Honestly I think it’s mostly 1) land mass 2) quantity that makes it so much 3) easier. Ireland and the UK have the benefit of a lot of horses, breeders, and top riders in a very small space compared to the US. You could fit more than 8 Irelands into just Texas alone.
Places like Fernhill and Cooley mostly just source horses from breeders within the area, buy them, put in a little training, and sell them at a markup. They breed very very very few, almost none, of what they’re selling. They have a good eye for a horse, experience choosing good ones, they know where to get them, they know how to train them, and they know how to market them. You can go to one of those farms and see dozens of specially-sourced horses for sale in the same place. While I am a huge supporter of American breeders and breeding programs (you know me) I can also completely understand the appeal of a place like that. You make one trip, spend less time and travel expenses, and you get to see a parade of horses that you know will be of the type you’re looking for. It’s an easier experience for the buyer, and you pay more for that.
There just aren’t a lot of places like that here. We cover so much land mass, and you rarely can see that many specialized horses in one place. We have very few places that really source specialized horses like that, especially young event horses. Certain none in the same quantity. You may end up spending weeks of travel time and a lot of plane tickets/car miles to see the same number of horses you’d see in a day or two at a place like Cooley or Fernhill. Plus yeah there is something to be said for the fact that people like a “name”, they like the experience of flying to Europe and sitting on lots of nice horses and coming home with one from a recognizable farm. It feels fancy. People love to feel fancy.
I will say that I absolutely DO think that we are producing an extremely similar caliber of horse here in North America. The prices for a young horse here are also similar if you’re buying directly from the breeder, by the time you factor in importing and quarantine of a European horse. It’s true that it’s more expensive to raise them here though (sometimes considerably more so), which many people don’t realize or understand. Having an intermediary source like Cooley or Fernhill that purchases from breeders and resells to riders would be a tougher business model here as far as carving out much profit.
While the caliber of horses is good and rapidly improving, we do have fewer people breeding for eventing, and the sheer quantity of top caliber horses available from the US is much smaller. Most breeders also aren’t situated particularly close together, so it’s more difficult to draw buyers steadily through if you can only show them a couple of horses. Many of them also don’t have the connections required to really get the horses sourced to the right people for training or to be seen by top riders. I know there are efforts being made to improve all that through various programs (US Event Horse Futurity, YEH, FEH, etc), but the truth is that logistically it’s pretty difficult and not an easy or simple thing to solve. I hope that people start to become more and more aware of the farms and the breeding programs here that are producing good horses… I certainly try to help spread the word as much as possible.
