Thinking About Cost

So another thing you have to do is to honestly figure out what kind of money you want to spend on this deal. As an example it is about 1/3 to 1/2 of the price for a trainer in Arizona than it is in Southern California. Trainers have what they call a Day Rate, this is what they will charge you every day of the month for your horse. It covers all the basics such as feed, works and everything to do with the daily routine. It doesn’t cover vets, shoeing any special supplements or medications or anything to do with the actual race day, we’ll get into those later. Another way that some trainers do business is to not charge you a Day Rate but to charge you a percentage of the win money that the horse makes. Now I personally am not a fan of this method, and I don’t think many trainers are either, since the trainer carries all the cost and that can mean the owner doesn’t really have much say about what goes on with the horse let alone make much off of any money earned. As an example I know of a man that had such a deal with his trainer, the owner got 25%of the winnings with the trainer getting 75%. So just think if your horse does do well that means you see very little return on your investment. Anyway, so in Arizona you could pay a good trainer $40-$50 a day and in Southern Cal that could run you around $90-$100. Now keep in mind that the difference between the two is like the major leagues and a farm team, so some of that jump in price is completely justified. Some of it has to do with things like Workman’s Comp and fees that the trainers have to pay, and of course those are going to get passed to the owners, some states are just much more expensive to deal with.

Another option to cut down on your cost is to go into a partnership. Again there are several ways to go on this, you can get with some friends and all buy in on a horse and split the cost, like the partnership that was started by six friends in New York and purchased Funny Cide, or you could buy into an already established racing partnership. Usually you buy “shares” like a stock. If you go this way you want to have a very defined agreement with a clear understanding of how many shares there are and what responsibilities and benefits are part of this partnership. Remember if you don’t own the majority you’re really just along for the ride and may have no real say so about anything. However, this is a good way to get your feet wet and to go out there and just have some fun without the bulk of the responsibility. No matter which way you take make sure part of the deal is to get copies of all the bills that affect your horse, such as vet bills and such, so that you have a complete accounting of what your percentage of liability is.