All in a weeks work.

We had some light rain on Monday morning. Lura had a fancy buckskin colt. Toni went and checked before going into the school to teach a horse genetics lesson to two science classes. She thought she was talking to an Ag class, which it was an FFA class, the problem is that it has been approved as a general science credit.  So it was not as rewarding as she thought it would be. Toni, the boys and I worked on some more fence. Anna did the show cattle chores. Then the boys went up to help when we got done with the fence. Toni, Jaxsen and I got Jeannie’s gelding in and then went and hooked up the gooseneck.

Ellie foaled on Tuesday. Dad and Toni went to Jordans to get King and Tank. They took Jeannie’s gelding and dropped him off. King and Tank look really good, Toni took lots of pics and videos.  They had to be back by noon because we had our first person out to look at foals. She selected Lilo to purchase. Or Lilo chose her, either way.  When Toni got back she saw that Twist was in heat, so I messaged Holly and Toni ran Twist over to Holly’s house to breed her to Whitty. Whitty is Friday’s full brother, he is by Colonel and out of Peppy. We are so happy to have him close by. If you want to breed to him give us a shout and we will get Holly’s info for you. Toni also put Sally in with King, she was in heat. When I got home Toni, the boys and I moved Mud down by Stetson, so we have BB and Mud down to tease.  We have every pen full all over the place at this point. No room anywhere, but we think we can make this work.

Wednesday started off pretty exciting. When Toni went to check, Annie had foaled but Stinger had stolen the foal. Mom, Dad, and Toni were all out getting him back. Stinger was pretty serious about keeping him, so it took all three of them. Luckily she really is a great mare and once Toni got a string around her neck, she was able to lead her to the corral where Stinger continued to pace the fence and act like an idiot the entire rest of the day. Annie had a colt, who was pre-named Ninja no matter if it was a colt or filly. Because of the morning debacle, Ninja got a tube of colostrum just to make sure. Annie and Ninja got moved over with Tulip so they could just be together with no other horses.   The kids had a half day of school and then parent teacher conferences. Anna went to serve the teacher’s dinner, since she is an FFA officer.  Jaxsen convinced his teacher that he did not need a conference, it was a bad time of day for his mom, blah blah blah. Kade’s conference was great.  Toni took the boys to see Grandma after and they had a good visit. Then back for chores. Right now chores include all the normal feeding, with more pens because studs need to be spread out, and teasing mares as the extra chore bonus.  King seems really happy to be home and mom is very happy to have him home.  Tank is up at Toni’s house with Charlie and Fancy, but he also seems very happy. They both look great.

On Thursday the kids were off for parent teacher conferences, so they went with Toni to Farm Fair and taught inner city 5^th graders about beef. I feel like it was an experience for everyone. I can say pretty confidently that our kids are not going to be teachers, and they have the utmost respect for the patience that teachers have. Jaxsen started to lose his patience, which are limited to begin with, by the end of the day. Toni had to tell him to be kind a couple of times. Please keep in mind that the “kids” he was teaching are the same age as he is, so he probably shouldn’t be as……. himself as he was starting to be. Toni had to pay the kids with slushies. Everyone got home and went straight to chores.

On Friday Anna and Kaine went back to farm fair with FFA and got to teach for a second day. Kade, Jaxsen, Toni and dad went to JC Grocery in Mesa and handed out beef for the WCA/2^nd Harvest partnership. Jaxsen had a blast because he got to yell out how much to bring to each car. Mom and I ran around and did errands. After I went down to circle 6 and worked on Tank’s fence while the kids worked on their steers. Marlo was out for chores. Chores went fine. We had some fence to fix and put in some more posts on the project fence.  Stetson is getting decent about going through a specific gate and getting into the swing of things.

Saturday dad, Ben, Kaine and Kade went to Ady to get panels we bought from Ruth and Gary. There are a lot of heavy powder River Panels. Toni, Jaxsen, Anna and I got cows in, fixed fence, chased cows, moved cows, hunted cows, paired up cows. We had planned to work on more fence, but we really needed to get the cows moved. Toni rode Pistol and Anna rode Kady. We also had people out to look at the cow we have for sale. And a bull buyer came and got his bull. We also had some acquaintances come look at the grulla filly out of Bayley, they bought her as soon as they saw her. She is a pretty cool little filly. Then we got an outside mare in and the kids from that family also mauled Bayley’s filly. Tall John showed up so we went to do chores and talk about horses.

Sunday we did more of the same, chased cows, fixed fence, hauled horses, the kids worked on their steers. I decided to west nile and deworm all of the mares in Circle 5, 2 of which we needed to get out with studs. So I did that while Toni showed a buyer around and looked at horses. She had a hard decision to make, but picked Honey Bug as the one she wanted. We moved Tank and his mares down to circle 6. Poor Tank accidentally ran through the fence then couldn’t figure out how to get back in the pen. He was not hurt and we got him back in and fixed the fence. We moved Ellie out with Tank and Lura out with Gunner. Now all of the studs have at least one mare with them. Anna started clipping her steers to get ready for the Pomeroy show. Kade moved Slick up to Toni’s house so he could practice roping in his spare time.

We were really excited this week to get Tank and King back. Both are stallions we raised that we think very highly of. We do have King for sale, but that is just because of the number of studs we have right now. And King and Tank are both related to quite a few of our mares, so selling one of them makes sense, but it isn’t something we are in any rush to accomplish.

It has been very rewarding to see the high amount of interest in the foal crop. Every day we are getting calls and emails. Many people are buying without coming out. We do have the foal contract online if anyone is interested in a foal and wants to see the contract. We love having people out to take the tour. Showing off our breeding program and ranch is one of the more fun things we get to do. Clearly as breeders we always think there is room for improvement, but we are pretty proud of the program we have put together. If you want to come out and see what KT Ranch is about, please let us know so we can get you scheduled.