Sounds like you had a fun afternoon! My father and I went to an auction about a month ago - it was a farm who had raised Hunter Jumper and Dressage horses and who were relocating to British Columbia, and who didn't want to bring all but their best stock with them. I went with my boss and my dad (who are oddly friends....) my boss going to see if there were any horses she could use for school horses, and my dad going as my cash flow. They had about 100 horses - most of them yearlings, weanlings and colts/fillies. My boss bought three - a weanling, a colt and a filly (she likes to have younger ones on the farm that she'll do as side projects and sell for a profit). There was this gorgeous Percheron x TB mix that caught my eye but the catalog said he was foaled in 1987... he was a bit old! 23 years is just a tad old for the stuff I do when I ride. There was also this cute little QH who was about 15hh - he went for $4k so he could be a girl's first horse - it was cute! Other then that there was tons of nice dressage horses I would have loved to own but people were bidding like crazy for them... there was one Trakhener mare who was just gorgeous and we bid on but she went for quite a bit of money! I'm kinda glad I didn't get anything though because the gelding I'm part boarding now is great!

Hopefully you and your husband find what you are looking for - I love chestnuts myself but bucksins are pretty as well - they hide dirt well! I'm an English rider though and a buckskin will always look better under a Western saddle than an English one! Maybe there are some for sale in your area you could go look at?

i think you were smart not to buy at an auction, unless you found a yearling that really excited you, i think it's best to buy a horse you've had a chance to get to know it and the owner a little bit. i'm sure there's plenty of good horses sold at auction, but i think the odds are a little more against you than if you bought it privately.

but...on the other hand, sometimes you find one that really jumps out at you and sometimes you can get them for a little bit of nothing at an auction.

Auctions can sure be fun and sad at the same time. You see some nice ones some fair ones and some pretty sad cases. I seem to be a sucker for some of those sad cases. Like the starving.
There must be a lot of us sucks because they say there is one born every minute.
Is it just me or is it when you are looking for something in particular you can find it to save your life, but if your not looking for it, they are everywhere
Sounds like you had a good time. That's what counts.

Yeah, Carla, it makes me wish I had about 80 acres of horse-safe-fenced pasture where I could bring all those pot-bellied babies home, give them a good worming and begin teaching them to lead and train them to be useful horses.

Makes me even more upset at the breeding that is being done these days. It is senseless to have a band of mares and a stallion and keep producing animals that are being sold for $80 when bales of hay cost $60. It would be wiser to hold off on the breeding for a few years and invest in making the lives of the horses that are already born more productive and useful and pleasant.

I used to think that a backyard breeder was someone who had an unregistered stallion and a band of ugly mares. Nope! It's the AQHA breeders (and even worse, the APHA breeders who are trying for certain colors and patterns) who are charging stud fees for an unproven and unshown and unsuccessful stallion bred to unbroke and poorly bred/built mares who have no other purpose on earth but to mass-produce foals that will continue the mediocre heritage of their parents.

It's my opinion that you should not breed at all unless you are prepared to raise, train, and make productive the foal that you are producing. In other words, if you're planning on selling the baby for $40 at the local auction barn, shame on you!

Just my honest opinion.