Visiting the WV horses

 It is getting close to weaning time for the foals; Theo and Shayla's palomino filly will be 4 months old in a few days. Because Theo's person is picking him up on the 31st, I was going to wean him on schedule, but changed my mind ( I can do that, right?) and will leave him in the herd until that time. 

I had a great day visiting Shayla and giving her a hand with a few projects, including getting photos for their AQHA registration papers. But I kinda got side tracked by a bunch of cuteness... imagine that....

First we visited the two pleasure bred colts, Chex (sired by Rex) and Oscar, who is sired by a show horse and was in utero when Shayla bought his mama, Sally. 

Although Oscar looks black, we think he will end up being a dark bay roan. Chex is red dun. 

The cutest little face!

We turned out Rex with a yearling Percheron stallion prospect... he does make Rex look small! 

He is appropriately named Biggy

Next up was a visit to the pasture with all the mares and foals-  Rex is no longer with them, having done his studly duties. 

This palomino filly was the first to sell. She will be heading to the north country. The Yukon!

This is Johnny,  who is out of the same dam as the next horse, but Johnny is sired by Rex. Whatcha chewing on, Johnny?

This is Jolene, she is a long yearling and has the same dam as Johnny (out of the palomino mare) and sired by the late Givemathrashin, the black stud Shayla had. She is the last horse available from that sire. 

I love the unison in this photo of Jolene and her bff, a draft cross mare. 

And last but not least, this is Shiner, Jayne's last foal. He too is red dun like his sire. 

All these foals except the palomino filly are available.

It's a bit of a tough market right now, there are a ton of foals for sale on all the media pages, a lot for buyers to choose from. People tend to be really specific in what they want- as well they should be. It is much easier to sell a foal with a unique color than a so-called plain sorrel or bay and often quality gets overlooked for a flashy color. A good horse is never a bad color. as Mark Rashid said in the title of one of his books. The one horse that I raised that literally took my breath away when I looked at her was Josie, a solid sorrel. She is probably the one Beamer daughter that I should have kept. 

All about those foals

 Another visit to Shayla, another photo drop for you guys! We started with the two yearlings she has for sale, Zipper (paint horse) and Fire (Jayne son).

EDITED: Fire just sold, he has a future as a barrel horse for a young lady!

Zipper is very tall and will likely end up around that 15.3 to 16 hh mark. He is laid back and friendly!

They are both going to be tall boys, I figure Fire will end up around 15. 2 to 15. 3.

He's in that gangly yearling growth spurt, he likely won't come into himself until he's about 3 or 4 years old. 

His pedigree is a cross between run and cow, so he should be a very versatile horse. 

Moving on to Jayne's foal from this year, whose barn name is Shiner. 

Yes he does have an owwy on his hip, it's healing. 

This colt is very quick on his feet- and with his feet, as I could see when he was kicking at the horse flies that were driving them nuts. 

This next filly is the one Shayla named Gemma, who is sold and has been renamed Trudy. 

She's sweet!

Last but not least of the foals was Johnny- he sure has filled out since the last time I was there!

 

We are still not sure if he is dun or sorrel. And likely won't know until he sheds out. 

Dun stripe or counter shading?

Either way, he is a handsome dude! Another one that is bred to be versatile, with bloodlines of great cow horses, reiners and ranch horses he should be able to do it all. 

All those foals sure do have a nice place to grow up in. This is Rex and his band of mares which includes 4 outside mares as well as some of Shayla's. She is still waiting for 2 more Rex babies. 

Next post will be a Theo post! And maybe some kittens. 😁

Dynamics

 I spent yesterday visiting Shayla and taking photos for her of her stallion and his mares as well as some photos of the foals for sale. 

Her stallion "Rex" (Majors Pistol) is 3 this year and he has matured nicely. He is a good pasture breeding stallion- respectful of the mare's space but also no nonsense if they stray from the herd. I got to watch him at work with 2 new mares introduced to the herd and how he rounded them up. 

These nice mares belong to The Rowdy Ranch (Facebook page) and they are the people who now own Midnight Mesa, who they call Mindy. 

Also introduced to the herd that day was Shayla's mare Concho and her palomino filly (sired by Rex)'

Rex was trying to drive them to the herd and Concho was saying no- she had just kicked at him and although it may look bad, his kick was nowhere near her. He actually has very good respect for the power of mares!

This is Rex's current herd- a Percheron mare, a grey Azteca/Percheron cross mare, and Shayla's mare Dolly. The sorrel colt, Johnny, is Dolly's and sired by Rex. He looks tiny next to that big draft colt! 

Johnny will be a tall boy when he's all done growing!

As Rex went to the new mares, he circled them widely and didn't put any pressure on them until he got to the point where if they went forward they would be going to the group of mares. 

