A Record Price, Sort Of
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Summer 2003

The sale of the coming two year old Belgian stallion, McIlrath's Captain Jim, for $112,500 at the Gordyville Sale established a new record price for a draft horse. It is now the new benchmark in draft horsedom. The old figure of $47,500 had stood for 86 years. More on that later.

This public transaction was very good for the long distance telephone business. People just had to talk about it. It was sort of like sextuplets being born to that nice young couple down the road. Who would have ever thunk it? Or, as Bruce Roy put it, "Unbelievable!"

And that is what triggered the phone calls. Most of the callers just wanted to talk, trying to make the unbelievable believable. It was like being a grief counselor without the grief. The local power station hadn't blown up. Nobody was hurt. A sorrel colt had sold for $112,500, that's all. Our job was to offer reassurance that the world had not gone mad and that this might even make sense.

One common thread, aside from sheer wonderment, was "Is this for real?" or, put differently, "Is this a case of funny money?"

My standard response was that it did happen, just as you saw or heard, the money is real (or as real as money ever getsñmore on that later, too), there was no flim- flam, and as investments go, I'd rather have a piece of this colt than a lot of stuff on sale at your local Stock & Bond Store. That was my story and I'm sticking to it.

I congratulate Jim McIlrath, the breeder; the consignors, Messrs. Helmuth; Detweiler; Dean Woodbury, who fitted and showed him to All-American honors last fall; and his buyers, James A. Raber and Orla W. Yoder. I think they stand a respectable chance of making money on this colt. I wish them all further success.

Now I will get to the reasons I think this might well turn out to be a sound investment and why I don't really regard this as a record price. The former is about arithmetic and science. The latter is about that "agreed upon fiction" that too often rules our lives, called money.

The widespread use of A.I. in draft horses has drastically altered the arithmetic of stallion ownership. Semen from this young horse will be available this year, even though he is just two years old. (In the dairy business, he would be offered in some select young sire program.) Thus, it will be possible for this colt to sire far more offspring that in natural service.

In most cases I'm familiar with, two year old stallions were pretty restricted in the number of mares serviced. Eight was the "magic number" for a horse breeder I once knew. Being a natural born smart alec, I once asked him, "What would happen if we forgot and used him on that ninth mare, would he fall off and die, would a golden chariot fall out of the sky, hit the colt on the head and knock him off the mare, deader than a mackerel?" I was told not to be stupid, which was beside the point. That really did not address the question which was, "What will happen to the colt?"

Go through the ads in this issue or any recent one. You will find stallions commanding A.I. stud fees from $300 to $2,500. Now let's think in terms of 30 A.I. mares this first season at either $1,000 or $1,250 a pop. That is either $30,000 or $37,500 in fees, plus the foals the new owners get from having their own mares serviced A.I. Then there is the next year, and the next year, etc., with 40 to 50 mares per season. Now that is not bad crude arithmetic on any investment. Is it?

Sure, he could be struck dead (by the golden chariot coming out of the blue) but I reckon they are carrying full mortality insurance on him, don't you?

He could be a disappointment as a sire but a full scale calamity in that regard is not at all likely. Due to the price, he will get mostly quality mares. Even those bulls in the young sire programs that never make it into the big leagues, sire some darn good daughters.

So that is the NEW DRAFT HORSE ARITHMETIC. It is a million miles from the old stallioner who would stay on the road most every day with his horse or horses for about eight weeks, charging $15 to $20 payable when the foal "stands and sucks." So you wouldn't even get paid for a year!

There are, of course, other hazards. They are of the doomsday variety. Global nuclear war could devastate the planet; or the economy turns out to be the house of cards it sometimes resembles and collapses in a heap; or a less than nuclear war results in worldwide dislocations and local conflicts that trigger a worldwide depression that is even worse than the 1930s model of our fathers, etc., etc. But if any of these come to pass, what difference does it make what you have your money in? (Probably quite a bitñbut I wouldn't know what.)

