Back in the day, Old Fred sired both sprinters and working ranch horses.

Old Fred. AQHA file photo.

From a 1947 issue of Quarter Horse Magazine

Over on the western slope of the Rockies, Don De Mars was talking to Coke Roberds and a few other horsemen. Don asked Mr. Roberds which horse – of all the Quarter Horses he had ever known – he would rather have back if such a thing were possible. And Mr. Roberds (who has been watching, working, and breeding Quarter Horses since the frontier days – and who owned Peter McCue, the fastest Quarter Horse and the greatest Quarter sire ever in Colorado, during his final breeding years) replied without hesitation: “Old Fred. I would rather have Fred than any horse I’ve ever seen. There was only one Fred,” he said, “and there may never be another; for to me he is the horse of a lifetime spent with and for good horses.”

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Since 1850, the Saunders family has helped write Texas history.

Thomas Saunders V rides Red Hot Powder to round up some young horses to be branded and gelded. Journal photo

From America’s Horse

Tom Bailey Saunders wouldn’t have believed a word of it. In fact, some men of his era might have tried to shut you up with a dose of frontier justice.

This patriarch, born in 1816, moved to Texas in 1850 and saw several of his sons grow up to make names for themselves in the rapidly developing cattle industry. He saw his grandson develop the same sense of entrepreneurship that later made him the largest cattle dealer in the United States.

But what’s going on today? Pshaw!

For starters, his kinfolk – six generations later – are still ranching in Texas. And they’re finding innovative ways of doing it, ways that weren’t even imagined in the mid-19th century.

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AQHA offers naming options for your horses.

Reserve your next foal's registered name. Journal photo

From The Q-Racing Journal

Expecting a foal within the next year? Got a registered name in mind for that baby, but you’re afraid someone else might take it? Here are some tips for how you can best use AQHA’s registration options.

Reserve a Name: You can reserve a foal name for $75 for one year. The name you reserve must meet all AQHA naming guidelines as stated in Rule 214 in the AQHA handbook. Foal name reservations are only good for one year. However, you can renew that reservation for another $75. AQHA completed 90 name reservations in 2011.

Re-Use a Name: Rule 214 was amended to allow some registered names to be reused. But don’t get your hopes up – Wimpy P-1 is not available.

Originally, Rule 214 stated: “Each horse for which registration is applied must be given a name, acceptable to AQHA, which does not conflict with the name of any other horse registered with AQHA, either living or dead.”

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New Nutrena SafeChoice horse feed helps owners take the reins for optimal nutrition.

Photo courtesy of Nutrena

From AQHA Corporate Partner Nutrena

Two new veterinarian-recommended Nutrena SafeChoice horse feeds have been put on the market to help improve horse nutrition.

Watch this Nutrena horse feed video to learn about the science behind these new products.

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The man who quietly bred some of the best says, “You can breed it out faster than you can put it in.”

John House. Quarter Horse Magazine photo.

From the April 1949 Quarter Horse Magazine

In 1939, a fortune teller at Franklin, Texas, told John W. House that he would someday be a famous horseman. John House laughed at the prediction – he was then 66 years old, and his name was not widely known beyond Milam County in central Texas.

The 10 years following the crystal ball gazer’s prophecy, however, have seen the great breed spread, and the fame of John W. House spread, too. He was a longtime owner of the mighty Joe Reed, Fannie Ashwell and Little Red Nell, the breeder of Joe Reed II, Leo, Joe Butler, Texas Betty, Red Joe of Arizona, Nellene and Little Fanny – names famous throughout today’s far-flung empire of Quarter Horses.

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Good neighbors team up to create a top horse.

Streakin Boon Dox. Journal photo.

By Larri Jo Starkey for The American Quarter Horse Journal

Mix a little running blood with some old-school rodeo blood and what do you get?

A year-end junior high-point horse with points in halter, tie-down roping, heading, heeling and pole bending.

Streakin Boon Dox, owned by Joe and Carla Spitz of Lamar, Colorado, is the 2011 AQHA high-point horse, but the versatile bay roan’s beginnings stretch back to South Dakota, when neighbors and friends James Colombe and Brian Fulton had a bright idea.

James sent his proven bay mare PC Joesy Dox to Brian’s red roan stallion, A Streak Of Fling. “Joesy Dox” came from Cowan Cattle Co. in Highmore, South Dakota, where James picked her out in 1988 as a weanling.

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One of the greatest quarter-mile horses in all history had a typically American “rags to riches” career.

AQHA Hall of Fame horse Joe Hancock. Quarter Horse Magazine photo.

From Quarter Horse Magazine

Out on a Panhandle prairie in the late summer of 1923, a middle-aged horseman stood talking to his son, who had come to visit him. This man had bred some great Quarter Horses, and he owned John Wilkens, one of the truly great sons of Peter McCue. The man’s name was Walter Hancock.

“See that doggie colt out there,” he told his son. “I’m tired of looking at him. Figure out some way to load him up and take him away from here.”

