Earle Farley trains his eyes on the sales ring, studying the draft horses as they chug past.
“We’ve always had horses,” said the 80-year-old farmer from Douglas, Man. “I think we’d miss them if we didn’t have them.”
At the Oct. 13 annual sale of the Brandon Keystone Draft Horse Association, Farley was on the lookout for a good buy.
He keeps a few horses on his farm as a hobby and to help with barn chores in the winter.
Clydesdale, Belgian and Perch-eron horses were all on sale at the Brandon auction. The voice of auctioneer Gene Parks echoed around the room, inviting bids from pro-spective buyers.
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A good-sized crowd gathered around the ring of the Brandon Keystone Centre and bidding was brisk.
Near the sales ring, Rick Reich studied a pamphlet describing the horses on auction. Reich drove from the Maple Grove Ranch near Swan River, Man., to sell some Percheron stock.
He was hoping to sell a pair of registered fillies for $600 to $800 each. He knew, however, that the price would be dictated by the whims of buyers.
“Whatever people are willing to bear is what we have to take,” he said. More than 100 lots of horses were sold during the three-hour sale of foals, yearling stallions and bred mares. At the end of the day, Jim Lane was upbeat about the outcome of the sale and the quality of horses shown there.
“I think the quality is getting better every year,” said Lane, president of the Brandon Keystone Draft Horse Association. “I’m positive it is.”
Americans help
Prices at the sale averaged higher than in the previous two years, Lane said. American buyers with their strong currency helped push prices up.
As well, Manitoba’s pregnant mare’s urine ranchers saw a seven percent increase this year in the quota for the urine, adding to the demand for horses for their barns. The urine is used in hormone replacement therapy for women. The increase followed cutbacks in urine quotas of more than 25 percent during the past three years.
Lane had the top-selling filly at the sale. That distinction put $2,900 in his pocket. The top-selling mare went for $2,400 and the top-selling yearling stud was auctioned off at $1,775.
Although many of the horses sold to PMU ranches, others were bought by people wanting chore teams or show prospects. Farley was among those buyers. He returned to his Douglas farm with a pair of Belgian colts.
“There were others that appealed to me,” he said, “but I picked these two out. I’ve got to be satisfied with them or there’s nobody to blame but myself.”
