Saturday, March 24, 2012

Ann Stockstill, Equestrian

Welcome, Ann!  

Rancher and horse breeder, Ann is internationally known for her 
Homozygous Paint Horses....

Where is Coyote Creek Ranch?

Coyote Creek Ranch is located in Winona, Texas, USA, which is a small country town in East Texas centrally located between Tyler, Longview, Gladewater and Kilgore.  I am approximately 100 miles from Dallas and Shreveport, Louisiana. I have 165 acres of rolling land with 110 acres of pasture, 5 ponds and a spring fed lake that is 7 acres and stocked with catfish and perch. The remainder is in timber (a mix of Pine trees and hardwood).

Tell me about your life as a rancher and your horses…

I lived in the city all my life and taught middle school and junior high English and Science along with other subject areas for Pine Tree ISD in Longview for 29 years and later for Winona ISD for 7 years.   I had no aspirations to be a rancher but it rather fell in my lap when I married my second husband in 1993.  He owned cattle and liked living in the country so we sold my house in town and moved to the present location.  I bought my first horse, a Palomino gelding, about that time.  I had always wanted horses but never had a place to put them or the opportunity to own one.  My first horse, Skipper, was a sweet natured horse that had been ridden by kids and then put out to pasture.  He was about 13 years old and gentle enough to ride bareback.

About 6 or 8 months later, we went to Idabel, Oklahoma and bought Peps Last Lady (AQHA own daughter of Mr San Peppy) to keep Skipper company and allow both of us to ride around the ranch and check cattle. About the time I bought Lady, I started noticing black/white paint horses and thought they were absolutely beautiful.  There were not many available so I started looking for one to buy and found a man in the Gladewater area that had a black and white stallion for breeding services.  I had never heard of a homozygous horse but found out that it meant they only threw paint offspring regardless of what they were bred to.  I decided to bred Lady to Sparky and the resulting foal was a black and white filly which I named Stormy. Not very original but she was born in February on a freezing night in the rain.  Lady was quite confused to have a black/white baby since all of her previous foals had been sorrel quarter horses.  It was really odd to see a sorrel quarter horse with a beautiful black/white filly.  I still have them both.  Lady is about 20 years old and Stormy is close to 14 years old.

In the next few years I began to look for other black and white paints and go to auctions in Shawnee, Oklahoma and Lufkin.  I bought several black/white paints including Color By Chick which had been bred to a double homozygous stallion, Summers Half Moon, owned by Dana James in Gladewater. The resulting foal was my multiple APHA/PtHA World and Reserve World stallion, Summers Chico Bandito.  Chico was the horse of my dreams.  Not only was he black/white but also homozygous for tobiano and the black gene.  He was splashy colored with one blue eye and one brown. Chico has such a sweet nature and athletic ability that I decided to send him to a trainer when he was two.

Summers Chico Bandito has won World in steer stopping, heading and heeling and top honors and superiors along with thousands of points in heading, heeling, steer stopping, tie down roping and a few pts shy of superior in working cow horse. He has produced numerous offspring that have also won APHA World and PtHA World Championships in cattle events.  His foals have been sold internationally to Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Ireland, Sweden, Belguim, Canada and Mexico.  I ship cooled and frozen semen and hope to start exporting frozen semen to Australia in the near future.

Out of the offspring winning World championships, I have Chicos Bandelero being shown in cattle events and standing at stud in Sanger, Texas. I have also owned World and Reserve World champions Chicos True To TexasChicos Delta Flyer Gold Bar, and Chicos Blonde at the BarChico's offspring are also being shown in reining, working cow horse, barrels, trail and other events.

I chose broodmares to bred to Chico that had World Class pedigrees and many have points and winnings of their own.  I look for own daughters of World Champions to get the best chance of getting athletic, good looking horses.  Chico's offspring have been blessed with his good nature and willingness to learn and perform.  Everyone is surprised to find that even with 100 horses at my ranch that they come to you wanting to be petted and groomed and we have no problem catching any of them.  They have been easy to train and even have been able to put as many as 10 stallions together with no problems.

