How Much Money Is A Thoroughbred Foal

It's probably a lot cheaper to buy a horse than it is to breed one.

Who would breed a horse when you can buy one for half the price of breeding it? This commodity, written past late New Zealand Arabian breeder Gabrielle Deuss, outlines the fiscal delivery it takes to breed a foal.

Notation: While the figures in the article, which was written several years ago, volition vary depending on location, breed and circumstances, the basics are the same the earth over.

This an age-old dilemma for breeders! While a few facts volition not convince the unconvincable, I idea information technology might be useful to wait at how much it costs to breed a foal and raise information technology to an age where information technology tin be broken to saddle. The following is for a gelding raised to three years and trained to saddle.

As prices vary throughout the country, this should not be taken as accented, it is an estimate, and an averaging of costs from personal feel and discussion with other breeders.

Costs can exist reduced a lot if there are no veterinary costs, you run an "organic" functioning (ie: no drenching), you permit natural wear and tear on hooves, and y'all use a local stallion with a lower stud fee. It does not include the costs of broken rail and fences, visits to the doctor later your caput has been bashed in, or your toe broken. Neither does it include the mandatory visit to a psychiatrist to explain why you lot got into this in the offset place (And how you are going going to leave!) The asterisks relate to costs of registration.

Event	Cost each	Total
Transport mare to Stud	$fifty – $450 ten 2	$100 – $900
Stud Fee	$850.00	$850
Stud costs, grazing, vet bills etc	$240	$240
Grazing for mare 12 months	$12.50 per week	$731.25
Post-natal care, vaccinations	$80	$fourscore
Blood-typing dam	$112.fifty	$112.fifty
Breed association membership	$100	$100
Registration fees	$xxx	$xxx
Gelding	$300	$300
Vet signature on reg. cert.	$50	$fifty
Grazing for three years	$12.fifty per calendar week	$2193.75
Hoof care	$30 each 10 4	$120
Drench, etc	$200 per year	$600
Supplementary feed, hay etc: Mare	$100	$300
Mare and foal	$50/month 10 six	$300
After weaning at half dozen months	$thirty/month 10 30	$900
Cost of Training to Saddle	$600 to $1200	$800
Total		$7807.50 to $8707.50
Animal Health (accidents, colic respiratory problems etc)	Space
Professional person Foaling	$500	$500
First prepare of shoes	$threescore to $120	$seventy

I know that many people will look at the above chart and guffaw with laughter at the total toll. It seems completely outrageous when one looks at the prices horses are advertised for. My math isn't that good (just as well), but I used the estimator to sum the higher up. Whatsoever horse advertised for $4000 is considered expensive, but if you expect at the higher up, one might well say that it was cheap.

You can of course reduce these costs if you have your ain stallion, only so you must share his costs across those of the foals he sires. Not many people transport their mares to professional person people to ensure they foal safely, but the above is ane genuine quote I had for this service. Service fees tin can become every bit high every bit $1350 including tax; vet bills can attain $yard or higher if you apply AI.

If y'all have your own property, in that location are no direct costs of grazing, but the horse excludes other opportunities, so one should really consider grazing as a toll. Grazing more often than not tin be as low as $ten per week and up to $60 in my experience. The cost of hay and lucerne (alfalfa) varies depending on the season.

If the equus caballus needs a comprehend, there is another $200 for wintertime and a similar amount for a summertime rugs.

If you lot show your horse, once again the costs rise, for transport, entry and ground fees, and the washing and polishing equipment.

I was talking to a local colleague recently. His view was that veterinary fees should be much higher than they are if people really paid for the quality of service that they are getting. These costs make the thought of horse buying become more than hard for the ordinary person. But it is the globe within which we operate.

The ways in which I try to hold costs are:

• buy feed in bulk
• railroad train in horses myself
• buy horse drenches in bulk
• keep vet bills at a minimum
• always pregnancy exam mares at 100 days so you don't waste extra feed if they are not in foal.
• sell some unbroken

Merely, the question remains. Why breed?

You lot will become the same equus caballus at three years former for less than half the cost.

Some interesting comments which I have had repeated to me:

• They are not worth annihilation until they take some miles nether their chugalug and accept proved themselves. Then yous can enquire maybe $5000 for them.
• Yous don't want $1400 for that 2-yr-old colt?!
• He's trained in, going well, five years sometime, and I want $900 for him!
• You can't sell him on "baste feed", yous are non a banking company!
• I rescued him from the meatworks, only cost me $200!
• I was thinking of request $2500 for her, exercise y'all think that is too much?
• If you can't afford a horse, go to the meatworks. That'southward where I got Joey.
• His stud fee was $800 merely I am going to cut my losses and quit him for $400
• I gave him away!

I have changed the quotes a piffling to protect myself from the potential wrath of the originators of the comments, and they are not pejorative. They just help to illustrate the surround within which nosotros operate.

All breeds probably have the same issues to face. Is there anything that tin can exist done to improve the returns to breeders? Can breeders expect to intermission even or fifty-fifty plow a small turn a profit – or should nosotros always look at equus caballus breeding as a hobby?

Every now and so, one breeder, or some strains go popular and highly sought afterwards and prices ascent because of the police force of supply and demand.

Maybe we should have some lessons from the New Zealand Dairy Board and set up a cooperative venture to promote the Kiwi bred horse. Sharing promotional expenses, and investing in some kind of quality system which says that horses bred by members of this cooperative are guaranteed to be of sound conformation, have been appropriately treated (vaccinated, wormed, hooves cared for, etc) and handled from birth by approved handlers and are genuinely what they are claimed to be (ie, there are no subconscious weaknesses).

There are breeders already who cull their unsound and poor quality horses (to the meat works to be rescued by some soft-hearted equus caballus lover).

I always balances the pleasure ane has in activities like this against the costs. The pleasance is indeed high.

Perhaps it is worth it later on all.

Source: https://www.horsetalk.co.nz/2017/05/19/cost-breeding-foal/

Posted by: williamsyoughought.blogspot.com

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