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Miniature Horse Prices
Rising from obscurity, tiny ponies have enjoyed large swings in popularity over the past 50 years. From the huge initial trust in 1962 when the ponies grazed on the White House lawn to periods where excess ponies were sent to the killers for meat, miniature horses have experienced wide swings of popularity.
Click here for research on adopting a miniature horse.
Because miniature horses are hardy and require little pasture, breeders with significant acreage were able to run herds of hundreds of tiny horses, flooding the market with thousands of midget ponies.
There is a wide variety in miniature horse prices ranging from over $100,000 to less than $50. In Great Britain, the Dartmoor National Park is known for it hundreds of square miles of free-range ponies.
Each year the ponies are swept from the moors and brought to an auction sale. Because of the high-costs of equine ownership in the UK, prices fell at one point to below $3.00 US dollars per pony. Today, the killers buy most of the Dartmoor ponies for the dinner tables of France.
However, there is that rare, perfect miniature horse that will sell for a large sum of money. Producing a perfect specimen often requires breeding hundreds of mares and the breeder is rewarded with huge rewards while their inferior by-products might suffer and die. Among the top-selling miniature horses we see:
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Lazy N's Boogerman – Sold for $110,000 at a the NFC dispersal sale in the 1980s.
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Boones Little Buckaroo – Sold for $100,000 in 1983.
Celebrity purchases also drive-up prices as was the case when Michael Jackson and Cher purchased midget ponies for their estates.
Ironically, every year hundreds of refuse-horses are euthanized or slaughtered for food while the top champions continue to command huge sums from wealthy horse owners.
In 2003 the prices for horsemeat dropped below 20 cents per pound and the “killers” slaughtered thousands of ponies, saving shipping space by stuffing their disemboweled remains inside the corpses of larger horses. Le Petit Cheval has become a delicacy in some European cultures and pony steaks are highly prized in some countries.
Today a buyer can purchase a pet-quality miniature horse for under $300 or spend over $100,000 for a national champion. However, when purchasing a miniature horse you might want to ensure that your money does not breeders who who not ensure good homes for all their baby ponies.
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Mini Pony Sales
Horse Charity
Fun Web Sites
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