We continue to be impressed with our Azteca herd, the improvements with each seasons foals are incredible! We eagerly await for our custom Racking horse colt to reach breeding age. Our Aztecas are competing nicely in Steeplechases and moving up the brackets nicely. The Rackers seem to be struggling a bit in Endurance, but I have been lax about showing them.
The little ranch that could seems to be the nickname around here these days! We have huge advancements in the quality of our foals, especially the new Azteca line we are building. Our homebred Andalusian mare, Aynur, has given us our two best foals; Stanley and Smarty. Our Racking Horses are building slowly in comparison, but we have our first Homebred Grand Champion!
The little ranch that could might as well be the motto around here. The horses are doing great, advancing where we want in leaps and bounds. Titles are coming in every month or so and often in pairs. This month (430) two horses moved up a bracket, one of our Andy girls and one of our Racking girls. We have 12 horses in the Beginner bracket right now with 7 Rackers in Novice and Advanced. Very pleased with the foals and our first Azteca yearling. We haven't decided what we are going to point her toward yet as an event to com
Since our last update, one of these days I am going to be much better about doing updates, we have much to tell. We have 4 Beginner Champions now and one Novice Champion! Three of our 4 BChs are mares and we are very, very pleased that one of our stallions has made it to the Novice Competition. Please pay a special visit to Diva, Tea, Pip, and Mist.
We have foals that are nearly yearlings now and we are very happy with them! Angel, Sera, and Dusty are all by our boy Pip so we have high hopes for them. This season we have foals by Check arriving. We have two colts so far and they are very promising. Flash and Whiteout are the foals so far. Whiteout is slated to be sold upon weaning as well as gelded. If you would like to reserve him as a stud colt drop me a line, that goes as well if you would like to reserve him as a show gelding. Flash we could be persuaded to sell, especially if we get a colt we like better in the remaining foals on the way. We have 5 more foals due this month and our very first Azteca foal due 410. That brings us to our additions announcement. Our followers know that we have been showing a few Andys over the years and we have bred a few foals from them. We also picked up a really lovely Lusitano Mare named Dimension. We showed her for a while and she reached the Expert level of competition. Since she needed some training before we felt she would be ready to handle the competition, we went and picked out a stud. We went with Grand Champion -sa- Colossus to be the sire of our first Azteca foal. In time we will be using our Andy Fillies as crosses for our Azteca lines. Hopefully this will be a successful venture for us here as our Racking horses are just holding the ranch up financially. That's right! Dreams on the Wind is waiting for our first plaque to hang on the wall! Vegas Diva, racked up 13 first place finishes earning at least 10 points and beat over 1300 horses so far in her career (which is WELL over the number needed to earn this title!) earning her Beginner title and the ability to compete in Novice shows! We've adjusted her schedule so she can brush up on her training so she is ready to go against tougher competition.
We have several more 5 and 6 year olds snatching points here and there. Expect more of these super excited posts in the future! Many of these horses are 5 gaited as well as having heart, or presence so our endurance rides are done in style and comfort! Diva especially enjoys speed racking down the trails with good footing. Well we finally have a new stallion! Jammin is of breeding age and our mare band are all expecting! They are due month 381 and we can hardly wait! Jammin has heart and is 5 gaited, not to mention his treasure trove of color genetics!
Our Racking Horses have started competing in the Endurance trials, they've picked up lots of 2nds and 3rds and two have managed a point each so far. I have a feeling the horses they are competing against are further in their training, besides being totally fit. I think we are on to something here with these 5 gaited beauties! Things are picking up here at DotW! The excitement is spilling over from the Somali ranch and welling up here on the Racking Horse ranch. We are expecting 7 Racking horse foals GM362 and 2 Andalusian foals. Andalusian? Yes, we have 2 Andalusian mares that we have been showing and our foreman, Scott, mentioned to us that they were getting older and it might be a good idea to breed them for replacement show horses. We used our Andalusian stallion, to keep costs down. Speaking of show horses, our Arabian Stallion that we've been showing is now competing in Expert English! The Andalusian stallion has moved up to Advanced Dressage. Our Beginner Racking horses are competing in Endurance. We have 8 of them competing and 4 of them are gaited, and 5 of them have other traits. We are excited about the foals we have in saddle training. Three of four have traited, either gaited or some other trait.
If you look back to our last post about stunning you will see a suckling colt. Well here he is all grown up! What a beauty! Same pattern as miss Ebony, but wow is he something to look at! He is finished with his foal training and starting saddle training next month (334). Not sure where we'll be pointing this boy for discipline but we have high hopes for him in the breeding shed regardless.
With the number of Grey horses we have running around this place getting a foal that isn't grey is a huge event. Well we have a couple of beauties! We start out with our lovely Ebony. What a striking combination of Leopard Complex and Jet Black. Next we have what I believe is the two solid horses on the property. Momma and foal, the foal is our showcase here. Our final stunner is our first colt in years, and what a beauty he is! We can hardly wait for him to grow up so we can continue our breeding program.
We are waiting eagerly for our first foal. Misty is ready to pop. Sierra has started competing, he didn't like Gaited so we switched him to TDE to let him utilize his agility, stamina and strength. Normally I would have gone with English, but I just don't think he is smart enough.
While we were training Sierra and Misty -- who won't compete -- we picked up two horses already trained and actively competing, Tick and Tera. Tick was in Grand Gaited, but has advanced to National! Tera was in Novice and is now in Advanced. We'd like to thank Azura and Christy for letting them come to live with us! |