Latest / The Horsehuman Connection Matrix / Eric Pettibone, farrier, rancher, and former horse breeder, explains lots about breeding horses.

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Eric Pettibone, farrier, rancher, and former horse breeder, explains lots about breeding horses. · The Horsehuman Connection Matrix

• 0:00
  Speaker: This is Ishi Abel with the Horse Human Connection Matrix Podcast.
• 0:03
  Speaker: Today I have with me Eric Pet Bone from Crane Creek Ranch, who also happens to be my farrier.
• 0:10
  Speaker: And we're gonna chat a little bit about breeding and horses and other stuff like that.
• 0:14
  Speaker: Thanks for being with us today, Eric.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: This looks like a real fun opportunity.
• 0:21
  Speaker: We were chatting and a while back and you were telling me that you used to breed horses, and I was really interested in that because I know it's very intricate and handling stallions alone is not something that everybody does.
• 0:35
  Speaker: So how did you, how'd you get started with that?
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Well, we me and my wife moved out to.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: What is now known as Crane Creek Ranch about 36 years ago.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: And we brought with us very high interest in in horses.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: We own horses.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We had an opportunity to purchase a stallion and our intentions were to start a breeding program.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Probably more on kind of a local.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Aspect.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Aspect.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: And then we got some brew mares and then we had to figure out how to get these mares bred.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: And so, you know both of us came from a background of being around horse breeding.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Not any part of any huge operation.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Just, you know, one or two mayors, one stallion type of a thing.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: So we're vaguely, aware of the process.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Initially it was all in the mindset of, of hand breeding, you know live cover is what it's referred to as and, and and then.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: The first year that we we bred five, mares out here at the ranch, we were rock stars.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: And and, and it was really interesting because it was somewhat comical because the next year we had five mares.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: With FOS on their side, which turned out being quite quite different than when they didn't have fos on their side.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: And with the help of our veterinarian, Dr.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Craig Downing craig, just an outstanding individual super knowledgeable and has a real teacher heart.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: He just jumped right in and filled in all the gaps of our lack of knowledge.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: And we just, we were able to clean glean off of that relationship for 10 or 12 years.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: And that's, how we got started.
• 2:19
  Speaker: That's great.
• 2:20
  Speaker: So what, what were you not ready for?
• 2:23
  Speaker: Like, what surprised you about.
• 2:26
  Speaker: Breeding horses that you were just like, wow, I didn't expect that to happen.
• 2:30
  Speaker: Were there, were there some moments like that?
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of things that we had to overcome.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: One would be because of our backgrounds and listening.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: You know when, when you get into a field where there's a lot of, I, I, I refer to'em as old wives tales.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Most, most all old wives tales are rooted in truth.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: But, but they're like, they're almost like half truths and, you know, you just hear these things and you just kind of copy'em and you, but you don't really understand them.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: You don't understand what part of it is truth and what part of it isn't truth, and trying to decipher that and apply it.
• 3:18
  Speaker: Can you give a couple of examples of that?
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question for me to ponder on The devil's in the details
• 3:26
  Speaker: something that occurs to me that I've heard,'cause I know very little about this, is that often mares give birth in the middle of the night, and I hear about people sleeping in their barns when they're expecting and like being, you know, or having cameras and having like 24 hour watch after a certain point.
• 3:44
  Speaker: Is that something that you had to do and is that something that, is it true that they're usually born at night?
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I think, there's always a lot of truth that stuff like that is, is almost is accurate, but it's not a hundred percent.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: And
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: When you're dealing with one mayor one owner, one mayor, you know you know, most of the time, they, they stay up.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: They start way too early and they stay up with their mayor forever because they're really, really excited about.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: You know this upcoming birth and about the time they get totally exhausted and they decided, you know, that their mare's not gonna fold tonight and they're gonna skip a night, or they're gonna go down there instead of going down there at eight, they're gonna go down there at midnight or whatever.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: They show up at midnight or they show up the next morning and bam, there's the baby.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: We adopted certain things over time to where I think they're probably the most accurate.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Indicator mm-hmm.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Of of that the marere was pending birth, was the the milk test.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: And that would tell you how high the sugars are in the milk.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: And
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: that became a real accurate gauge for us.
