Not every baby is going to recoup your costs and some will pay for two.
Thats my point! Most of them DONT, but others still gripe about paying money for the horses. If they dont want to pay for it, then go breed it themselves and spend their own money. :lol:
Chiming in…
My hay cost is 100/month per head. More in winter, when it’s not supplemented with grass, but it’s fully 1200/year/horse. My grain cost is about $50/mo per horse. (more for lactating mares, or growing babies, less for mature horses, easy keepers-- that’s an average).
I trim the horses every 5-6 weeks, at 30/visit. I paste worm myself. I do most of the shots myself.
I breed to leading sires, but usually get a “deal” of some sort through a futurity, or as a past breeder, or based on the mare-- so my semen usually costs between $1500-2000. I have easy breeders (knock on wood) and settle on one cycle, often just one dose of semen. This helps keep costs down.
Because my foals are born in North Texas, they need rhoddococcus plasma (two doses, total about $500) along with the normal baby shots and tests.
I do not carry insurance on broodmares or babies and I do most of the work myself. There is an incremental portion of my mortgage and taxes directly attributable to having a barn, acreage etc beyond my house and yard; but I don’t count that in. Ditto a cost for the equiptment, storage buildings, carts, buckets, consumable and non consumable supplies. I also consider depreciation and upkeep of the broodmare, and assume 2 foals per 3 years of mare care.
All that said, if I wanted to “break even” I need to sell a weanling for about $6500, yearling for about $9000. This is not a fully loaded cost, so it is still understated. Basically, I breed 10 horses, knowing that I will likely lose money on 6 of them, break even on 3, but the ONE will emerge as my next champion.
Someone suggested it would be less to have your own stallion, and I disagree. Many of my friends are stallion owners-- and it can cost them upwards of $50K per year for promotion, advertising, and fees for standing the stallion. They are spending far more to stand and promote the stallion, than they are saving on breed fees. Early in the stallions career, many invest closer to $100K annually. To me, a stallion that does not have the right breeding, the right credentials, who has proven themselves in the showring and in the breeding shed… is not a sire. And I won’t breed to that kind of horse. In my area, a baby by a stallion who’s claim to fame is being a son of a leading sire… is almost unmarketable. I’ve seen people pass them over, when prices are less than $1000. I’ve come to think those stallions are too often merely sperm donors, or horses that should have been gelded. People will pay astonishing prices for a truly great horse, but it’s harder to get any money at all for an average horse.
[QUOTE=carosello;2605944]
OK so how do you keep any horse for a year for a mear 1K???
Do you not include vet costs (shots, breeding/collection), farrier, hay or grain in that total? If your horse is out of state what about shipping costs, stabling, paperwork (coggins, healt certs)?
Just my farrier alone is at least a quarter of that per year per horse and that is for trims.[/QUOTE]
Have to agree.
I know my hay cost is higher than most, due to my location (North Texas). For one horse, I spend $1200 in hay (would be more if I did not have good grass for much of the year), $600 in grain. Worming costs about $100 per year, routine shots another $100. Trimming feet another $300. So I am at $2300 before I buy any flyspray, shavings, a brush, a saltblock, or have a visit from the vet for a cut or colic. Add in routine supplies (bandaging supplies, banamine, bute, SMZs, electrolytes, flyspray, wound treatment stuff), an annual coggins test, an occasional winter blanket or halter, and it’s pretty easy to figure on about $250/month or $3000/year per horse. Realistically.
Go back and read my earlier post where I laid out my costs and how I keep them down. I do my own trims for 30 horses which is a significant savings, I feed round baled hay that I buy in bulk, my horses live outside, they are healthy and rarely need the vet (a nice change of pace due to having a hardy breed), I do live cover with my own stallion, I pay the vets for IgG tests and one untrasound, I feed small quantities of oats and a good vit/min supplement and my horses stay nice and fat, I buy generic wormers, and worm on a regular basis. I do my own vaccinations annually, I do pay $30 for a coggins per horse a year and health certs only when I need them.
Those were my costs last year…probably they are going up this year with the increases in hay, grain and fuel…but it’s probably not adding that much on per horse…a couple hundred each I’d guess at most.
I’m not including show costs or shipping in my number either…just basic care, feeding, vet and direct costs. Indirect costs and overhead push my cost per horse up higher but it’s still no where close to 10K a horse…more like $400 more a horse…if that much…spread over the 55 horses on our farm to include boarders and our own.
I’ll bet if you ask County, he can keep them even for less as he has a large farm and has lower feed costs than I do.
Maybe the reason for that is because they put too much effort into trying to sell weanlings and yearlings to buyers who don’t exist?
I know people who are breeding truly top quality horses ( ie elite/sps mares, top euro stallions ect) and I can assure you they have NO problems selling the weanlings for at least ten k, often more. I also notice that alot of the smaller hano breeders, many of whom post on this board, usually have their foals sold before weaning, and rarely have anything available. TRUE top quality always sells.
:yes:
I was just looking at your website, STF. Didn’t see a lot of high-overhead stuff, like vinyl fencing and washed stone walkways–so I thought not to lump you into that group, 'tis all.
