Smithfield Horse Center

Horses by a wooden fence on a foggy morning in fall. Yellow foliage from the changing leaves frames the photo. — Photo credit: Natalie Duncan

After moving the Warmblood breeding program to our extension campus in Middleburg, VA in 2009, Virginia Tech restructured the on-campus equine breeding program. The mission of our Blacksburg program is to support undergraduate, graduate, and professional education while producing quality quarter horses and sport horses suited for a variety of performance careers.

All youngstock are sold through an online auction in association with the Hokie Harvest Sale on the last Friday of October. Our students gain experience in breeding and foaling, ground work training, marketing, nutrition, exercise physiology, as well as stable management fundamentals.

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New livestock and poultry facilities at Virginia Tech help grow agriculture , article
Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences recently finished $31 million of construction on a series of new and renovated buildings around the Blacksburg campus that helps cement the university’s role as a source of research, education, and outreach that serves the commonwealth’s largest private industry – agriculture.

Equine Training and Marketing Sale

Each year the Equine Training and Marketing classes collaborate to host the annual Equine Training and Marketing Sale (formerly the Hokie Harvest Horse Sale). During this sale Virginia Tech auctions horses that are born and raised to support the undergraduate teaching efforts.

The website will be live and open for bidding begining Oct 1st every year. An open house to see the horses that are being offered for sale and the live cattle auction are held on the last Friday in October. The online horse auction closes following the open house.