Untitled - Wagon Wheel Ranch

Turning
The Wheel
“Our philosophy here at the
Wagon Wheel Ranch is to
do everything horseback
whenever possible. … I tell my
crew, ‘Hey, we raise horses,
let’s use them.’ ”
The Wagon Wheel Ranch preserves
the foundation lines that made the
American ≤uarter Horse.
Story and photos by
Richard Chamberlain
T
texas is where cowboys and cowboyin’ were born.
It’s where ranches and ranching developed.
Not that it’s news to anyone who reads this magazine,
but it’s where early ranchers bred and raised foundation
American Quarter Horses – the usin’ kind, solid stock
for every kind of job on every type of rugged terrain in
the West.
And it’s on places like the Wagon Wheel Ranch
where cowboys and cowboyin’ – and real good ranch
horses – are still alive and thriving.
“I sure like it here, much more than any other job I
could think of,” says ranch foreman Rusty Rodgers, 43.
“I love this ranch, I love this operation. I like running
cattle, and I’m definitely passionate about these
foundation Quarter Horses that we raise. I truly
believe we’re raising some good horses.”
The Wagon Wheel is selling good horses, too –
stallions, geldings and mares with the Walking Stick brand
on the left hip, from a breeding program concentrating
the blood of legendary sires King P-234 and his son
Royal King, and Joe Hancock, Blue Valentine,
Gooseberry, Mr San Peppy, Driftwood and Dick
Sonoita. An AQHA Ranching Heritage Breeder, the
Wagon Wheel held its annual production sale
September 13, the second of a two-day Ranching
Heritage Weekend at the headquarters ranch in
Lampasas County near Lometa, Texas.
The sale was only one part of the weekend that was
an open-to-the-public celebration of ranching and
ranch life. The day before the sale began early, with
gathering the broodmares and their foals, and then
weaning, vaccinating, deworming and branding the
babies. Lunch was served after the Friday morning
work, and the WWR crew then invited everyone to the
arena to participate in a ranch penning and watch
demonstrations of the sale horses. Each horse was
demoed again the next morning before the sale, and
Saturday night wrapped up with Red Steagall and The
Boys in the Bunkhouse Band playing a live concert,
with everything both days recorded for a documentary
on the ranch by a crew from Emmy Award-winning
Celebrity Films.
That wasn’t all. Between the sale and concert was a
horsemanship and training clinic by well-known
horsemen Buster and Sheryl McLaury, whose daughter
Tiffany also trains horses as a member of the Wagon
Wheel staff.
“The horses here have real good dispositions,” Buster
says. “They’re pretty easy to get along with. Their
genetics are very important, too. The genetics they
have here – the Kings and Driftwoods, the Hancocks
and Blue Valentines – they’re old foundation-type
horses that have been around for a long time. They’re
versatile, they can do a lot of different things well.
They rope on them, they cut on them, they run barrels
on them. If they hadn’t been the right kind of horses,
we wouldn’t still have them. If those genetics weren’t
right, they’d be raising a different kind of horse here.
They’d have bred to something else.”
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Rolling Along
founded in 1872, the wagon wheel wanch was bought
Rusty Rodgers ramrods
the Wagon Wheel Ranch.
on its centennial anniversary by Elaine and Fred G. Gist for
their children, Kim Skinner, Kathy Magee and John C. Gist.
The Gist family runs a commercial cow/calf operation on the
Wagon Wheel headquarters ranch at Lometa and on a nearby
ranch on the Lampasas/Burnet county line, comprising
approximately 10,000 acres. They also have cows on another
19,000 acres near Midland. Fred Gist died in 2009, leaving wife
Elaine and son John to carry on with the ranching operation.
“We had horses and cattle when I was growing up,” says John,
42, who last year married Molly Anne Gilbert, a childhood
friend from Midland. “I didn’t do any cowboyin’ myself. But I
was around the ranching lifestyle my whole life. Mom’s family
primarily ranched in West Texas, near Goldsmith. Dad’s family
ranched in New Mexico, near Roswell and Las Vegas. We
bought this place (at Lometa) in 1972. Mom and Dad picked
this part of the country after doing some research and talking to
acquaintances, and they just loved the country.”
