will say that I’m an East Coast lady, born and raised in the West, currently drowning in a sea of OTTBs and WBs. I’d do anything to run across a doppelganger of the second horse I owned as a kid, a 16.1 Appendix QH mare who we purchased as a 4 yo for about $1500. She did Pony Club rally and the beginning of the hunters, but she topped out at 2’6". Looking back, I wonder if a different program/more skilled rider could have taken her higher, but my trainer (who had a barn full of Appendix QHs and OTTBs) was sure that was her ceiling.
If I stumbled across a horse like her, who had potential to jump higher (say 3’3"), I’d happily spend 10-15k, even 20k. Those are a lot of stars to align on your part, as the seller. I guess this long rambling tale is just to say, I’m on the East Coast and I’m all in for more quarter horses.
I second this. As someone who would be very interested in this type of horse, I’d be paying pretty close attention to the quality of the lead change. That’s an important button to have in place.
I’ll take a stab at explaining. In the hunter show ring, the lines are set up a specific number of strides apart, based on a 12 or 13’ stride. 6, 7 and 8 stride lines are typical. In general, a big WB looks like they’re “walking” the lines, their rider having to compress the stride to fit in the requisite number of strides. A big TB gets the set number of strides (called “getting the distance” or “getting the step”) from a relaxed forward canter. A smaller horse, or a smaller strided horse, struggles to get the distances, either having to gallop to get there or adding a stride in the line. Adding a line is penalized in most divisions. All other things being equal about the same trip, a horse that gets the distances easily from a relaxed pace will always pin above one that has to work to get there.
This creates a big premium on size in the hunters, as size roughly coorelates to length of stride. There are very, very, very few hunters under 16 hands any longer for this reason. Horses between 14.2 and 15.3 tend to be Pony Club, 4 - H, very local hunters or local jumpers.
If you have a nice 14.3 hand horse, you can more than triple its value for getting it measured as a pony and getting it a permanent card. It’s not marketable at 14.3, but people will line up for it if it measures as a pony
This is NOT a breed bias, as some like to insist. It may be a type bias. But being able to make the distances in a relaxed fashion is critical to a horse’s ability to be successful in the hunters, even at local and schooling shows.