Which brings me to the next thing. Is this REALLY the all-time high price for a draft horse? In the very narrow sense of dollars, sure, it is easily the highest. In terms of value and/or intrinsic worthñit isn't even close.

The previous records cited are for the Belgian stallion, Farceur, and the Clydesdale stallion, Baron of Buchlyvie at $47,500 apiece. Those sales took place in 1917 and 1911, respectively. Then there was half interest in the Percheron, Carnot, for $20,000 in 1916, making him into a $40,000 horse. It was said that he was literally "worth his weight in silver" at the time. But silver goes up and down, too.

Money, the almighty dollar, is an agreed upon fiction invented to facilitate trade, finance wars, buy and sell horses and houses, and pay for the staff of life, gasoline and groceries. So far as how much of those things a dollar will buy, that is as changeable and fickle as a 16 year old kid or Iowa weather.

So let's forget Baron of Buchlyvie and Carnot and just use Farceur with 1917 prices (not values, prices) compared to McIlrath's Captain Jim with 2003 prices. We know who brought the most dollars. Let's see which would cost the most.

It was said that "Grant Good paid the equivalent of his Boone County farm for Farceur." We can probably assume that was a quarter section at the time. So land was selling for around $300 an acre down there in 1917. I get a weekly paper called Farm News out of Fort Dodge, Iowa. Good paper. Its March 7, 2003, issue tells me that the average price of ground in that Ogden area is currently around $2,600 per acreñclose to eight times as much in 2002 as in 1917. We will be conservative and say six times as much. Six times as much for Farceur would have been around $285,000, eight would be $380,000.

Well, right now there are a lot of fat cats buying farm ground, not because they have the slightest bit of interest in even gardening, but because land is sort of a haven or refuge in troubled times. It might also make them feel kind of wholesome. So let's take something else.

Let's take livestock instead of land. On the facing page of that October 25, 1917, Breeder's Gazette that delivers up the Crownover sale report on the Farceur Belgiansñare the weekly markets from Chicago's terminal yards for the same week. It was one of those odd times when steers, barrows and wethers are all selling for about the same per cwt. Sixteen bucks a hundred would catch both hogs and lambs, with the steers maybe a dollar higher. This same Farm News tells me that top lambs are now $90, top cattle are around $80, and hogs (which are no longer a farm animal in any traditional sense) are around $35 cwt. So let's forget the hogsñpoor things. It is tough to be an industrial product while you're alive. Fat cattle and lambs appear to be about five times as high now as then, so in those terms, Farceur would have cost Good only $237,500.

I don't think there is any point in extending these paper and pencil, then and now, games any further. It is simply not a case of apples to apples. Not when there are over 86 years between events.

I wrote my old friend, Miles McCarry, about this record price stuff as well as the impact of A.I. on the earning ability of certain sires. Darn near every milk cow in America is bred A.I. these days and has been for decades. The same cannot be said for horses.

But people love records. And here are some for you from Mac's treasure chest of basically useless information. (I have a similar chest.-MT) In the high-price business, Mac tells me that in 1966 ABS (American Breeders Service) bought two bulls for $104,000 each in the Don Auger dispersal in Connecticut. Significantly enough, neither one of us remembers the names of those bulls, and don't care. It is A.I. that supported bull investments at that level, you can be sure.

But even in the pre-A.I. period there was a Holstein bull calf that sold for $106,000 in 1918. He went to Carnation Milk Farms in Washington. They changed his name but it didn't help. He never really rattled any cages.

And at Curtiss, where Mac spent at least 20 years of his life, he states that they had three bulls, two Holsteins and one Guernsey, which were leased by his employer and each of those three sent better than one million dollars back to their owners.

So much for high-priced stallions and bulls and the volatility of that stuff called money. I think the most remarkable thing about this newest "record" is that it was for an as yet untested sire. But as for its being suspicious, or even a little bit nuts, I don't find it so.