John Freeman – Too many sales, too many horses at the bottom end of the scale…
Tinnitus is a curse and after three days of listening to auctioneers begging for bids. I feel punished – getting rid of the high pitched noise in my head is going to take some doing so I took part of Monday off, writes John Freeman on Freeman Stallions’ eNews.
I have to say that it’s hard to concentrate at sales when many at tables around you are there not for the sale but for a day out. The louder the auctioneer made his voice to try and keep people focused the louder they spoke – I am going deaf so that’s cruel torture.
Someone suggested we pitch an umbrella outside the tent and bid “out-back” in future – definitely going to try that. Bidding on the telephone was also difficult.
There is talk about the market being depressed, certain sires not selling well etc etc. Let’s put that all into perspective.
Too many sales, too many horses at the bottom end of the scale.
What do we expect from weak damlines when size and conformational issues pose questions.
There are a host of other factors that affected this market but I am sure that the drop in averages is largely due to over-supply at this end of the market.
Four hundred yearlings at competing sales, two days apart.
You don’t need to be a helicopter pilot to work that out.
The usual sire questions are also doing the rounds; “seems like the didn’t want the progeny of XYZ, he didn’t sell well”.
Really?? Every sire has wastage and this is the place to find them.
Unwise to draw conclusions at this level of the market without looking at the physical specimen and the catalogue page.
There were plenty of well-made horses at both sales with enough type on the page to suggest promise, but it was a buyers’ market, so we climbed in and I am very happy with what we bought.
On reflection we should have pushed a bit harder on a few that we let go but you do that when you know that there are another 650 yearlings coming onto the market in Johannesburg over the next two months.
Having seen both of the Joburg catalogues now I have no doubt that we’ll find a very good short list there. Our record at the Jhb sales speaks for itself.
There very definitely was more of an appetite for some of the new young sires progeny.
We are very happy with the performance of the stallions in our portfolio at both of the March sales.
