I foolishly thought I would get off the hook real neatly by coming up with a simple statement of our philosophy about  raising horse.  “Do only those things that result in good horses.”  Well talk about trying to duck out on the real work!!  The explanation behind such a simple statement requires a great deal more effort, if I am to get my point across. 

Let us begin the process by seeking to define all of the categories that need consideration.  First, there is the breeding, the pedigrees, the bloodlines or the gene pools to consider.  Second, feeding, nutrition, and prophylactic maintenance. Third, the aspect of time lines versus life spans of horses.  Fourth, the element of conformation as influenced by breeding, by diet, by environment, by use, as expressed in terms of soundness and mechanical function.  Fifth, the horse as an end product of a conscious effort to produce a better horse than the ingredient horses that preceded it as its parents.  Sixth, avoid doing those things that are unethical and would knowingly produce an offspring that will be an unsound horse.

Our philosophy is then, that we will produce Appaloosa horses, that are the product of a gene pool that regularly and reliably  provides color and characteristics of the Appaloosa, but which concurrently provides intelligence and disposition, longevity and length of useful life, mechanical correctness and soundness in conformation, and who have the capacity to reproduce those facets in their offspring.

We implement this policy by utilizing mares and stallions who are themselves the building blocks of the facets we seek to promote.    Many of the branches of the pedigrees our animals represent, reach back into a time when there was no problem with out crossing and dilution of the gene pool.  This is especially a problem of the seventies, eighties, and nineties.  It is common for our animals to have spanned fifty, sixty, seventy years in only three or four generations back along their pedigrees, to a time preceding the problems brought on in the present.  These same pedigrees show us the diversity and breadth of the genetic source material from which we breed.

Our production of color and characteristics is not dependent on the contribution of one or two horses, redundantly repeated and repeated.  We consciously avoid the breeding practices which lead down the road to inbreeding and loss of the broad based  source we have carefully assembled.  The use of “famous” horses in the breeding practice ignores the reality of many equally good horses who never became known or famous or promoted, but who carried the same worthy genetic material as those who did.  While we do, on one hand have notable “famous” or well known horses in the bloodlines we have assembled,  we have as many or more that were little known or obscure, who lived out their lives as favorite working and breeding animals as someone’s special horses, never making the spotlight beyond that cast by the owner’s barn light.

The horses of the Americas, are the product of centuries of horses imported to the new world from many sources over the years, who did what they do best, in surviving and breeding as adapted “wild horses”   These horses became part of feral herds, who in turn were the horses of the Native American in their development of the use of the horse, and later they were the horses running loose in the United States during the 1800’s and early 1900’s that fueled the development of the ranches of the West.

These were the source of immense genetic diversity which was available to develop  many of the later and  better known bloodlines of the American west, which we now refer to by their famous ranch or owner names, years after the peak of their fame.  This diversity is still there, but you have to look for it.  Our pursuit has been to find and salvage what we can, and bring it forward to the present in current day offspring.  Our philosophy is based on the wise use of this base.