Most breeders I know dont have trouble selling their young stock.
Then you either don’t know many breeders or you define reality however you see fit. How did you manage to come to that conclusion having posted on this BB 7380+ times? Just to remind you, here are some of my favorites…
My #1 favorite thread about why breeders are NOT selling babies very much (kept not because it mentions my guy, but because it was started by someone who can’t be treated like he’s an idiot): http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=100436.
Indeed, what is really cool with that thread is to compare what the same folks posting here said there!
I also particularly like (and so return often to) this thread: http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=92623 because it keeps me grounded!
One statement from the aforementioned thread that just rocks me each time I consider it is this one: “This is a hobby for so many people, and it is hard to compete with people who don’t need to make any money at this. This is something you don’t often see in other businesses. For example, how many people decide to open a car dealership “just for fun”, lol.”
What an intriguing monkey wrench to throw into this the gears of this rivetting discussion! Wowser, think about it (in a way that probably wasn’t the originators intent–I think she meant UNDER-pricing, not over pricing): “Ego says I have to get this much for it, so I’m going to spend whatever it takes to be get it sold that way (or lie about it ;))! I want to sell expensive foals, so even if I lose money doing so, I’m going to!”
Try to wrap your mind around THAT when it comes to the $10K weanling. No way to prove this, but imagine one person sees another pricing this baby with similar breeding this way, and so determines that hers, too, must be worth that much–and so on and so on, even though that first baby may have been priced that way partly because its breeder simply could afford to price it that way (and promote it, it’s dam, it’s farm, etc., etc.). NOTE: I’m not saying this IS what happens, like, “all” the time. But I suspect it happens sometime, which is why the statement about competing against those who do it as a hobby can really make your head spin if you think about it too much!
Meanwhile, there’s that article DBs found about demographics and the future of the market. I like this particular piece, even though it’s AQHA based, because it’s one of those rare ones which establishes a realistic, rather than idealistic, basis for current and future market(s):
http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=102925
And then there’s this thread, useful for reminding one of how we’ve acknowledged just how “average” the foals are we usually produce (making genuinely $10K-plus-worthy ones that much more unlikely to be selling in great numbers): http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=37569
And still more threads: http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=32355
http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=26579
The cost of advertising a stallion in no way related to the cost of raising a foal. Again a personal choice, that has no bearing on the quality of said weanling.
Mary
Not really. GOOD MARKETING always sells!
[QUOTE=pwynnnorman;2606058]
Not really. GOOD MARKETING always sells![/QUOTE]
Ain’t that the truth!!!
Mary
??? They don’t eat?
Quarter Horses etc = 95 % Horse Market
Your WBs = 05% Horse Market
Need better market or lower prices.
It would be a part of your allocated overhead, mostly if you breed your stalion to your own mares. 
I have no problem with our market. I dont agree with .05%, but Im not going to go and try to figure it out. Could care less of the QH markets, so it does nto matter. If you go look at the top breeders in North America with those ol’ crappy warmbloods, who are breeding to top proven mares, you will see that they are not having trouble selling.
[QUOTE=GreekDressageQueen;2605166]
I don’t disagree that breeding is expensive and some foals cost a lot to get on the ground, but these numbers aren’t true for everyone.[/QUOTE]
That’s right. Those numbers assume the mare gets in foal on the first try. Would you like to talk about the more than 12K I spent trying to get my top mare in foal this year, and I still don’t know if the last round worked? That is in breeding fees alone, btw, and does not count all the other expenses I incurred for her from March to August. Nor the mid-five figure purchase price of Elite mares, etc.
Now, I do agree that just because someone spends $XXX to get a foal on the ground does not necessarily mean that foal will be worth $XXX, let alone more than that. Although I only breed horses that at the very least are capable of producing top quality offspring, the value and price of the baby will ultimately depend on how that individual turns out. But if the foal turns out to be very nice, I don’t know how someone can begrudge the breeder for asking $10K (which I find to be low) or more, given the breeder’s investment and the fact that said foal should be worth at least triple that by age 3.
[QUOTE=GreekDressageQueen;2605897]
if you accept breeding horses and losing money as a “labor of love” then expect to give away some of the babies in the “name of love” too. Not every baby is going to recoup your costs and some will pay for two.[/QUOTE]
Or I can just keep them. I am not running a charity here.
This is how some of the Europeans do it - they raise the youngstock in groups like we do livestock:
http://www.paardenopfok.com/Opfok.html
I imagine this improves the profit margin.
They also have an export market for their culls that we do not have - ie. North America IS the export market for elite riding horse culls (and there is easy access to a taboo-free horsemeat market for the bottom culls too).
I really don’t see the problem here. If making a profit is the goal and your not doing it then either change your operation so you are or quit breeding. I don’t understand the big deal about someone making a lower offer on a horse either I do it all the time I also do it on land I’ve bought, farms, trucks, cars, alot of things. Just because someone offers less hardly means you have to take that offer.
Raising livestock in herds is hardly a new concept here in the U.S.
Pwynn, I am at the point in reading your comments where I am interested to find out what you sell your horses for and what you think is a reasonable amount to pay for youngsters and going horses. Are you giving the good ones away?
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
