How long do you think prices are going to hold with the way our economy is currently heading?   Seems like folks have been asking and getting a pretty penny for some mediocre horses for a while now.   I noticed a couple of ads on Facebook today that are making me wonder if the interest rates and fuel prices are starting to effect the equine market?? 

I think the rich are getting richer. I don't t see the market ever going back to where Betty can afford to barrel race on the weekends. 

Prices have to come down!  People can't even afford fuel to go anywhere. 

It's not bothering the top 15% unless they need to sell stocks. This is the direct result of the D system. Should have left it at 3D half second splits.

Watching things over the past 3 months... I think prices are already coming down slowly. Tack is moving slower and cheaper than before. I watched the Gold Buckle Pink and Ruby sale and personally I thought what those horses brought was less than expected. From what I've observed on Facebook, people aren't commenting or reacting much to posts for horses for sale about 10k as much as before AND horses are staying on the market longer, with price reductions.

I agree the people in the industry with money will always probably have it, however I tend to think the 65% of the industry that are not professionals will "downsize" and prices will come down.

I was thinking it might be slowing down to but the last couple of days the horses I'm seeing on Facebook that I would consider reasonably priced for what they are have been selling within days.  I think the top hight dollar horses are going to stay high dollar even when things do slow down.

I personally think the horse market like most things right now is cooling off. Horses don't seem to be selling as fast. Even the horses 15k and under aren't getting snapped up. 

Maybe all the free government handouts, free rent, free utilities etc are all ending. and people actually have to go back to work.lol

I just had a convo about this after seeing some 2023 showbills posted already. 10 years ago you could enter a $10k added Open class for $60 and they'd have 200-400 entries just in open every time, gas wasn't historically high, and you could buy the best horse at the race for $20-25K. And now its $50 to enter a $1K added race, $5+ gas, and you can barely get a 4D horse for $20K. Its going to crash, it has to crash or there will be no one able to go to weekend jackpots or even NBHA super shows. Even the shows like Great Lakes that used to be 300-400 entries is a silly little weekend jackpot now, it was a ghost town this year. One showbill out for a little weekend jackpot at the end of this year, if you take and stall 1 horse for the weekend and enter open & adult, you're at $400. The 4D will pay out maybe $100 to the winner each day. A market where you have to pay that after spending $20k on a horse isn't sustainable for the industry, especially right now. I'm not saying I want to see it bottom out, but its going to have do something. These incentives are great for the industry to an extent, but they're going to absolutely wipe out weekend jackpots and the people that don't go to the incentive shows 

I had quit racing for about three years and decided to start back being a weekend warrior.  Apparently I decided to make this move at the very worst time because of the horse prices. I ended up with a decent little mare that I paid about $2500 more than she was worth four years ago. I feel like that scene in Tiger King when he said "I'm never going to finanically recover from this" because my level of competitiveness will never level up to her paying for herself. But shes really pretty

Can you elaborate on this theory? I'm curious how 4 and 5D are effecting fuel and entry costs. I'm obviously missing the connection here

I can elaborate all day. I've been predicting this for absolutely years! Are you ready?

Before the advent of the D system, we had 2 groups: rodeo girls and play day girls. (Futurist girls were like unicorns) The expensive horses (20k or less) belonged to the rodeo girls.  We would all groan aloud when one of the rodeo girls would pull up to a play day barrel jackpot-winner take all-with a $5 or $10 entry fee and always fewer than 20 entries. But we had fun and could afford to go. Nobody had a LQ. We all had 2 horse bumper pulls or stock trailers. STAY WITH ME. If you did not have a chance in heck of WINNING, you stayed at your local riding club. You had to be able to ride and win to go. Nobody cheered for the girl at the rodeo who was two seconds off. 