• 4:58
  Speaker: They start lactating before they give birth.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Like like for an example, Amer will maybe come into her milk, but the milk will be real watery, and then everybody will get excited, and then two or three days later.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: You're like, where's the milk?
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: And maybe she'll drop off a little bit.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Like she, you know, and then the, the second time that the magan glands get activated, that's usually, that's usually way more close to being pending.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's just so many variations to anything that I would say that if somebody had their own experience, they would say, well, that's not necessarily correct.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: But when you're falling out 20 mares a year and you have 20 different examples.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: True.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: They're not all the same, but but that's where the milk test came into play because if we test that milk and the sugars are way low, we know that it's not but those sugars in the milk will spike right before they, they they full.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And so that the, the sugars end up being the number one thing.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: And we tried a lot of different things and most of them were.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Fairly good.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: But the one, like I said, like the one, the one, the one thing that was the most accurate, the most consistent was the, the milk test.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: It would tell you like two or three days, it was a litmus paper.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Tests and, and depending on how many squares that lit up, it would, it would give you an indicator that your marere is a week away or three or four days away.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: And then, as it kind of went up the scale, it would be, 72 hours, 24 hours away.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, you use the other things that you've learned about, how relaxed the mare was and the vulva and, the.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: The muscles above her tailbone, you know?
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: And so you're like, oh yeah, okay, this is it.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And we did have the cameras and we did have the warming room with the video monitor.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: And you know, at any given time we maybe have like two or three mares that were.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Getting close.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: And then we would maybe have one marere, pretty much one marere at a time that was pending.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: And when I say pending meant that the milk tests and all her other signs showed that she was perhaps 24 hours, 48 hours out.
• 7:20
  Speaker: 20 horses all at once.
• 7:21
  Speaker: That doesn't mean everybody's pregnant at the same time, but maybe, maybe a bunch of them are.
• 7:26
  Speaker: So like that's kind of like one question.
• 7:29
  Speaker: And then the other question is, if there.
• 7:32
  Speaker: What did you call it?
• 7:33
  Speaker: Breeding naturally as opposed to artificial insemination.
• 7:36
  Speaker: You had a word for that.
• 7:37
  Speaker: It was, yeah.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Live cover.
• 7:39
  Speaker: Live cover.
• 7:40
  Speaker: So if it's live cover, then their cycles happen at a certain time.
• 7:45
  Speaker: And, and this is, this is kind of what was interesting to me, like,'cause when I used to have cattle, they would all come into heat at the same time and they'd call the neighbors bull over and they'd all get bred at the same time, and then all the calves would drop within a month of each other.
• 8:00
  Speaker: And so I don't know if you're doing live cover, if there's that opportunity like that, or at what point did you go to ai?
• 8:06
  Speaker: Like how did you stagger if you had any kind of control over those things or did you just let them happen?
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Well, we did handle the stallion and we handled the marere and in the beginning we didn't, we didn't live cover very long.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that, you know, when you're in a, a a breeding management situation
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: mm-hmm.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: The first thing you wanna do is you, you do, you know, there's certain things that you should do.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Particularly if you're breeding multiple mares during a season where perhaps more than one marere might be ready to be bred on a, on a, on a given day.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: So if you are live covering, you know, you would definitely want to know that your stallion was fertile because and that would be with like a, a semen evaluation test.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: And there's a, a protocol for that to, to find out whether.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: One the stallion is is.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: A good breeder, you know, whether he has adequate sperm zoa to to be able to cover marere.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: So you could breed a marere in the morning, you could breed another mare in the afternoon.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: On worst case scenario, you could breed another mare you know, in the evening, you know, so you could potentially breed, you know, three mares in one day with live cover.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: If the stallion.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Prove to be fertile enough.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: As stallions get older sometimes their their sperm numbers drop and you need to be aware of that.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: So, you know you know, it's almost like, you know you know, grandpa, grandpa used to take the mare over to, to the neighbor Stallion, you know, says she's been in heat.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: He drops her off, picks her up in the afternoon.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: She has a full every year.
