I have some eventing-bred youngstock that I bred to keep, but health issues are driving me to consider selling some off. What are pricing guidelines for selling weanlings and yearlings? It seems like weanlings sell better. Obviously bloodlines and size will matter, but is there a range to consider? The hot market seems to have cooled, so has that been reflected in prices for youngsters as well?
Honestly, I think the best advice you can get is to research - see what horses of similar age are selling for, it’s especially useful if you can find horses with similar or otherwise comparable breeding to the young horses you have.
Sales in the young horse market have definitely slowed. The very top prospects continue to do well, don’t get me wrong, but at least for the dressage market even very well respected programs with very well bred horses (some with full siblings under saddle who are doing well) are moving more slowly and the prices are down.
Once a horse is started under saddle the price that a buyer is willing to pay start to go up again. Depending on the age of your youngstock, if you’re looking for best prices I would consider seeing if it’s feasible to wait until an age where you can have them started under saddle (which admittedly, may be yet another fee and more time with them on your bill - but if that’s not a direct concern…)
if there are older siblings their performance can be used as a bases for the setting the value of the current crop.
This thread just spurred a thought that probably isn’t helpful at all, but with a vast amount of horse sales being conducted or advertised via Facebook under the guise of it not being an animal for sale, it’s harder to see what horses are selling for. Some groups don’t allow any disguised pricing such as carrots, other emojis/symbols, or calculator screenshots. FB doesn’t alow sales/pricing period. So this makes it harder to do research.
Sure, there are still other sites out there, and maybe some will disclose the information privately, but still. Something I thought about.
I’m in a “Warmblood foals for sale” or some other similar title group on facebook and it’s quite active, maybe look there for some comparables?
I’ve seen weanlings go from $5k-$25k in that group, so it’s incredibly variable. Definitely recommend looking for comps to get an idea of where to start.
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This would probably be a great resource for OP. Finding FB groups - there is a WB marketing group which might be useful for them, and I also can think of a few other groups, there’s a WB breeders discussion group (no sales allowed, only discussion) where people will pretty candidly discuss with each other things like pricing. Maybe such a thing could be found for eventing, if OP thinks their young horses would do best if marketed that way?
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I have definitely run into this, not just selling a young horse but a horse I had under saddle for sale. I was having a hard time deciding if I was pricing her fairly and in line with the market, because I would see ads for similar horses on FB, but price was usually hidden or “PM for details.” I did have fairly good luck messaging other sellers and just saying up front that I was not shopping and they did not have to respond if they didn’t have time, but I had a similar horse I was looking to market and wondered what they were asking for their horse. Most were very willing to share info with me, which was nice. But definitely more work.
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I have found some of those horses advertised on FB on other sites like Warmbloods for Sale by doing some sleuthing. And some of the FB ads list another sales site that lists prices. But those are the asking price. No way to find out what the horse actually sold for.
I’m sorry to hear about your health issues!
I think the market for babies has cooled significantly. I still see a lot of well-bred weanlings for sale in the $12k-$15k range, maybe a bit more for some really special breeding and some dressage foals, but it seems that breeders that usually don’t have any foals left at the end of the season have a few still left this year and the market has been pretty saturated. Yearlings seem to be about the same price as the weanlings and, IME, tend to be a tough sell. I think the market picks back up a bit for 2 and 3 year olds, especially 3 year olds. But the yearling market is tough.
Warmbloods-for-sale is a good website to look at comparisons, I think. Most seem to have prices. I think there were start lists for the Young Horse Show Finals on their website or FB page that listed which horses were for sale and some had prices, so that might be a good place to look. I’ll see if I can find it later.
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I expect two’s can be as hard as yearlings this time of year. Hard to add either to a feed bill over winter, and any given horse is bound to have a fugly period or two somewhere between one and four that will make them harder to sell just because it is harder to see quality and potential in an out of balance conformation…
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Event bred babies are notoriously difficult to sell, IMO. Unless you have a proven program and some well known bloodlines, there is little interest …
