Hello everyone,

I am new here, and I came with a question that I hoped someone could answer me with. I am looking to adopt a PMU foal, preferably sometime in the next year. I would like to try and find one at an auction, however I do not know how to find auctions that would have them. I live in in Florida, but would be willing to travel pretty much anywhere. Does anyone know of any auctions either in the southern US, eastern US, or just any in general within the next year? Thanks in advance!

Jillian

There is an email from Karen if you scroll down through previous posts about PMU auctions. You might start there.

Hi Jillian,
I'd be very surprized if there are any in the US this year... With so many unwanted horses floating around and being abandoned, and no "meat" price floor...horses at US livestock sales rarely bring enough to justify the cost of health papers and hundreds of miles of transport to the US, when they can be sold for meat up there...and our unwanted horses are all headed either there or Mexico...its hard to imagine an economic reason for farmers to pay to ship them this year... Even the one event that Wyeth sponsors...they still have to convince the farmers to send some colts..
The sales that I know of in Western Canada are local affairs and all kinds of horses go through. (They have unwanted horses that are old, blind, lame, diseased, infertile, improperly gelded, dangerous etc just like we do at local livestock sales)..
The current and former pmu farms that I know of try to sell their colts or find people like the organizations on this site or "feeders" to take the "good colts.
The puny, crooked legged, sick, colts with deformities, hernias and blemishes, and culls in general go to this type of (local)sale where the meat buyers pick them up for animal food..if the colts are good they generally go elsewhere, if they are good and they do not go to a person or placement organization, then many are picked up by the meat dealers directly from the farms as "feeders" and fed for a year for export to europe or asia etc.
Of course asking this question here is going to get the obvious answer..there are lots of horses from former pmu farms right on this site and lots of contacts as well. We would hope that you would support the folks who are involved in this on a daily basis. Getting the colts placed is a numbers game..its not cost effective on an individual basis. You can read posts on this board by others who have dedicated their life and life savings to these endeavors.

I know that this is not the subject of this post, but I hear this question all of the time and just wanted to answer it where people can see and read it... I am often asked if it is not a bad thing to help place the foals and horses from former PMU farms... the idea being that it enables them to "continue to breed unwanted horses"...
Imagine if you had a huge herd of horses that you cared about...perhaps they were registered horses that 3 generations of your family had been breeding even before the concept of hormone replacement therapy was invented..and you just could not bear to send them for meat...and so you had to do whatever you could to continue to feed them as you gradually placed them in good homes they died natural lives on the pasture and you reduced your numbers.. Not all of the colts are unwanted..and very few are unwanted in the same sense as the horses that are typically found in local livestock auctions whether in the US or Canada.. I do what I can for these horses, but I am not a subscriber to the beleif that the major problem is that there is too much breeding going on...rather that there is no solution in the United States or Canada for the humane disposition of the unwanted and unplaceable animals. If there was a solution for the unwanted and unplaceable animals things would be quite different..

Anyway...
We deliver to Fla - are going there with our next load, we have good healthy colts..and cheaper than you could get to a sale and back..

Hi Jillian,
I expect PMU ranchers to ship 2009 foals to auctions in the U.S. again this fall. I don't have any dates yet but they normally start shipping in September and October so I should have some dates this summer. I've attended several auctions and I'm always pleased with the quality of the auction foals. The foals are unhandled and do need at least 4 weeks of quarantine but the extra effort is certainly worthwhile.
Karen in IL
salukifan2@yahoo.com