• 9:51
  Speaker: Okay.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: And you're, oh my gosh, you know, grandpa used to do it that way.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Why can't we do it that way?
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that
• 9:56
  Speaker: sounds really easy.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: You know, and you know, and there's always these stories about this kind of thing, and you're just like, oh my gosh.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: When you're dealing with clients.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: That are anxious and they wanna get their mare in full.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: There's so many variables, which probably leads to some of your discussion about the wild horses, grandpa kept that marere because she was fertile, and he took him over to Joe, Bob's the neighbor, because that stallion was fertile and he was probably well behaved and, and every, you know, everything just went glorious.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: But, but it gets very, very, very complicated.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Really quick when you start doing numbers, you know, you know, you take one example of one mayor, one stallion, but like with ai.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: When we ai, we can collect the stallion and we can breed multiple mares.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: We can breed, you know, anywhere from five to 15 mares with one, one ejaculate, one collection.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: And and we do that with a density meter that tells you how many, how many million of sperm are per milliliter, and then you just make up a, a breeding dose on farm would be 500 million.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: If we ship semen which we get a lot of it's it's 1 billion per breeding dose, and on farm it's 500 million.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: And so some of these stallions we would, we would put in, you know, two, anywhere from two to.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Four mls of raw semen to the extender, and that's a breeding dose.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: And with the total ejaculate of, of, of 30 to to 60 mls, you, you can just add it up and you can tell how many mares that you could breed.
• 11:37
  Speaker: The extender that you, you put it in.
• 11:40
  Speaker: So you're basically, you're getting like a constant, you're getting so much of it.
• 11:45
  Speaker: It's so concentrated that then you use an extender and that's how you can go up to 15 different mares with one sample that that seems like a lot like that's, yeah, I can see where, and it seems like it's something that would vary from maybe one day to the other, the amount of sperm in a sample, or even a different part of the day or different parts of the year.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Like, so the physiological breeding season for mares is April 15th.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: And typically'cause they're because of the amount of, of, of daylight.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: So on the natural, like maybe out in the wild or just, you know, on your farm, you know, typically.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Mares will be in, like, they'll come from, they'll go and during the winter they'll go into Anest.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: And then as the days start getting longer, they'll transition into, into, to more of an est extra timeframe.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: And so during that transition.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: There's, there's a lot of, a lot of problems during the transition, you know irregular cycles, mares stay in the heat, they come in the heat, they go outta heat, but they're not really ovulating and dropping viable follicles.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So, but once you get into, you know, past April 15th, typical typically, and not all, typically these mares recycling.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Normal.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: And so, and then for stallions it's a little bit after that.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: So it's like sometime the first part of June.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna quote me exactly on the, on the, on the exacts,'cause it's been a while since I had my breeders hat on.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: We, I basically retired from breeding mares and handling stallions, managing stallions.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: And the mayors probably this would be my fourth fourth year away from it.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: So, but usually about the end of May, June mm-hmm.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: That's when the stallions will have peak of sperm production.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: And so but when you're, when you're breeding a lot of mares, like on our Young Fertile Stallion, a full book, a full book of mirrors.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Could be 125 to, let's say 150 mares per per year per breeding season.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: And not a lot of stallions can handle that, but in those scenarios, you're collecting a stallion.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Every other day and you collect and then, you know, and what you got is what you got.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: And it's typical breeding farm in Weatherford, Texas, or Pilot Point, Texas, where they have a lot of, they have high powered stallions that breed a lot of mares.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: You get on a list and it's first come, first served and they collect the stallion and that's what they get.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: They don't, they don't go outta their way to double collect the stallion when you have a full book.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: So management is key on the stallions so that the, the semen that they ship off is viable.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: And the extenders, there's two things that the extenders do.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: When you got a heavy concentration of sperm, they, they get kind of crazy and they like to clump that, like to clump up and they don't.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: They don't really go anywhere.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: They just kind of, they look like a, you look under the microscope and they're like a little rugby team and they're just like pushing each other all around, but they're not really going any direction.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: So the extender thins it out and it, it makes it to where there's enough room and they, and they, they can get direction and they can go.