So does Rusty. Hired on seven years ago, he was raised in a
ranching family at Graham, Texas, and earned a degree in
computer science before returning to his roots. His wife
Juanita Perez grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. They
married eight years ago and the couple moved to the Wagon
Wheel from western Kansas, where Rusty at the time was the
shipping manager at a Cargill feedlot. Rusty now runs the
day-to-day operation at Wagon Wheel, where Juanita is an
all-around hand and the foreman’s assistant.
“Rusty is my right-hand man, and I’m extremely grateful
to have his help,” John says. “We both manage the place for
my mom. She runs the place – she is the matriarch. As far as
Buster and Sheryl McLaury come to the
Wagon Wheel Ranch to break colts each
year, and conducted a horsemanship
clinic after the ranch’s production sale.
the technical aspects – the Xs and Os, so to speak – well, we
are just the managers. Rusty has been able to pick up where
Dad left off. Dad educated Rusty, Rusty educated himself,
I’ve educated myself and we’ve educated each other. Rusty’s
vision has always been to make this ranch the very best that
it can possibly be, to continually improve on the breeding
program and to improve our horses.”
Improving horses is not as simple as just turning a stud in
with the mares. As an old-time cowman once said, most
people don’t breed livestock; they merely multiply them.
“That’s right,” Rusty says. “Not to get too complicated, but
we use linebreeding to maximize hybrid vigor, size, speed and
other desirable characteristics in our foals. We also try to
increase the number of matched pairs of chromosomes produced
in our foals, which allows us to maintain and sometimes
increase (depending on pairings) the percentage of foundation
blood in our foals. By doing that, we try to consistently produce
all of the desired characteristics a person looks for in a horse –
good conformation, good feet, gentle attitude, good withers
and cow sense, and even color in some cases.”
The ranch now stands Gists Fifty King and has in its
broodmare band the Cow Bo Country mare Miss Fifty King
Gist, who might well have the highest percentage of King
P-234 blood of any horses alive today. Wagon Wheel also
stands Roan Hancock Man (a son of the Wagon Wheel’s former
stallion Rowdy Blue Man and who the ranch says has the
highest percentage of any Blue Valentine stallion), and the
Mr San Peppy stallion Hix Freckles Peppy. The ranch bred to
a dozen of its own stallions this year: Claytons Romeo Ike,
Gists Fifty King, Mr Cat Hancock, Mr Forty Six King, Pig
Creek Hancock, Roan Hancock Man, Royal Tony Too, WWR
In 2004, Red Steagall interviewed Fred Gist
on his “Cowboy Corner” radio program.
Steagall and The Boys in the Bunkhouse
Band wrapped up the weekend on Saturday
night, and after the show visited with Molly
and John Gist.
Blue Hancock, WWR King Hancock, WWR Driftwood Ike,
WYO Chuckar Hancock and Berry Sweet Whizard.
“We just recently acquired Berry Sweet Whizard,” Rusty says.
“He’s a line-bred stud who goes back to Hollywood Jac 86 and
King who we plan to cross on our Royal King, Mr San Peppy
and Hancock mares,” Rusty says. “This particular stallion on
the top sire side of his pedigree has some Topsail Whiz, goes
back to reining horses. I believe that cross will put a little
performance-type blood in with the foundation cow-sense blood
to produce some performance-type geldings and mares … in
other words, some riding horses that we think the general
public is looking for.”
The foundation breeding program that Wagon Wheel is
practicing today was started by Fred Gist some 36 years ago.
Until then, the ranch had just been breeding grade geldings
for ranch use.
“His foreman knew of a good horse for sale, told Mr. Gist he
could make some money in the horse business and encouraged
him to buy a Two Eyed Jack stallion named Jaggidy Jack,”
Rusty recalls. “Mr. Gist bought the horse and he became one
of the cornerstone stallions of the Wagon Wheel Ranch
breeding program.”