I have also started breeding Chico to quarter horses with great pedigrees, such as, Shining Spark, Grays Starlight, Peppy San Badger, Hollywood Dun It, and Nu Chex to Cash to name a few.  I have a 8 month old filly out of a Chico filly that has World Champions top an bottom including Shining Spark and Nu Chex To Cash and she is already athletic and is has been a joy to start training.  She is bay and white with one blue eye and one brown like her grandsire.

Chico has also been bred to Holsteiners to produce splashy colored dressage horses and hunter jumpers.  They are show stoppers in a ring with solid brown or gray horses.

In your opinion, do paints have a different disposition than other quarter horses?

In my opinion, paints have a better disposition than most of my quarter horses.  Their foals will come to you wanting attention where the quarter horse foals tend to be a more reserved and they take more time to come around wanting to be handled.  I think it is ridiculous for many cowboys and ropers to state that paints aren't as athletic or fast as quarter horses.  You can’t find a single paint horse that doesn’t have quarter horses and or TB on their pedigree.  The major difference is color.  I love to look at a pasture full of loud colored black/white or bay/white horses.  Their color adds so much to a parade or rodeo events than looking at sorrel or bay solid horses.  I think more should be used for mounted police work to help stand out in a crowd and they are great in movies; Hidalgo being one of the great paints in movies.

Where is your favorite place to ride?

My favorite place to ride is along a beach or a wooded trail.  Love to hear the sound of waves splashing against the shore or the quiet of a forest with only the sound of occasional birds chirping and the sounds that your horse makes as you move along the trail.

Where do you show?

My horses are usually shown in shows in Texas (Ft Worth, Lufkin, Waco, Athens, Stephenville, Royse City, Katy, Houston) but we have shown in Monroe, Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi, which also have some good paint shows.  Now that APHA requires paints to qualify for World there may be a bigger interest in showing than since our economy took turn for the worse.   We show at the World Show in Ft. Worth along with the Stockshows in Houston and Ft. Worth.

What are your goals as an equestrian? 

It has been my goal to produce the best black and white horses that I can.  I breed not only for color but performance and disposition. I specialize in black/white double homozygous horses.  Many people do not understand what a homozygous horse is but they are horses that have been tested genetically and shown to only throw the paint gene so their offspring are paints.  Horses that are not homozygous have about a 50% chance of throwing color and 50% chance of throwing a solid colored foal.  Horses that are homozygous for the black gene can throw black, bay, grulla, and buckskin but do not have the sorrel or chestnut gene.

My international clients are mainly interested in black/white homozygous and preferably double homozygous horses.  They look at performance ability and the ability to throw color.

I really wish that our government was interested in helping ranchers with our drought situation.  Many horses are being starved, abandoned and sold for slaughter due to the expense of feeding and caring for them.  Horses have been a part of our heritage and culture for hundreds of years.  They are powerful, majestic creatures and need to be protected and given the dignity they deserve.  Lady ranchers could also use some help and respect these days to make ranching a profitable business to be in. 

Update July 5, 2013
Ann's Book Releases....

Painted Dreams

"This wonderful collection of 45 poems provides true insight into the reflections, dreams, feelings and vivid imagination of a remarkable talent."    
http://www.blurb.com/b/3975403-painted-dreams?pid=new

Out of the Dark into the Light
This book is dedicated to all the people who have touched my life. Some people simply passed through my life like an ocean tide washing against the shore and then out to sea again. Others stayed through the passing of time until they had other places to be. There were those people that brought happiness and light and others bringing darkness and sorrow. Together they brought experiences along with my own life's journey that inspired the poetry I have written. The poems in this book express both the evil thoughts of man and the light of salvation through trusting our Lord; my simple reflections on the world.


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