Enter NBHA with its D system. All of a sudden you could barrel race and win without winning! That was a huge draw. People flocked to the sport. Prices for a decent playday horse immediately rose from $1000 to $5000. Stand alone barrel races appeared. Parents who could afford it began paying exorbitant prices for those elusive kid horses that were fast and safe. I was at the first NBHA super show in Natchitoches, LA. Rodeo girls, playday girls, Talmadge Green and Kay Blandford. Guess who won? Most of us stayed in motels. But mediocre riders went home with money and were hooked. The price of horses really started to rise as the 3D riders entered the sport. The horses that could never win were as much as the ones that could. In fact, the prices on the best horses were the last to rise. The wealthy ladies could buy a horse, "ride" it, ruin it and buy another. You see them. The ones with a different horse each year. It was attractive to the rich because they could buy horses, hire trainers and grooms. The trainer will go to races and saddle and warm up horses. Kids or lady gets on and makes run and gets off.  The new wealthy barrel racers wanted the LQ to stay cool or warm at day races even before weekend shows became the norm. They also wanted trucks with all the bells and whistles. Ask a salesman who buys most of the 90k trucks and he'll say barrel racers. Because of the influx of wealthy customers, entries and fees went up. It didn't bother the rich but it kept some of the riffraff at home. Just like the division between Dillard's and WalMart. Now, 25 years later, BR has become yet another sport for the wealthy like polo, TB racing, and cutting. The fees are out of reach for middle income families without even thinking about purchase price and fuel. Unless you are monied, you will not attend an event that costs you $600 a weekend with a small chance of winning $200 at the most and even that is based on chance and the fastest time of the day. If you have been in the sport for 20 years, you can't honestly tell me you haven't noticed the complete change in the type of person attending. The blue collar working class and middle class can not afford this. I can't afford it and we are upper middle class. Around here we are up to $40 entry for $250 added. It's insane. 

Gotcha. Thank you for explaining that in such great detail.  I think I can understand what you are saying and I do agree .. although I've had horses my entire life I grew up hunter jumper and it was expensive back then to run with the big dogs ... good trainers with grooms and fancy horses.... it was expensive back then and I don't know how my parents did it for us.. both my sister and I competed and had a string of nice NICE horses to compete on. Expensive then and expensive now are COMPLETELY different, I feel. No way in this day could I have been doing it at the level I was. The last nice horse I had was purchased for me by my loving grandmother and he was 80k Dutch warm blood and a wonderful talented mount for sure... I didn't come even close to winning that money back on him. Nowadays that same horse would probably be in the 200k range I'm sure. So I've only been actually going to barrel races for a year so yeah I'm fairly new to all of the D system and how it works vs how it use to be. I see some extreme things at some of these races and I feel poor most of the time! I just run my 14yr old grade head horse I patterned myself... not so much lately because of pretty much everything in this post!  Fuel, entry fees etc etc .. I can't afford it.. we are blue collar middle class all day long... my husband drives a truck and I stay home with the kids.. we make ends meet but it's a struggle at times. I joined Texas sr pro rodeo association in hopes to go run and enjoy it more and stay local... and it's been really fun, the ladies are great. There's usually 45-50 ladies running barrels at each rodeo and typically the same gals. I'm gonna say that's been the most fun I've had, attending these rodeos.. once a month. Usually we can swing that and since they are usually local I don't have to do overnights .. only a few arenas I have. It helps with the cost. You can enter Saturday and Sunday or just one or the other. I've missed the last 3 or 4 unfortunately because my horse got hurt but I'm hoping to get back to it soon. I told my husband I probably won't run anywhere else since I've joined this association.  I just really enjoy the atmosphere much better and the people and running 1x a month (Saturday and Sunday) is doable financially and not so taxing on my horse either. 

So bare with me, humor me for a minute.  Do yall think BR is gone and only a sport now for the wealthy? That can afford a horse that will actually be competitive enough, be able to afford the so called "maintenance " it takes to keep the horse winning/competing "competitively " plus the entry fees, traveling,  training, feed etc etc ... when I go to a race, I go to have fun, and try our hand, sometimes the stars align and we pick up a little check here n there ... but I dang sure can't really afford to go for those reasons only anymore. I think we are up to $50-60 for a 250 added nowadays and it's usually an hour or so drive ... we just quit going to those. Kinda bums me out it's gotten so expensive.  But I'm sure the cost of putting on races has also increased for the producers? What entices people to attend races? Added money? Location, equal payouts? Around here it's usually a 40EF plus a $10 office fee. I think I'm starting to understand why a few girls I know only show up to run in exhibition for $5 now and they stick around to gage where their run would fall. I use to think how pointless! But I'm starting to think it's pretty dang smart lol 

I don't know about down there but where I am from, take that $40 add another $10-$20 for an office/ground fee. And then you have to add in all the nomination fees if you want to run the series, it can be so expensive. One weekend race that I know of was $5000 added per day entry fee was $150 per day, $35 dollar office fee per day, pens were $25 per day, even self penning cost $10 a day, then you also had a tractor fee.  $630 dollars for the weekend, plus the cost of food and fuel. And don't forget to add in the side pot incentives, so you can take the chance of being a crack baby in the main race and still come out with a little money to break even. 