To further improve his stock, Fred began gathering mares
and studs with the blood of Leo, Bert, Oklahoma Star and Mr
Gunsmoke, and the Thoroughbreds Three Bars and Top Deck.
“Mr. Gist gradually built the horse-breeding program from
that Two Eyed Jack stallion, one thing led to another, and at
one time, he had one of the largest number of horses in the
United States – something like 1,000 head,” Rusty says. “He
bred horses not only for ranch use, working cattle and that kind
of stuff, but also to sell as breeding stock to other breeders.
Lilly Staley, 17, shows Quala Te
Tabasco in the sale ring, riding
bareback with only a halter.
Early on, he noticed that his foals were OK, but didn’t have the
uniformity he would have liked. He began to study Ed
Heimann’s genetic formulas concerning homozygosity, which is
a fancy word for matched pairs of chromosomes, hybrid vigor
and inbreeding coefficients, and then he applied those formulas
to his horse-breeding operation. When he did that, he started
producing exceptional foals with a lot of uniformity. He said, ‘Oh,
I’ve got on to something here: I can’t just breed A Good Stallion
to A Good Mare, not knowing their (genetic) background.’
When he started looking at both the outside of the horse as well
as the inside genetics, his breeding program really took off.
“In 2010, after Mr. Gist’s passing, John and I analyzed the
entire breeding operation and decided to concentrate on the
bloodlines we’re currently raising,” he says. “We picked those
for a number of reasons: marketability, preference of what we
like characteristic-wise: attitude, how they ride around, what
we thought would be the best sellers, which sometimes is a
gamble. Then we dispersed the bloodlines that we didn’t want
to hone in on, got leaner and meaner, and started producing
better quality but not as much quantity. That is what we
strive for here: Better quality.”
Tiffany McLaury moves
cattle on Haidas Wood
prior to the sale.
OK, that’s all well and good – theories of homozygosity
and inbreeding coefficients are great. But down here on earth,
what do you get if you bring home a horse from the Wagon
Wheel sale?
“I was looking for a finished horse that had a reputation,”
says Jane Owens, who ranches at Dripping Springs, Texas,
and paid $17,500 for the highest seller, Gin Beam Merada, a
13-year-old Freckles Plaboy/Peppy San Badger/Doc Bar/
Hollywood Gold-bred gelding owned by Wagon Wheel
trainer Kelsey Mosby. “Anybody would be an idiot to not buy
a horse that has been trained by Kelsey. She owned that horse
for five years, and with the training she put into him, 17-5 is
a total deal. His breeding is exceptional, he’s quite an athlete
and he’s such an easy-going horse – he had a 12-year-old girl
riding him around most of the sale day. I ride him nearly
every day, moving and working cows, and he is right on top
of the game. He can cut a cow, no problem – he really gets
into it. I’m exceptionally pleased with the horse.
“I also own two yearlings that I bought as weanlings from the
Wagon Wheel,” she says. “I’ll tell you, if you are looking for good
ranch stock – good, solid horses – go to the Wagon Wheel.”
Kelsey Mosby demonstrates WWR
Goldnugget King prior to the sale.
Rusty Rodgers puts the Wagon
Wheel’s Walking Stick brand on
the left hip of a weanling colt.
Jane Owens paid $17,500 for the highest seller, Gin Beam
Merada. From left: auctioneer Bruce McCarty; Jane Owens and
Rusty Rodgers; Gin Beam Merada, with 12-year-old Morgan
Squires, who showed the horse in the ring; and Kelsey Mosby.
Set To Turn
“i think it’s incumbent on all breeders of the american
Quarter Horse to breed responsibly,” Rusty says. “What I
mean by breeding responsibly is every foal that is produced
should have a purpose, and that purpose should not be just
hoping to produce a quality horse. I believe genetics play a
large role in the breeding of quality horses, yet so many
breeders don’t take the time to understand the genetic side of
the equation. Many breeders today are more interested in
breeding to the hype – the ‘stallion of the day’ – but they’re
apt to later find out that the great hyped stallion cannot
produce nearly as advertised. That’s not necessarily to take
away from that horse, because he might be great himself,
great in the show ring, but he doesn’t have the genetics to
back it up so his offspring aren’t uniformly as good as he is.
