Barretts Sales will hold its first auction of 2017 on Tuesday with a one-day mixed sale of yearlings, 2-year-olds, broodmares and racing prospects at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona, Calif.
Market fluctuation at the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale continued into its fourth session, with numbers dropping once again after somewhat steadying the previous day.
The catalog for the 2017 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky winter mixed sale is now available online, featuring 580 horses on offer before supplemental entries.
The Keeneland January horses of all ages sale provides owners a chance to bolster the book of an incoming stallion. Several partners in the new stallions of 2017 were aggressively bidding during the sale's high-end Book 1 portion earlier this week.
Farfellow Farms ventured into consigning its own foals for the first time at the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale and held the distinction of offering the first six-figure horse of the auction, with a yearling Uncle Mo colt going to de Meric Sales, agent, Monday for $140,000.
The third session of the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale saw the market get closer to the pace it set last year, following sharp declines in Book 1. However, those returns came paired with a much higher buyback rate.
The Keeneland January horses of all ages sale posted across-the-board declines for a second straight day on Tuesday. The session was led by the $575,000 broodmare Joyfully.
The opening session of the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale showed that the money was in the building for the right horse, as evidenced by the $1.025-million broodmare Siren Serenade. However, an often-sparse market below that led to overall declines.
With the first significant snowfall of the season last week in Lexington, and temperatures in the single digits on the first full day of showing for horses at the Keeneland January horses of all ages sale, consignors were taking extra precautions in horse care.
The quarantine at Fair Grounds due to several cases of equine herpesvirus has had a ripple effect across the Thoroughbred industry, with Delta Downs rescheduling a pair of stakes that would have been decimated due to a lack of shippers, and Grade 1 winners Gun Runner and I'm a Chatterbox, both stabled at Fair Grounds, unable to travel for early-season engagements. The sales industry has not been left unaffected, with several prominent racing or broodmare prospects who most recently raced or trained at Fair Grounds forced to be scratched from this week's Keeneland January horses of all ages sale, as precautions against the spread of EHV-1 prohibit them from being on the sale grounds.