IMO--people will find the money for their hobby, which is what barrel racing is for MOST. In our area there are still the playday shows, then there is the middle ground shows and then the Big Shows. Completely different crowds at all of them but as long as people are having fun and enjoying horses---does it matter ? 

Ahhh yes the added side pots! I forgot about those too. Lots and lots of added fees. I believe my daughter just paid close to $300 to run for 2 days with some added youth side pot. That wasn't even overnight. It was close enough to haul back n forth but still. She ended leaving with nothing but memories... 

It takes a lifestyle change for a lot of people, some can & will & some won't. So in my mid 20s I went crazy with several credit cards, that I'm still digging my way out of at 34. I'm a single person, one 40 hour per week job with a house, truck, and trailer. Dog, cat, & board 2 horses @$275/mo ea(was 3 horses at the start of the month). All by myself.  If I wasn't making $700-1,000 payments on debt each month, I could haul a bit. Luckily the arena 15 miles away has like 20+ barrel races a year, so I don't have to go far. As a single person though that also lives 3 miles from my job, its super easy for me to keep a low cost of living. I can live (mortgage, utilities, fuel, & groceries) on around $1,250 a month with todays costs of things. And then factor in the horse costs. If I didn't have the debt I could do it no problem. And we all know barrel racers love their debt. I'm sitting this year out completely for the first time in probably 15 years. I sat out once before when I didn't have anything to run. Mine had spine surgery in Feb so she's going to be brought along this year and go back to hauling next year, But it's been giving me time and extra funds to put towards the debt, so that I can try to be debt free and free up that $$ to haul maybe 2x a month. Thats my sweet spot where I don't get so tired from packing up every weekend to go. I am not one that wants to go to a ton of races anyway. So for me, since I'm low maintenance as a single human, its still doable on a $22/hr job, to haul some. But there's not a lot of people in that position.

But if something happens to this mare I have, my only shot at affording something to replace her in this market is to breed her and wait on that baby. Or try to find a cheap questionable project and hope for the best.  And even then to breed, for a halfway decent stud now I'll be $10k into it before its born, then lord knows what for incentives. And I wont use the incentives myself, but if I decide I don't care for the baby or life changes have me selling, I'm SOL without being paid up. I won't get out half of what I put in to create the thing. The people that own the stud to my mare now are asking $7-8K for the 2022 weanlings and I paid $5k for her as a broke to ride 3 year old in 2017. And even with the diagnostics, multiple KS treatments/injections, 2 stifle ligament splits, & finally KS surgery (around $4K for all of this)...I'm still less into her financially than I probably would be trying to buy something of her talent in todays market. I think theres a lot of factors to the market right now. The divisions created a lot more demenad that supply then needed to meet & you'll have decent markets with that. But I still think the incentives have driven it more than the divisional format. When it costs $7-10k for stud fees now since some have well over $50k in yearly enrollments fees, it's hard to not sharply increase the market prices to cover that.  And everyone wants to do embryos which can be another $5-10k depending on your situation. I know a few people who have figured out how to do that almost entirely on their own to save a lot of $$. They can all check when to breed, inseminate, & preg check without a vet too. They're saving costs and trying to keep theirs a tad more affordable for the weekend warriors. 

Got out years ago and then a few years ago thought I'd start back up and was able to borrow a horse. I found out that the local barrel races had dried up just about around here. Life intervened and I quit. Now I'm contemplating starting back up only because the little jackpots have started popping up close to home again. There aren't many but more than a few years ago. I think the current economy is the reason. People can't afford to go to all the bigger ones and don't want to fool with the play day people so they have started a few jackpots back up again. I hope they make a little money and the girls are nice to the staff because I am getting the itch again. 

It should be fun but I'm gonna say, the last playday my daughter took her horse to, to season him cost he'd $70 to enter. I think she ended up with $17 in winnings