• 15:05
  Speaker: All they can swim.
• 15:05
  Speaker: They need to swim.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: They need to swim, and they don't get all congested and, and back.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: That's interesting.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: And the other part about the extender, most of them are, are kind of like a milk base.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: And so there's an absorbable protein that extends the life of the semen.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: So this, the, the semen, this, the individual sperm can actually absorb that fuel.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: So we call it, you can refer to it as.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Fuel or gasoline, you know, or
• 15:33
  Speaker: food.
• 15:33
  Speaker: Yeah,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: food.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, food.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And it just extends the life of the seamen.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: And some stallions do are, are quite adapt to doing that.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: And some stallions are really poor.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: And so and so I think sometimes the industry can be, it can be dominated by in certain disciplines of categories of, of, of horses.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Equine can be dominated by.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: You know, popularity, this and that color, whatever.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: But as far as like getting flows on the ground, it could be dominated by, by fertility, by the stallion that ships the best that you know, that, you know, is the most fertile, particularly in maybe
• 16:13
  Speaker: the ones that live the longest.
• 16:14
  Speaker: Yeah, I mean, all of those things.
• 16:16
  Speaker: I mean, that's what was fascinating to me about the conversation is like there are so many different variables and we haven't even started talking about like different traits that people are breeding for.
• 16:27
  Speaker: And then what happens when you keep breeding those same traits and how you can breed, like, I don't know if you can breed a Philly back to its father or how, how distant the relationship needs to be in horses.
• 16:41
  Speaker: I mean, I know it's different with cows and it's different with goats and sheep and, and then how traits that in the horse industry that people want in their horse, if it's not just color, but we're talking about athleticism or, you know, how like those cow horses get down low and hop from side to side, but, you know, certainly a, a fox trotter's not gonna do that.
• 17:02
  Speaker: Like there's all of these.
• 17:03
  Speaker: Like so many different things that go into it.
• 17:06
  Speaker: It's kind of crazy.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, to be true to the, to be true to the breed, you know, you whatever category you are in, whether it's Fox trotters or, or cutting horses or race horses, they definitely lean theirselves toward.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: The breeding those traits and to kind of go back to some of the breeding choices that breeders make.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: You know there's a lot of us that breed horses.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of mares being bred to stallions.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: But, but to be to be aware of the differences between like a a, a real breeding program versus, you know.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Just breeding horses.
• 17:48
  Speaker: You know, somebody just wants to have their own baby and raise their baby, so they get, yeah, they get their marere knocked up.
• 17:54
  Speaker: Right.
• 17:54
  Speaker: That's different than breeding for genetic choices.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Well, the most, the most interesting example of i'm aware of is the WEC camp horses.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: The Skipper W line is a, is a quarter horse line that really dominated.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Couple of decades ago and they did a lot of line breeding, what they refer to as line breeding.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: They also did a lot of, in breeding.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And and, and in that case, I think it's just, it's just a whole nother level because what you do is you, you concentrate the traits that you're looking for.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: But unfortunately, you can also concentrate the, the traits that you're not, and so you have to, you have to really get into a livestock mindset where.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Potentially you're going to coal, the, the, the horses that that.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Come out, you know, wrong, you know, either confirmation soundness issues, stuff like that.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: You know, you don't go ahead and sell that horse.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: You send that horse in a different direction.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: And, you know, those have to make some really, really hard choices that we don't normally.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Extend to the horses.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: We, we might be more decisive if we were raising cattle or sheep mm-hmm.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Or whatever, because they're really in a, in a, in a non-PE category, whereas, you know, they truly are livestock.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: And we wanna be sure that those cows are fertile and that they breed back and that they continue to be productive and.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Whereas we'll if we get a horse, you know, that maybe is compromised some way or the other but.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: We immediately fall in love with it, then, you know, then we, you know, we, we make adjustments for it and we try to do this for it, and we try to do that for it.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: And, you know, maybe the horse is never really sound and unfortunately you know, it's, it's four or five, six years old and we got this unsound horse that we, that people love.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: And he's like, well, let's just breed her.
