Here lately I’ve had to do the taxes and add up all the expenses on the farm. It seems every year I learn something when I study my farm expenses. Like most any farmer, we somehow ended up with too many animals and our feed bill was through the roof.
We have goats and horses that don’t really do anything but eat feed. They were the kids first horse or show animal and they will live out their lives in peace and die on our farm. Lucky, my son’s first horse is either twenty three or twenty four this year. Red, the momma goat that started it all, has to be about ten years old now, that’s ancient for a goat. They cost a little money, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
However, I also bought three team roping horses last year. We also have my daughter’s barrel horse, three colts and an our good roping horse. Somehow, we ended up with about ten horses. We only actually ride about four of them. Needless to say, the feed bill was pretty pricey when I got to adding up all the receipts from the various feed stores we buy feed from.
My daughter is always sending me pictures of horses she wants to buy. My response is almost always the same, no more critters to feed. We don’t even ride them all.
Here lately I keep hearing the words of a man that taught me a lot of horsemanship when I was in college. He always emphasized to me, “ride the horse you got.” He was big on spending time developing the best horse you own. He said too many people want to complain their horse isn’t good enough, when really the problem is they don’t ride the horse but maybe four times a month. He’d say, “ride the ones you’ve got.”
These last few days I’ve been emphasizing to my son we need to ride our horses every single day of the week. We’ve got two colts and our good roping horses. School is out for the summer, there’s nothing better to do than ride these colts and make them better. I’ve sold one colt and one older rope horse. My daughter is selling her barrel horse and I’ve got another team roping horse to sell as well. We are trying to get the horses down to a manageable number.
I can remember as a kid I’d ride four horses a day roping at my parent’s house. It seems there aren’t enough hours in the day to ride that many horses now. I’m either baling hay, running the dozer or dealing with some business related issues.
Jim Brinkman said something similar when I was at the Pitzer ranch horse sale in April. He said he only has so many hands to help him ride the horses, so there’s only so many they can develop each year.
No great athlete became great by sitting in front of the TV. The same is true for horses, they have to get out and see the sights and get some experience in order to develop. Ride the ones you’ve got and keep your horse numbers to a manageable amount.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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