Special Report: Breeding Today

Times are changing, and so are people’s decisions about horse breeding.  Horse & Rider looks at what’s happening, and what it could mean to you–even if you’re not a breeder.
By  Juli S. Thorson
 

With the economy, the horse market, and the world at large in the recessed states they’re in, here’s a piece of news that shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

The breeding side of the horse industry, at least the side tracked by breed associations, is in recession, too. (No stats exist for grade-horse production, leaving no sure way to tell where its under-the-radar trends are headed.)  In just about any breed you could name, recent records show fewer mares being bred, fewer stallions employed to breed the ones still producing, and fewer foals arriving and issued registration papers than were the norm just a few years ago.

 

Still, details about the decline probably will surprise some. For instance, the pullback’s not new. It’s been underway, in most breeds, for about eight years. Comparing the latest mares-in-production statistics to those of 2000, when many breeds’ production was at or near a 25-year peak, at least 100,000 registered broodmares have lost their jobs.Furthermore, as it’s become socially, emotionally and financially contagious, the less-breeding trend has picked up speed. In one breed, for instance, where numbers had been in gradual retreat since the start of this decade, the breeding rate plunged last year alone by 36 percent.

“So what’s the big deal?” you may be asking. “Less breeding equals fewer horses, and that’s a good thing for the horse world nowadays, right?”

It might be, if fewer foals were the only effect of a breeding recession. But no recessionary dynamics are ever quite that simple. Here’s a look at how a changed breeding economy is sending other changes your way–some of them uncomfortable, if not downright painful.

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