• 20:08
  Speaker: Yeah, I, I mean, yeah.
• 20:10
  Speaker: Well, she's not good for this, but, but she could be a brood marere.
• 20:13
  Speaker: Like I've, I've heard people talk about horses like that, and, you know, you want, you wanna give the animal that you love a job, but I can see where that's just a bad choice.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: And it comes
• 20:25
  Speaker: to money.
• 20:26
  Speaker: It's about money, right?
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Because on individual.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: On the individual you could potentially breed to a really high powered stallion and have a lot of money wrapped up in the stud fee.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: And, and if it was AI with the vet and if you brought the mare out to our farm and where we we managed brood mares where I coordinated the vet you know, followed the cycles coordinated the vet.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: The vet told me when the mayor was ready to ovulate order the semen, I mean.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Before you know it, you know, you could have anywhere from, you know, a thousand dollars up to$5,000 into this, into this full.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: And in some cases that's just for the services.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: And then you have another, you know anywhere from a thousand to$5,000 in the breeding fee.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: So this full hits the ground.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: You got 10 grand into it, and it turns out it has, you know, maybe it's just a bad cross and it's just.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Got a terrible disposition.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: What are you gonna do?
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: You know, you, you know, and then all of a sudden, like I said, it's a, four or 5-year-old, you know, really snotty mare that, that nobody really understands.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: And they just like, well, let's just breed her.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: 'cause maybe if we breed her.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: She'll she'll get better.
• 21:38
  Speaker: The off offspring will better.
• 21:39
  Speaker: She, the offspring will get better.
• 21:40
  Speaker: Her disposition
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: will improve.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And potentially potentially there's probably a small percentage where that maybe is true.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: You know, but in a lot of the cases we just, we just create another poor minded horse.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: And, you know, in your, in your field I've heard you talk and you, you know, you're talk, well, maybe those horses are just misunderstood.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: And,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: you know, but for the most part, I don't think people are passionate enough to, you know, to really spend the time it, you know, that it takes to bring that horse around or to understand or connect with that horse in a way that, you know, makes it, you know a pleasant horse to be around.
• 22:24
  Speaker: Yeah, and, and there's so many different purposes with horses and people need to make money to maintain horses.
• 22:31
  Speaker: Like people just don't, you know, it's not free.
• 22:34
  Speaker: Farrier services aren't free.
• 22:36
  Speaker: Hay isn't free, vitamins are not free.
• 22:39
  Speaker: The vet check and the teeth floating.
• 22:42
  Speaker: It all costs money.
• 22:43
  Speaker: And I, yeah, I, I get it.
• 22:45
  Speaker: It's, it's a hard one, but some of these things that you've touched on have me curious about wild horses breeding too, because like this last podcast I did, I was telling you about, they talk about the genetic bottlenecking and how there's just not enough viability because a lot of the wild horses are being sterilized.
• 23:06
  Speaker: And even if they're not sterilized, the numbers are not big enough.
• 23:10
  Speaker: And the mortality rate of, of the fos is pretty high too.
• 23:17
  Speaker: And you know, very few of them are reaching breeding age.
• 23:21
  Speaker: If you talk to one person, if you talk to other people, they'll say there's a population explosion.
• 23:26
  Speaker: So I'm trying to, you know, sift through all of that.
• 23:29
  Speaker: But some of what you were talking about, like nature has a plan, I can only imagine what that is as far as feral horses choosing how they breed what's available within a certain territory.
• 23:44
  Speaker: 'cause they come together at breeding time, right.
