Velvet inherits several horses from an elderly gentleman who committed suicide. (apart from ‘The Pie’ she won in a lottery.). She and her three sisters live in a countryside-seaside English village with fields and they all ride and take care of the horses . But their father is beginning to complain about inescapable expenses and they ponder selling their one old pony (who has lived with them for many many years) for money for upkeep of the new horses…now, one of the new is a young, unbroken filly. Not suitable for riding yet, but probably expensive. I always wondered why they didn’t sell this young filly instead of thinking of getting rid of their old pony. Wouldn’t that have been a better plan? Why did they want to keep the young one?
Maybe because a horse this young has very few upkeep expenses. Just turn them out in the field.
Yes, but the other horses do well out in the fields, too, at least in the summer. They get some use out of the riding horses, but the unbroken filly is just another equine mouth to feed. If they sold her, being a bright new expensive thing, they could get some money. (the poor elderly pony they own is good for plodding around for pony rides, I guess. ). I do think the father was considering selling most of those horses Velvet inherited. But if they sold the filly, they would have some money for feed, and horseshoes and such, at least for a while.
It’s likely that the young hors has significantly lower expenses (Vet care, mostly) than the older horse. Feed costs are probably about the same; the young, growing horse might need more feed, but the older horse will be having difficulty fully digesting all his feed, and might need special (expensive) additives.
The other big reason is that the young horse is growing in value as it grows up, while the old horse is declining in value (and increasing in maintenance costs). The young horse is the better investment.
We had a rabbit we named Un-Natural Velvet. He was weird.
/aside
There’s a ton of stuff in National Velvet that I never understood. I’m guessing the old pony would be sold because old pony doesn’t have the potential of the young filly.
Eight horses altogether! Velvet’s father would eventually probably insist most of them be sold. (They were sentimental about the old pony who had been their ‘pet’ for as long as they were alive.).