A.H. "Bud" Ferber

When A. H. “Bud” Ferber, Jr. decided to get into the horse business, it was to raise hunter/jumpers.  Little did he know how influential he would be bringing the Quarter Horse back to the East Coast.

Growing up in New Jersey, Ferber had a natural love for animals and spent his summers on his uncle’s farm.  As a grown man, Ferber and a friend bought eight American Quarter horse mares with the intention of breeding them to an Arabian stallion and raising hunter/jumpers.  Instead of raising English horses, Ferber stuck with Quarter Horses.

It did not take long for Ferber to catch racing fever.  In 1965, he was a key player in promoting the first Quarter Horse futurity and derby in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  He also had an active role in the formation of the New Jersey Quarter Horse Association and the Eastern Quarter Horse Racing Futurity.

In 1967, Ferber became a director for AQHA and then was elected to the AQHA Executive Committee in ’68.  Four years later, in 1972, Ferber became the Association’s 22nd president.  The major accomplishment during his term was the formation of a committee to develop an amateur program.  Other areas of service were the finance, Heritage Center, Hall of Fame and marketing and public relations committees.

His own accomplishments as a Quarter Horse breeder were numerous.  His first foal, Isleaway, won the first halter class she entered as a two-year-old, and the black mare became an AQHA Champion in 1962.

Born in 1918 to a family of some means, Ferber’s mother died before he reached his teen years.  He spent his meager $700 inheritance on a bulldozer to start an excavation business, which became the successful A. H. Ferber Company.

Ferber was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 1994, and died in 1998.

Biography updated as of December 1998.