• 23:46
  Speaker: I mean, they're living in family bands and they come together at breeding time to see what, what happens.
• 23:53
  Speaker: I don't know.
• 23:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: I I think it's really interesting for.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: The crossover in mentality, the human perception
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: mm-hmm.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Of what we would, what we would see and with our domesticated horses, you know if there's a talented stallion that is super easy to be around.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: You know, and they're able to ride this horse and show this horse and promote this horse.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: And even if it was just like a local horse and you went out on trail rides and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm riding a mare.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize you were riding a stallion.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: And it's like, oh, yeah, I take my stallion everywhere.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: What a wonderful boy..
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: You've done a great job with him and, you know, and the, the person riding the stallion who owns the stallion probably has done a great job with him.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: But there are also dominant traits, you know, and, and testosterone levels, you know, that come into play that particular horse that would probably service quite well in a domestic breeding program.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: I would bet money that under the microscope his sperm count is a little bit low, and if he had to breed a lot of mares, he probably wouldn't be able to get it done.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Or, you know, the numbers would drop off and we would have some, some real management challenges.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: But I mean, we could definitely do it with ai and, and scheduling mares that needed to be bred.
• 25:25
  Speaker: Lemme just recap what you're saying because it sounds like what you're saying is that.
• 25:30
  Speaker: Stallions that are gonna have a high sperm count.
• 25:33
  Speaker: Probably also have dominant traits that may look like aggression because in the wild, those are the horses that win out if there's competition and.
• 25:43
  Speaker: Having a docile stallion may not have a really high sperm count.
• 25:48
  Speaker: And so in a domesticated, small breeding situation, we might be able to bring those amiable traits out.
• 25:56
  Speaker: But in the wild what we're looking for is wild, aggressive, big, strong muscle testosterone, high stallions.
• 26:05
  Speaker: 'cause that's what's gonna reproduce
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Because if you, described, in the domesticated, there may be a very, very talented stallion, but he is just uns showable, you know?
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: If he's lucky enough to maybe breed enough quality mares, he may be a stallion that, maybe Doesn't have all the awards but he's really a good producer.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: That can go that way too.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: In, in the domesticated realm where he's a really good producer and he can breed a lot of mares.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: So, but usually most of us will gravitate toward the more the more user friendly horse.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: And so that horse is not gonna be an alpha.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: He's gonna be, you know, and and then, and you, and then you switch gears to the wild.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Well, I would suggest, without knowing exactly, but I would suggest that, that the most rank is dominant Stallion is gonna breed most of the mares and so, if his traits are, are, does he have some negative to him?
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, he's gonna pro be producing, you know.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: 75, I'm, I'm gonna guess 75 to 80% of the offspring out there.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: And and you know, when we have domesticated horses, you know, we, you typically don't have any acceptable death loss.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: But when we switch over to the livestock realm, there is acceptable death loss.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: You know, whether we're raising sheep or cattle, we know that they're not all gonna live.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: But with horses it seems a little different.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: But then when we get into the wild, we gotta look at'em as a completely different creature.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: And so,
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: You get into that realm of verbiage, like natural selection, ones that are born compromised, they're not gonna live.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: And
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: so if you end up with you know, a stallion that has maybe that is super dominant, but it has some kind of genetic fault and, you know, you're, you're in that particular group.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Your numbers might drop off because he, you know, maybe that genetic fault is, is, is dominant and it's showing up in a high percentage of his offspring.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe they're not gonna make it, you know, depending on what the environment is or what the predation is.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: And, and so I could see that in certain groups of horses, you know, one group may be thriving and another group may be really struggling and another part of the country, and it could all, it eventually could all lead to just genetic selection.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Well,
• 28:34
  Speaker: yeah, I'm sure a lot of it is an environment and, and predators and, I mean, so many different variables in that situation as well.
• 28:42
  Speaker: I mean, it's, it's, it's no shock that in the wild there are no old and sick horses, you know, despite, despite that I, I'm seeing language that.
• 28:54
  Speaker: That is the opinion of some people that horses have no natural predators.
