First Foals -- It's Better to Be a Stallion

Young Mares

• Looking over the results of the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July yearling sale, it struck me that foals out of new broodmares were underperforming.
• The overall sale average was $92,298, and the median was $75,000. I looked at "birth order" figures and saw that the yearlings sold included birth orders from first to thirteenth, with one foal being the fifteenth offspring of its dam.  Mares represented by their first foals averaged only $76,057 with a median of $63,000, making them fourth-worst in both categories.

Young Sires

• First-year sires broke the average by about 3% ($95,026).
• The July sale has a special focus -- it emphasizes its New Sire Showcase. Perhaps buyers are willing to gamble on foals from unproven sires -- but not when they're also out of unproven mares.

To Name or Not (not related to the above, but interesting) 

• 34 foals sold (1.1%) were already named.  Of the RNAs, 17 (8.8%) were named. 
• Named foals averaged $75,364 (median $55,000), whereas unnamed foals averaged $94,314 (median $75,000). 
• Looking at it from another angle, the named foals' RNA percentage was actually lower than the auction average (33% vs. 39%), but their average price was nearly 19% lower than unnamed foals.