The agri.CULTURE Facebook page was developed to illuminate the values of country living by exposing the passion of hard working people in agriculture. If you listen, you will find that most of these people would trade nothing for the lessons learned – lessons that produce strength of character and solid foundations for generations to come.
Quote from Gena:
“I started riding when I was three years old. Our family had a horse ranch in Oregon. We also raised German Shepherds for the K-9 Unit there, so it was horses and dogs.
I now live in the Coeur d’ Alene area on a ranch and we raise Dun horses. We call the ranch… “Duns N Roses Ranch” because, after all, we are from the 80s. The Dun is the color that we produce, we are a color breeder.
They are all American Quarter Horses but we breed for the color. Dun is the primitive color, the oldest color known to man. It’s a natural base color with black points. The black stripe down the spine is known as the dorsal stripe. Then the primitive markings are on their legs, withers and face. The primitive markings were designed for camouflage so the horse could hide from predators.
We got involved breeding the color about 25 years ago. We have our own stud and we produce about 20 horses a year, 95% of those are Duns. We promote the Buckskins and Duns and produce them and of course, our barn has a show team.
There are about 30 members on our show team. They travel nationally and regionally and we go to the championships every year. We have several world champions and reserve champions in our barn. Quite a few of the horses that we have produced have won in the American Buckskin Registry Association as well at the world level.
We sought out to produce the most beautiful version of the Dun and Buckskin that we could and brought those standards up to today’s AQHA level with a higher standard of movement and grace. They are far more stylish today than ever before. They are now going into the Quarter Horse ring and doing well. They have always been a versatile breed, these horses can branch out to do a number of things. They might be great at one thing and good at a whole bunch. I would rather see that then have them only do one thing. We look for what the horse is talented in or good at and we promote that.
We like to keep our horses happy. My breeding program produces all around performance horses. It’s rewarding to see the owners grow and do well with our horses; we have little representations running around all over the place.”