Eight Mile is one of 556 horses entered in the first go-round of the Open at the NCHA Futurity. The stallion was the highest seller at the 2014 NCHA Futurity 2-Year-Old Sale. • Photo by Jim Arnold
One of the biggest and most common dreams in the Western performance horse industry is to win “the big Futurity.” If you’re a cutter, that’s the National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) Futurity in Fort Worth, Texas. The show starts on Thursday, Nov. 19, with 556 3-year-olds entered in the first go of the Open.
Quarter Horse News compared those 556 Open horses with the sale results from the past three years and found that 160 head went through horse sales between 2012 and 2015, not including horses that were sold as foals in utero in 2011 or early 2012. Several horses sold multiple times, while others were offered only once and returned to their owners when the final bids failed to meet the reserve prices.
If you’re curious what it took to buy an NCHA Futurity prospect, keep reading.