Sneaking past them....

Beginning the drive

Game on!

It was quite something to watch the power and athleticism of this handsome stallion at work. He had moves like a cutting horse and he was very effective- one would not want to get in the way of even the best minded stallion when it comes to his doing his job. 

There was more to the day, but that's for the next post!

Photo day

 I had a lovely time visiting Shayla and helping her get photos of her sale horses.  Mostly it was all about the paint colt. 

He is a bay dun, hence the black in his mane and tail from the bay and the dorsal stripe from the dun. And he is gonna be a big boy! 

First he got his feet trimmed and he did really well. Shayla's husband was very patient with him but really he didn't fuss much. 

This was his first time in the round pen, and we managed to get a few action shots. 

Overall, he was fairly calm though so the action shots were, as I said, only a few.  He has show horse breeding and it sure would be nice to see him go to a show home. We also put a fancy halter on him and took some conformation photos, but with Shayla's camera. 

The colt with him in this photo is Fire, who is Jayne's son, sired by her late running bred stallion. These are two really nice colts.

I didn't do any more with Gussie in the last few days; I had one day where I was just plain crabby, then the weather turned cold and blustery again. I think Gussie is ok with that! 

I have someone coming to look at Ruby this week. She is looking for younger broodmares, so I think Ruby would do well for her. We shall see if it's a match. 

Some horse updates

 Well that 10 days went by fast! Since I last posted we had major temperature swings in the weather-  cold nights, warm days, then cold days, then warm days- gah! But we are on the upswing now. 

Beamer and Belle got their blankets off a few days ago; I'm sure they appreciated that!

The short portion of her mane is how much it has grown since September, that was all rubbed out. I love all the colours she has in her mane. 

Yes Velvet, you also have a beautiful mane. 

One of the reasons for my delay in posting is that I planned a trip up to see Shayla and take photos of a couple horses she is selling. First up is her paint colt, Zipper. 

Speaking of manes, his is sure colourful!

Zipper is a really good minded colt who is going to be really, I mean really, big. 

He's a weanling and is already up to Shayla's shoulder! I didn't get a lot of photos of him because we wanted to concentrate on Boe photos. Yes, he was put up for sale. We took him to the round pen for the photo session. 

He's literally the spitting image of Beamer only in red. He carries himself beautifully, and even yawns like his daddy!

We took some video for his sale ad. This was only his second time of being worked in the round pen; he was very good. 

We also worked him in hand a little. Just following the feel of the lead rope, and he was beautifully soft. 

I'm pretty proud of the quality of foals Beamer sires off different mares. They are all good horses!

Anyway, our work paid off; Shayla posted him on FB and he was sold within a day and a half!  He will be going to a working cattle ranch only an hour from here. 

Beautiful boy

He might be leaving but I think we will be able to follow his progress as both his owner and the lady who will be starting him are on FB. The trainer's page is Anchor S Equine.

Drifter is a rock star

Drifter has had the summer off to grow up and just be a horse. I have kept up on making sure he minds his manners but other than that he hasn't been worked at all. Since Shayla is in town for a couple of days she was eager to see if he remembered all the training he had from the early part of the year.
Starting with just longeing- no problem! He remembered all the little nuances. So she moved on to the saddle blanket, still no problem. If you remember, we did all that with a horse blanket and a tarp, and yes he remembered all that too. So then it was time to introduce the saddle- and Drifter seemed to really enjoy everything about this whole session.

He handled that really well. She walked him around in a circle both ways, letting it fall to the ground a couple of times. When that happened he just stopped and looked at it, not startled at all. That is a good thing, we want him to just stop and look, especially for the future if anyone falls off him or if any gear falls off he won't get excited about it.

Since he was so chill about just carrying the saddle uncinched, she ran the cinch under and held it in place without fastening it for him to get the feel of it. Again, he took it in stride. So that was a good place to end the saddle work. Next, and since he was so enjoying everything, I brought in the step stool and Shayla draped over his back from both sides.

Once again he was relaxed about it. Not in the least bit twitchy!

So of course we stepped it up once more. Literally....

We both had big silly grins on our faces! They say about the Driftwood horses that you show them how to do something and they get it right away, so you better do it right the first time. I think this was a really good first time for Drifter! Maybe not the traditional way where you rope all the feet and rope the belly and all that, but we do what works for us.  Low key, no stress, but always giving the horse something to think about. And keeping it a good experience for them.

Happy horse, happy Shayla! 

 

This horse has a wonderful future ahead of him! He will be a start-to-finish horse for Shayla, and I am so looking forward to their progress.
Another session is planned for him today including cinched up and perhaps trotting cinched up. And we are going to measure him.
After all this, he is going to get more time to grow up and resume his training in the spring.