I was going to comment further on this post last
night as well, but I see Maria and Sarah W have beat me to it. If
anything, the "big name" show horse stallions have MORE foals in the kill pen so
to speak than others, simply because they ARE in vogue, and more people breed to
them, making far more of their foals available. Furthermore, even though
the ridden show disciplines may change fads more slowly than the halter ring,
they DO nonetheless change fads with regularity. What made a good western
pleasure horse back when I had any interest in showing would be given the gate
these days--a horse that moved freely, moved with neck properly telescoped and
just flexed nicely at the poll, and covered ground readily in a pleasant
fashion. In the Arab ring, western fads come and go over how slowly the
horse can move (often shuffling his hind feet, or practically dragging them from
the next county), how overbent he can be, etc. In the stock breeds, one
has seen peanut rollers come and go, horses that slope so painfully downhill in
front that they are caricatures, etc. So indeed, the stallion that is
producing the "champions" of today is often out of style next year.
The situation is far better with disciplines that
have a using objective--horses that can get to the finish line first, horses
that can cut a cow, horses that can jump, horses that can consistently recover
and do endurance ride after endurance ride, etc. Those sorts of
disciplines that require balanced conformation and general athletic ability do
not come in and out of vogue as the rail and halter classes do, and furthermore,
horses bred to do athletic disciplines can usually do other disciplines than the
specific ones for which they were bred, as well as make good general riding
companions.
Especially if one is breeding to suit one's self,
it pays to seek out the "generalist" horses rather than the "popular" horses, as
the former will have a value for a long time, whereas while the latter may
have a higher dollar value right now, they will be much harder to place 5
or 10 years down the road.
Very rarely will you find one of these horses in the
sale pen unless it is a high classed auction where the sale average is
high.
I disagree with this. There is a very big named
stallion with high stud fee that has had many of his foals end up in slaughter
house pens. High dollar, in vogue, stallions have plenty of foals that get
thrown away.
