this is just the saddest scene ever. Poor mare.
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Holy crap. That poor mare.
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@Alterrain Iâm getting more for the recips ($26,100) and maybe slightly less than $10k for each ICSI, but youâre definitely in the ballpark. Itâs safe to say no money was being spent on dewormer!
https://www.equmed.com/reproductive-services/icsi
Dr. Fossâ contract claims a 20% success rate, so I feel safe in saying more than 6 attempts were made to get those 6 foals.
Kate didnât attend any KWPN keurings this year.
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Thank you, I was sure I had seen another photo or video that was especially horrifying but I could only find the one that mostly just showed her front end.
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Is she leasing recipient mares or just taking in free/cheap mares offered by desperate people?
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Oh my gosh. This is despicable.
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Right?! My thoughts exactly. If anything, I feel like this increases the chance of injury since the rope could get caught up on the fence (or whatever else, because⊠horses). Itâs horse management 101 to not turn out with anything that could catch onto something, that is not designed to break away in an emergency. I literally gasped out loud when I saw the photo of the foal turned out with the rope tied around its neck.
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Oh noâŠneed popcorn and a box of wine here.
Hint to breeder, scribblerâs not the only person reading COTH Forums.
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If I randomly came across this photo on FB I would assume this baby was in an auction feedlot somewhere and Iâd be hoping someone would step up to save it.
Yet in this Fâd up world this is a purpose-bred weanling with a 25K pricetag. Unbelievable.
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She said that money isnât an issue, but if that were true, she would have the best staff and be at the best facility. There are many breeding operations that donât look like this. It sounds like she can afford for hers not to as well?
I remember seeing pictures of a brood mare or two and I thought that they didnât look to be in good condition. Itâs just so sad.
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I cannot imagine how clueless someone would have to be to turn a foal out with the neck attachment. If say it got caught on a hind leg while rolling, or a fence postâŠbroken neck or at best, wobblers.
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Or maybe feed it inside the fence so it does not feel the need to jump out of the fence to find food.
I thought this foal was sold in utero. So in that case, she already sold the baby, she just needs the baby to come out alive, nothing more. If you want to be that kind of breeder, that is the mare to skimp on care for, because no matter how the foal comes out, it is sold.
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This breeder/seller almost sounds like a hoarder. Breed breed breed, farm out (maintain ownership) and price too impossibly high, and possibly disfigured, to sell.
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Good point. Doing ICSI I would have thought she would have leased mares from Dr. Foss, because syncing a recip just adds to the hassle of the process. But at least one person on Facebook free leased her a mare (the one with the aborted fetus in the filthy stall). That mare went home 300 pounds underweight and lame.
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Re the Keurings, at one point she threw a fit because KWPN-NA (which runs a very tight ship going all around the country in a different location each day) wouldnât come to her farm separately to inspect her babies. It was outrageous given there is a Keuring in Ocala! I had to drive 4.5 hours each way to mineâŠ.
Anyway, the year before she had the one that did well then a bunch of Second Premiums. Second Premium is âbelow breed standardâ but above âkicked out of the registry.â Wow, impressive.
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But to an uneducated buyer, saying that 100% of your foals were âfirst or second premiumâ sounds ok. I abashed her of that notion on the other thread (and so did you if memory serves but itâs 1800 posts!).
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I wonder aloud how many foals actually end up selling. I cannot imaging paying $25,000 for even the nicest of these foals when for the same price (or less) you can import one or get one in the US/Canada that is well bred top and bottom and that looks so much more attractive. Itâs one thing to convince a rube to buy an in utero foal-- but even a rube is going to see the foal once it comes out and think âhuh,â if that buyer is doing ANY comparison shopping AT ALL.
Itâs much easier to get underwater on⊠everything⊠when your whole business model is to sell in utero before anyone SEES the foal or before it costs you much $$$ other than getting it made (and keeping the recipient mare going) and then you end up having a bunch of unexciting foals and nobody buys them, meanwhile youâve already bred more-- and in numbers that are wholly unsustainable for most businesses, and youâve got a huge price tag on non-exciting foals so theyâre not selling. It almost feels like one of those MLM pyramid schemes where by the time you realize you canât sell the sh*t youâve got, you already bought 200 more boxes to sell. So there are unexciting foals all over the place and you have more in utero on the way. Meanwhile youâre spending more and more $$$ for living things that are actually here when the whole business model was just to facilitate the foalâs creation and sell it before you have to pay much to maintain it⊠and before you know it you are in quasi-hoarder territory where you have more animals than you can keep on top of and/or afford. This business model seems like a guarantee to spiral out of control, itâs just a matter of when.
The business model seemed⊠shaky to begin with. How many people can you possibly lure in just on the fancy name of the stallion? A limited number. Because the donor mares are, characterizing them charitably, unexciting. and the initial offspring demonstrate well that even the best stallion can only improve so much. Any one of the foals look like the sort of foal you can get from a backyard breeder or the Amish. If you put one in a lineup with a bunch of random auction foals, I donât think anyone could pick out the one with a famous sire. Perhaps the talent will shine through once they get undersaddle (I have doubts but perhaps?!) but the curb appeal on the foals is nada. And curb appeal and/or doing well on the line (which relies on curb appeal) is what sells foals.
If youâre going to sell in utero based on potential you really need to be: (1) famous and well respected as a breeder; (2) wealthy and savvy enough to market like crazy in an effective way; (3) winning on the line with your existing foals; or (4) able to get truly rare/elite (not just good or âlikely to be successfulâ but truly rare/elite) breeding stock. None of the above applies here. Yes the stallions are proven and big names-- but you can get most of their semen. So theyâre not rare and the mares are not rare/elite.
I just donât understand how this was ever going to work. This seemed like a disaster from the start.
I think it would have been different to have a handful of mares (2-3) in your own custody/control and to experiment with the DHH/warmblood stallion for sport cross, and show them on the line, and break an older one or two and show in young horses classes, etc. These horses DONâT float MY boat but maybe they float someoneâs and I could see someone deciding this was going to be their niche and doing it on a manageable level and turning that into a reasonable business. That would have been a responsible way to do this. But thatâs VERY far afield from what was happening here. I just donât see how this was EVER going to end up being anything but what it looks like is happening-- a bunch of roughly auction-grade horses spread out across the country being poorly cared for that no one is going to spend anything LIKE the price tag for let alone more than auction price.
This makes me so sad. I canât see a great outcome for these foals and mares. Even at a firesale price, who is going to buy them? And given what it cost to make them, even the âbreak evenâ price for them is too much. I hope Iâm proven wrong and people are lining up to pay $25,000 to buy these foals and give them great homes but I am wracking my brain and I canât imagine WHO these buyers ARE?
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So⊠Iâve seen situations when a mare is hard to keep weight on during a pregnancy and then the foal pulls the mare down even when youâre feeding a ton. In general a reputable breeder might try once more with that mare and if sheâs a hard keeper during pregnancy again wonât breed her again. Also, the rest of the mares are always fat so itâs clear itâs a problem with the one mare.
This situation where ALL The broodmares look poor is alarming.
I was just at a low end sale barn and someone had brought in 5 weanlings they had bought at a auction in TEXAS, shipped them to Indiana, then sold them 2 months later at the sale barn and those weanlings looked freaking fantastic for how much theyâd just been handed around and they were âjustâ QHs.
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Some people just shouldnât be allowed to have animals.
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Agreed. Iâve seen a mare that was a hard keeper begin with lose some condition while pregnant, but she didnât look like sheâd been malnourished either.
