Hello, my name is Yankee.

Hello, my name is Yankee. I have lived at White Stallion Ranch for 15 years and I am nearly 30 years old.

I worked very hard for the ranch carrying guests for many years which is a job that I really enjoyed, especially towards the end of my career when I carried kids. My favorite past-time was team penning with a kid on my back. I could run so fast down the arena and when I chased the cows I felt like I was a professional rodeo horse! 

Now I am retired and the ranch said that because I worked so hard and was loved by so many people I could spend the rest of my life here with my best friend Bronco just eating and hanging out with the herd. Sometimes people look at me and say that because I am skinny I must be unhealthy or neglected. I am not. I have more food than I can finish and a superb health plan that is probably better than a lot of people in America. The summer months are a little hard on me because I have to burn a lot of calories to stay cool. But I am not unhappy. The wranglers regularly scratch me and Gry the herd manager chats with me every day about what I want for my second breakfast as I have been known to be picky about my grain. Anyway, I plan on enjoying my retirement until my time to go to greener pastures comes, but until then I wanted to say hi to everybody and remind you all to always have cookies in your pockets incase our trails meet.

Hay hay hay!

Sometimes I get asked... "How much hay can you fit in the barn?"

Approximately 407 tonnes. Is the answer Steven, Gry and I worked it out the other day.

The following question normally is... "What does a bale cost?" 

We don't buy by the bale, we buy by the ton so $285.00 per ton.

This led us to figure out a few other things...

Here are a few stats on our hay consumption (well our horses hay consumption).

407 Tons of hay goes in the barn,

815,200 lbs of hay,

1 bale is about 100lbs,

8152 bales of hay in the barn.

76 bales of hay can be moved by a "squeeze" machine in one stack,

8 of these stacks fits on one semi-truck,

14 trucks fill our barn.

We have 150 horses,

We feed 1 1/2 tons of hay a day,

547 1/2 tons of hay are fed a year,

The full barn lasts 266 days.

Last time we bought hay we paid $285.00 per ton,

That's $427.50 spent on hay we feed a day,

We spend approx $156,037.00 per year on hay.

We feed a lot of mouths.

Ladies week

Our second Cactus Cowgirls ladies week of 2014 has come to a close. And what a lot of fun we had. We'd like to give a big thanks to Carol Moore and Carol Bachmann for running the program and taking wonderful care of the girls. 

This trip, as well as the riding program, the girls had Yoga classes with Denise and Pilates classes with Pam (both veteran cowgirls), plus a guided hike at Sanctuary Cove that ended with a group labyrinth reflection walk. We must not, however, forget the highlight, the trip to La Fiesta de los Vaqueros. Otherwise known as the Tucson Rodeo. Cowboys, broncs and bulls! 

Thanks again ladies for visiting us and we hope to see you all again next year!