Champion breeds from 14th Annual Performance Horse Sale
Horses are all-around good, but a great horse is akin to magic. That magic could be found in spades at the recent 14th Annual UF Performance Horse Sale. The sale was a culmination of the educational efforts of the UF Equine Sciences Program. “The school has been very blessed with donations of high-end stallions and mares,” maintains instructor Joel Mcquagge. “There’s no better program in the country.”
Students get a well-rounded education in the breeding, training and the sale of horses, Mcquagge reports. “It allows students to have an end-goal for their horses and to put together a sale; one hundred percent of the proceeds go back into the Horse Teaching Unit.” The same students do the planning and hands-on work of breeding, foaling, training, and selling their horse over a two-year period.
It also gives students of the UF Equine Sciences Program the opportunity to work with some top-notch animals. With horses registered in the American Quarter Horse Association, the Appaloosa Horse Club, and the American Paint Horse Association, the stock represents some of the best of the best when it comes to the proud lineage of American-bred horses. The dozen-plus horses sold at the annual auction are all-around suited for ranch life, the performance ring, as a hunt seat, as pleasure horses, and so on. The horses are started under saddle, and have a good amount of training and desensitization for two-year-olds; coupled with their high breeding, UF’s horses are a great deal.
Take, for instance, UF A Certain Krymsun. The two-year-old performance Chestnut gelding was sired by AQHA-registered Certainly Original out of Dam O What a Hottie; both have proud blood lines featuring Western Pleasure Show champions with impressive winnings. Selling for a bid of $2,700, “UF A Certain Krymsun is a bargain to the people who bought him,” Mcquagge continues. “He’s a physical specimen; a truly great horse.”
The enchantment of a truly great horse touches all who work with that animal, and UF’s Annual Performance Horse Sale ensures that the magic will be around for years to come.
CREDITS
story by ERIKA ALDRICH