Understanding the genetic side of it plays a big role.
“If someone brings a mare to one of our stallions, I can tell
you exactly what the foal is going to be genetically – everything
except whether it’ll be a colt or a filly,” he declares. “I can tell
you everything else about it: What it’s hybrid vigor is going
to be, how many matched pairs of chromosomes it’ll have, is
it more likely to be a reproducer itself or more likely to be a
performance horse.”
The Wagon Wheel managers expect their horses to perform.
Raising mostly Beefmaster/Angus cattle – all commercial, no
registered stock – the ranch calves twice a year, springtime in
March and April, and in the fall in September and October.
The ranch sells weanling calves twice a year, at the end of
April and the first of November.
“We maintain our own heifers and usually purchase our
bulls,” Rusty says. “We always keep some heifers around
headquarters to assist in the training of our ranch horses. This
serves two purposes: It helps our young colts learn how to
track cattle and it makes our heifers gentle and broke to
being gathered and driven around horseback. And gentle
heifers make good mother cows.
“Our philosophy here at the Wagon Wheel Ranch is to do
everything horseback whenever possible. That includes checking
fence, checking water in various pastures, riding through our
cattle during calving season, dragging our calves for branding,
gathering our broodmare band, halter-breaking our weanlings,
even just going to shut a gate somewhere – we take a horse.
I tell my crew, ‘Hey, we raise horses, let’s use them.’ ”
Time in the saddle is one of the perks at Wagon Wheel.
“It’s not a job,” Rusty says. “There’s an old saying, when
Buster McLaury joined the
Wagon Wheel crew to gather
mares on Friday morning.
you’re working at something you like, you never work a day
in your life. I don’t know that that’s true, but at least you
enjoy your work. I might work seven days a week, because
livestock doesn’t know Sundays from Tuesdays or Christmas
from a day in September. You have to take care of them. But I
don’t feel tied down. It’s something I want to do. It’s something
I love to do.
“We’re raising some good horses. I can’t claim they’re the
best in the world or the best in Texas or whatever, because I
haven’t seen them all. But I truly believe we’re raising some
really good ones. Everybody here on the ranch has a passion
about it, and when people come here, I believe it overflows
into them, they see that passion and commitment, and they
feel it as a family. And that’s big to me. You can go to a lot
of operations where they might have good stock, but if you
feel like an outcast or an outsider, do you really want to go
back there? Or would you rather go to some place that makes
you feel welcome? That’s the way I want it to be here: We
want to raise good stock, but still be good people.
“Those can go hand in hand, even though a lot of people
don’t think so.”
Changes might well loom on the horizon, however. The
Gist family is set to turn the Wagon Wheel. Like the horses
and cattle they raise, and any other business anywhere else,
the ranch is on the market.
“We’re looking for the right people,” John says. “We have
a turn-key system, a breeding operation where somebody
with the passion to continue where my family and I leave off
can take this program in any of several different directions,
keeping the core of what we’ve built and what Dad left us with,
so this ranch and the breeding program can continue to preserve
the bloodlines that Dad set out to preserve. The program can
be tweaked by bringing in whatever horse individuals that
somebody desires. It doesn’t have to stay the same. It’s a
dynamic system, ready to go, plug and play, and I’d like to
pass it to somebody who has the passion, the desire and the
knowledge to move it forward. But if we can’t get it into the
right hands, we won’t let it go.
“This was Dad’s lifework,” John concludes. “It was his passion
and now it’s his legacy. We are going to do everything we
know how to do to preserve it, take care of it and get it into
the right hands.”
Richard Chamberlain is a special contributor to the Journal.
To comment, email aqhajournal@aqha.org.
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