Howdy from Kansas

New over here to this forum(although I'm on a couple others). My name is Nicole & I'm from Kansas. I have a horse ranch & horseshoeing business with my husband. I've got a year old son & am having a daughter in Feb. I'm currently in my 2nd semester of working towards my vet tech degree. I don't have a huge number of mice due to where we live but I am greatly looking forward to our move to Oklahoma in the next few years so I can expand my breeding. As for my mice, I'm addicted to broken blacks & blues and am working towards dutch. Thanks for allowing me to join :-)

Oh I would love some blues! - the gene isn't in NZ apparently.. Oooo Horses, you should post some pictures

And Welcome

Hey there!!

Welcome, Welcome! I love horses! I really want a mustang, gypsy vanner, Clydesdale, Appaloosa and some sort of a buckskin

You shouldn't ask for pictures, you'll end up with more than you want! LOL We only have 3 horses right now, we try and get all of our training projects sold & out of here before winter because hay is soooooo expensive right now due to year number 2 of a massive drought. Our hay bill when we bought our winter's worth of hay was astronomical. Talk about a blow to the checkbook! We were starting to get a little concerned because we had a coming 2 year old colt that we REALLY needed to get sold and it wasn't until November that we were finally able to actually get him sold. It would have a been a stretch this winter with a 4th mouth to feed.

This is my baby boy, Yankee. He's my sweetheart. He's a former racehorse that is now just my trail horse & work horse. He's very much a one person horse.





Our filly. She's got a bright future ahead of her. She was started under saddle this fall and is being sent to a trainer in Oklahoma early this spring. She'll be shown very heavily in the next few years.



This is my husband's horse, Twitch. I really don't like him very much lol

mouselover01 wrote:Hey there!!

Welcome, Welcome! I love horses! I really want a mustang, gypsy vanner, Clydesdale, Appaloosa and some sort of a buckskin

You could get a buckskin mustang :-) I love Gypsy Vanners but I will NEVER be able to afford one or justify the expense of buying one. I think they are GORGEOUS! We've had appaloosas before, they are great horses although often quite headstrong lol. Do you want a black or a bay(brown) Clydesdale?

I like the browns!

I did some reading on them some months ago and they are expensive keepers with the food bill and all. I didn't even think of the drought and hay bill! Hopefully by the time I get mine the hay bill goes down!

When I lived in Arizona they go around with the wild mustang and let people pick them out for a couple hundred dollars.

It's better than shooting and killing them but it's still sad! But I wanted to take one home so bad!

You can adopt a mustang online too through their auctions. I always end up browsing through the auction horses because I would love to get one at some point. It's really kind of discouraging that more don't get adopted. https://www.blm.gov/adoptahorse/onlinegallery.php

We don't make much money at all off of our project horses, our primary income is the horse shoeing but we buy regular horses(not mustangs) from the local sale barn that are headed to slaughter simply for NO reason other than no one every taught them anything, and then spend anywhere from 30-60 days halter breaking & gentling them. If they are old enough they are also broke to ride as well. Our goal is to give them at least a CHANCE to have a decent life. With a solid foundation on them they have a MUCH better chance of finding a long term home versus an untouched terrified horse that has to be run through the sale ring loose because they won't allow people near.

that's so great that you do that!! They need a good start in life and need to find good homes. I love horses! I miss watching the wild horses in the morning and at dusk. They'd run through the desert without a care in the world.

It was great!

This is one of our most recent projects. His name was Benny. I bought him at an auction for $40. He was registered and came with papers. No one wanted him because he had never been touched by a human and had a pretty bad cold.

This was the day we brought him home from the sale.


His first "walk" outside of the round pen


By the time he left he was doing great. He'd load on a trailer, walk around with a saddle pad on, stand for the farrier, bathe & groom, not be bothered by a swinging rope, etc


He looked so much better with his winter coat! (Minus the flowers in front of his face)


He's now owned by a gal who has grand plans of using him as her barrel horse in the future. He's spoiled rotten now. Those are the kind of success stories we like to hear for our horses

That's great. What a transformation. He looked so bad day 1. It's nice to see he definitely transformed into a healthy happy horse.

Why do their coats change color in winter?

A lot of bays get very sun bleached during the summer and turn quite a bit lighter. When their winter coat starts to grow in, it's thicker and it often darker than the summer coat. Usually they don't have such a drastic difference, but with Benny I think it was probably a case of malnutrition & no shade of any kinda that caused his super light coat.

And yet I'm still wanting more pictures haha

Cordane wrote:And yet I'm still wanting more pictures haha

Here, I just found a couple more I had on photobucket. :-)

This was the very first picture of us together. It's hard to believe that I'll have owned him for 4 years come Feb.


We did a 'photo shoot' with a friend of mine. She wasn't really getting married, we just wanted to take pictures and the only fancy dress we could find at the thrift store was a wedding dress lol