• 28:58
  Speaker: That doesn't seem to be a way that that can really be true.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: I would just assume that, if you had a, a herd of elk and you have.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Some weaker elk they're probably the ones that are gonna lag behind and get taken first.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine that the same thing wouldn't happen with a, a herd of horses.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: We look at our domestic horses and, when the weather conditions are right.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: They can get an abscess.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: They could, spraining the ankle.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, you would think that would set them up if they got any sort of separation from the protection of the herd, off the wayside.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: And then just being able to just cover ground, you know, if they can't really cover ground and get the forage then that's gonna compromise, you know, and then one thing leads to another, to another, to another, and it can be probably.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: I could imagine it being a downward slope and with any, with any animal out in the wild, particularly you know, when you think about herds, we're thinking about like elk and antelope, horses, wild horses you know, stuff like that.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: But they definitely rely on the, on the herd to, to probably be somewhat of their protection.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: As far as a group.
• 30:08
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 30:09
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 30:11
  Speaker: Do you miss, do you miss not breeding?
• 30:12
  Speaker: Do you miss the horses?
• 30:13
  Speaker: I mean, you, you still have horses, right?
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we, we have about five.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: And I we, we don't, we've kind of gotten away from the riding of them.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: We have a, bunch of older geriatric horses that are pasture pets.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: They're all broke to ride, but, myself personally, I struggled with a, with a bad hip for a few years, and I found that I can't even really get in the saddle.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I get my leg up to get in the stirrups, so I recently had hip surgery and, and that's one of the things we're, we're looking forward to in the future is, getting back to having some, solid riding horses so that we can get back into the the routine of, of riding because, we do a lot of hiking, but, but if you're on a four wheeler or, or side by side you just don't see the things that you see.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: So you can cover a lot more ground, but it's slow enough that you can really take in your environment riding to check fence lines or, or, you know, certain times of the year where it's practically dangerous to go anywhere in a, a vehicle whether it be a side by side or in the middle of the winter, we can still go back up into the canyon and, and check out, a pasture i'm looking forward to, getting back to just having horses for our personal
• 31:32
  Speaker: wonderful to be able to ride and it's, you're right, it's so practical and the experience is completely different.
• 31:38
  Speaker: And I know when I'm on horseback is different than hiking in that I also seem to have.
• 31:45
  Speaker: The experience of the horse who has better ears and better eyes, and the footfalls, you know, are, are not my own.
• 31:52
  Speaker: Like the whole experience is just, I know for me it's just magical.
• 31:55
  Speaker: I can see why you've missed it so much.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: A little bit of therapy.
• 31:59
  Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:01
  Speaker: Well, we've covered so many topics.
• 32:03
  Speaker: I really appreciate all of your knowledge and background with this, it's been really interesting for me to learn more about, about breeding and horses and stimulating a lot of thinking about wild horses and the horses that I see that are bred.
• 32:17
  Speaker: It's good stuff, Eric.
• 32:18
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're welcome.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Everything that we talked about was just the tip of the iceberg.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is, it is such a, every one of the points that we were talking about is, is such a huge subject and you could just go into depth.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: And it's really hard to even talk about it without getting, you know, sidetracked on goat trails My encouragement to anybody thinking about getting into horses is that,, get around professionals and find out, you know, the facts.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: 'cause the facts can be critical, you know, and, and and, and you can you can glean so much, you know, you can glean a lot from anybody.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: As far as what you don't wanna do and what to do and the it's, it's really served us well.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: We, we've been into horses forever and, and even though I'm not breeding horses now with you know, through the farrier, you know, shoeing horses and, and meeting people and dealing with lamenesses and whatnot, it's, it's all rewarding, you know?
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: And I think the horses have served me well all my life.
• 33:22
  Speaker: Well said.
• 33:25
  Speaker: All right, well thank you again and we'll be seeing you pretty soon I'm sure.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll be up and about before you know it.
• 33:32
  Speaker: Alright, thank, take care.
• 33:34
  Speaker: Thank you.