How much are you willing to pay for your saddle stock?

[the_jersey_lilly_2000]

Texas Dept of Criminal Justice - more commonly known and the Texas Prisons have gone to 1/4 Perchron 3/4 QH cross. Reason being, most of the bosses are bigger and these horses can stand up to long days in the saddle much better than a strait QH. And if you aint ever seen a cross like that....OH MAN they are gorgeous creatures. Few years ago we went to the Prison Horse Sale. They hadn't had a sale in years, but had about 300 head to sell, from broodmares to saddle stock. They never expected to sell any for over 5 or 6 hundred dollars........the first one that went thru the ring brought 3600.00 and it only got worse from then on out. Even the young ones that hadn't ever had anything done to em brought huge money. Needless to say we went home without buyin a horse. biggest majority of them were sold to outfitters from wyoming. They came in with semi's ready to haul.
I think alot of the hooplah on those horses is the Texas Star that's branded on their shoulder. But they do make some awesome mounts.

[Northern Rancher]

Alot of good stock horses up here have a bit of draft in them-there's nothing takes it out of a horse like riding inmuskkeg all day-those draft crosses are big-strong and they keep their wits about them. Some of them are like a big cat tiptoeing over that boggy ground-it's no fun getting a horse stuck and having to unsaddle him in loon crap halfway up to your waist. Up here the horses have to be able to go where the cows go and just about every pasture has some muskkeg to cross.

[alacowman]

for just a good using horse with no special talents wouldnt want too go much over 2000 or so. ive seen ropers buy a decent rope horse and them win half or more of what they payed for them on a weekends worth of roping.

[theHiredMansWife]

[RoperAB]

Warm Bloods are just way beyond my means
I have looked at a lot of PMU type draft crosses. The problem is that the ones I looked at just seem to, well there not what I want. Usually they are just to heavy or they well they seem to be a QH on one end and a Percheron on the other. They just seem to have the worst possible atributes of both breeds.
Outfitters use them because they are cheap. They can leave them behind way up in northern BC until next season and they stand the best chance of surviveing, wolves, deep snow, etc. Outfitters really only need a dude type horse and they dont want to have much money tied into these types of horses. Or if they do put money into stock they are going to buy mules and bring them home with them at the end of the season.
Sure would be nice to have the money to get into warmbloods though. We are going to Spruce Meadows next Thursday. LOLs I know im going to be drooling over the stock up there.

[RoperAB]

BTW The draft crosses I was looking at were breed by people whos main concern was getting pregnate mare urine to sell. I dont want to sound like im putting down all draft crosses that are out there