Breeeding equine. Novice

irishguy19772

Taking over family farm and thinking of breeding some connemara foals. Have the facilities and land/feed.

Anyone ever take a punt on buying thoroughbreds or is that a different ball game? Buy weanlings and sell as yearlings or 2 year olds?

Albert Johnson

There's a market for quality well bred connemara's but you'd probably want to keep there progeny until there 2 or 3 year old to maximise your chances. Foal prices are the first to suffer in a sticky trade as the buyer will have to keep them for an additional 2 or 3 years before there ready to work with. You'd want a good mare to begin with and pick you're stallion to suit. If you kept 2 or 3 quality mares you'd be as far on as 7 or 8 middling ones.

I don't know anything about Tb's but I'd imagine there more specialised. Also buying a weanling to sell as a yearling isn't really a runner imo as you're not adding much value to them.

If it were me I'd be more inclined to buy a few nice connemara foals in the backend and let them run on for 2 year's and sell ready for breaking. You'd save yourself the hassle of keeping mare's, covering/foaling them ect. Once you kept on top of worming and socialising the yearlings there isn't that much else involved. Obviously you'd want to buy something nice with potential that will be saleable in the future.

Ave Sodalis

By novice, do you mean you've never kept an equine?

irishguy19772

Have a connemara mare and bred her a couple of times