They went next day, the doggie colt in a “wagon” trailer (they all were in the early ’20s) and the son, secretly proud of a chance to “make a horse.” He was a horseman, too, and while he knew that this doggie was out of a Texas range mare of average breeding, he was by John Wilkens, and all the world knew that this son of Peter McCue had phenomenal early speed. John Wilkens was one of those tragedies of the horse world – a horse as truly great a speedster as his sire, but doomed to obscurity because of small, soft feet.

The doggie colt went down in the Henrietta country, and Walter Hancock’s son grew him into a horse of tremendous stature.

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AQHA now offers a horse coat color test and individual coat color tests.

Determine the actual coat color of your horse. Journal photo.

AQHA is now offering several coat color tests, including a panel test, individual color tests and gray zygosity test. This test is designed to determine the actual coat color of a horse.

These tests can be done in the panel, as well as individually. If done as a panel, the cost is $85 for members and $125 for nonmembers. If ordering individual tests, the cost for members is $25 for each test, and nonmembers pay $65 for each test. Please note, roan is a separate test and not included in the panel test.

Get answers to all your coat color questions with AQHA’s Quarter Horse Coat Colors report.

The gray zygosity test determines if one or two copies of the gray gene are carried in the horse. The gray zygosity test is an additional $15 for members and $55 for nonmembers.

The coat color panel test includes:

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Follow AAEP biosecurity guidelines to reduce the risk of infectious disease transmission during breeding season.

Reduce your horse

From the American Association of Equine Practitioners

The American Association of Equine Practitioners urges those involved in the breeding management of mares and stallions to reduce the risk of venereally transmitted diseases by utilizing the association’s “Biosecurity Guidelines for Control of Venereally Transmitted Diseases.” Developed in 2011 by the AAEP Infectious Disease Committee, the guidelines focus on controlling the transmission of equine arteritis virus, contagious equine metritis and equine herpesvirus-3.

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Question Mark was the definition of a great American Quarter Horse.

From America’s Horse

The great American Quarter Horse, Question Mark. AQHA file photo.

This gentle, golden stallion displayed the talent and heart of a great American Quarter Horse.

“Question Mark was so gentle, and the best thing you ever saw,” said Ray Cates, whose father, J.R., bought the stallion in 1947. “He was a good-looking horse. He could run, and he had a lot of sense. You could put a little kid up on him, and he’d walk around with him – we did that a lot out in the pasture.”

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For more than 100 years, gray hair has been a good thing on this Texas ranch.

When someone trots up on a gray horse, the first response is to step back and say "Wow." Michele Jones photo.

By Colleen Schreiber for America’s Horse

Frank Jones Jr.’s family has been raising gray cow horses for more than 100 years now, continuing a long line of horses that knew how to get a job done and looked good doing it.

It makes perfect sense that when you ask Frank’s son, Bedford, what makes a good horse, he replies, “Well, first it has to be gray. When someone trots up on a gray horse, the first response is to step back and say, ‘Wow.’ ”

In addition to this American Quarter Horse program, the Jones family operates a diversified farming and ranching operation in on the Wicker Ranch in Yoakum, Gaines, Dawson, Borden, Crosby and Dickens counties in West Texas.

Bedford, now 36, came back to the family operation in 1998 after completing two degree programs at Texas A&M University. He lives with his wife, Michele, and their 5-year-old son, Henry, on their ranch just outside of Spur, Texas. His parents, Frank and Jean, are also actively involved in the family’s operations. Bedford’s younger sister, a Dartmouth graduate, has recently come back to the family operation as well. She’s handling the books and may in the future take over the farming side of the operation.

“You could change the cows around, but you weren’t going to change the horses around,” Bedford says. “They were our Wicker Ranch horses.”

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Rocket Wrangler proved himself a great race horse and superb breeding stallion who passed on a willing temperament to later generations.

Rocket Wrangler's get earned more than $9.4 million and included Dash For Cash. Journal photo.

From America’s Horse

Rocket Wrangler. Rocket Wrangler. How’s that for a name for a racing American Quarter Horse – the horse of the cowboy, the fastest breed on earth? It says it all.

“He was small, and I was taking him slow,” said American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame trainer C.W. “Bubba” Cascio, who developed the colt who would have a lasting impact on the breed. “The first time I beared down on him, I said, ‘Well, lookee here.’ Jerry come back – Jerry (Nicodemus) was doing all my riding then – and he said, ‘Say, we might have something here.’ So we began to bear down on him. From then on, it was just history. He was a runner.”

Rocket Wrangler proved it. The champion 2-year-old colt in 1970, Rocket Wrangler started 23 races between 1970 and 1973, coming back a winner from 10 and bringing home $252,167 in earnings. Winning his maiden race, he finished farther back in the Grade 1 Kansas Futurity, the first stop on Ruidoso Downs’ triple-crown trail. Then, with Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Nicodemus in the irons, Rocket Wrangler swept the next two, taking the Grade 1 Rainbow Futurity and Quarter Horse racing’s flagship event, the Grade 1 All American Futurity.

Check out AQHA’s Equine Breeding Techniques and Foal Health Tips to learn what to expect during every stage of breeding.

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