We just bought a horse!

Researching the horses for sale is a long process with lots of effort and teamwork.  It begins with understanding what type of horse you are looking to buy (trotter, pacer or open to either) and if you have a preference on a colt or filly.  We decided to narrow in on trotters and thought we were looking for filly.  From there, three of us look through all the pedigrees and eliminate horses we think don’t have a great bloodline of champions.  We rank the horses and afterwards share the list with one another and discuss why we think certain ones might be a better choice than another.  After looking at the list of horses, we decided to go to the Ohio Jug Sale as there were 10x the amount of horses on our list versus the Lexington Selected Sale.

Prior to the sale Tyler, Ben and Brent went and looked at each horse on their list and examined their confirmation (correctness of a horse's bone and muscle structure), Tyler checked the airway of the horse, and we examined the horse’s size in comparison to the average. This eliminated some horses on the list and also elevated some horses to a different ranking. 

On sale day, it’s a whirlwind of activity including looking at the horses again on their way into the sale ring and making a cap on the sale price of each horse based on our ranking.  Then the anxiety builds as you start the bidding and the hammer flies.  Luckily for us, we landed on Hill Fire who not only has some brothers which have proven themselves, but we also got him well under the average and median price.

This year the average sale price was $30,766 and the median price was $25,000. This was a nearly 11% increase from last year.  That means we got Hill Fire for 25% less than the average and 8% less than the median price of a horse at the Ohio Jug Sale. Nearly all the horses we originally planned to get went for a price out of our capital range. 

Hill Fire was the perfect fit for the launch of our new look with Blaze Racing Co.!