Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This week we're going to McQuay Stables. Tim McQuay, a $3 million money earner, learn a
little bit about his reining and get to see some of his breeding program.
What an honor to be here today at McQuay Stables and visit with a $3 million rider, Tim McQuay.
Thank you for having us today. Thank you.
How did you get started, I guess, in reining? When Connie and I got married, we just started
a little training place to just ride anything and everything and then we pretty much went into
doing quarter horses. My wife does the hunters and jumpers and she's done that all along.
For a little while in our careers, we just did a lot of quarter horse shows. In 1983
we both said "look we don't want to go to the quarter horse shows like that anymore."
So I said I'm going to do just the reiners and she went strictly back to doing the hunters
and jumpers. And the biggest reason we moved was because of Hollywood Dun It. We bred 40,
50 mares a year to him up there and the first year we came down here, we bred right at 80
mares and then every year after that we bred over 100 mares to him every year. But the
big thing there was you couldn't get the mares to cycle up there, spring didn't hit until
the first of May and here your days are longer all year long. It's just a whole different
climate and people come to Texas, it's easier to get horses to Texas. The mares at that
point, you have to bring the mares to the stud. Well it changed after we were here a
few years where you could ship *** but it's still your babies and everything are so much
better off here than there and then for our training, yeah, the middle of the summer is
hot, but the middle of the winter is not quite as cold either. In October up in Minnesota,
you batten down the hatches and you were inside until who knows when. In this area, when we
moved here, it was more pleasure and halter horse business.
Bob Loomis moved to Marietta and Craig Johnson was here but when we moved here then more people followed.
Dell came then 10 years later and bought his place across the road from us. It's just really
become a reining horse mecca. It's like you fly into Dallas and you can go look at 5,000
horses within 2 days if you really want to. It's been good for us. No matter what, if
I don't have it, I'll call Dell or call all of the guys around and say "Hey, they're
looking for this kind of horse. What do you got?" I've been very successful. The Lord
gave me the talent to train reining horses so I've made pretty good success out of it.
I'm a $3 million rider now, I've won the Futurity a couple of times, the Derby several times,
the NRBC, every major event there is to win, I've been able to win it, the World Show
and AQHA World Show. So it's been a good career for us. The training business is a good business
but it doesn't really make a lot of money. It's kind of like milking cows, you've got
to have enough help to take care of all of them and you've got to have the feed to feed
them so it's not a cheap game to just be in the training business. So the stallions have
been our profit. When I started with Hollywood Dun It, there weren't very many stallions
out there breeding reining horses, it was a small enough group that there weren't very
many people breeding them. He did very well with his colts from the very beginning of
his colt's showing and he just did a great job for us. So he helped us pay for this month's
trustee. We got lucky enough to have Gunner. The genetic part of it is Dun It was bred
to be a reining horse which didn't mean as much back then as it did as time went on but
his daughters went ahead and have become real good brood mares and then when we got Gunner, I
crossed him on the Dun It and it's really been a good mix. In the last 20 years, our
industry has changed just because of the breeding.
That horse been getting too many calories or something?
No that's Hollywood Tinseltown. It's one of our studs. So he doesn't get rode or used?
Not anymore so we just try to keep him in shape.
We have probably 20 people that work for us. We have the boys that do the chores and then we have 5 or 6 people riding constantly.
We ride 60 to 70 horses all the time. Some of them we own ourselves, 2 year olds, and now
we're getting ready for the Legacy Sale in October and that will bring in probably 25
of our yearlings and start getting them fit and it works out pretty good because we bring
them in when we're done with the breeding season and fill up those stalls with the yearlings
and try to get them fit. The Legacy Sale is where we sell probably 80 percent of our colts
every year. I raise between 40 and 50 head, we sell about 80 percent of them. I keep a
handful back but sell some really nice colts there and people come there to buy colts.
There was 3 or 4 of us that started the sale, myself and Dell Hendricks, Tom McCutcheon,
and Bob Loomis but some in, that were just breeders of reining horses. When we sell them
as yearlings, they know we can't really pick through them and say this one is going to ride good
and that one, we haven't riden them yet. I think that helps us sell our yearlings better
because they don't think they're culls, they're buying nice colts. It's been a really, really good sale for us.
Let's go look at your breeding station.
Alright.
So, you bring your stud in here? Yeah, we walk them right in here. And when he mounts that, you collect him and the mares are standing
right in those. Most of the time, we'll have a mare standing outside the gate that they can tease over the top a little bit
just to get excited. Is there some reason you made the breed dummy cowhide?
We just feel like it's closer to horse hair than that plastic stuff.
The vet brings his ultrasound computer and sets it on here so he can do his ultrasound
on all the mares.
Steve, I know as a cowboy one of the most important things is the health of the animal and not only that but the health of you and
I as well. Tell us a little bit about the health pen you've got here.
Well, this is what we've got, one version of the herd health pen. We've got another
one, a 10 x 10 behind us. The nice thing about this is by utilizing one of these, you
can help an unwilling mama cow or a young heifer or you can pull off a sick cow or bull
and bring him into here and separate him from the rest of the animals, keep him close to
your house, and be able to take care of him without having to run out into the pasture.
Definitely a safety for the animals and helping them out. Show us a little bit about how this
gate is helpful for you and I. Well, the nice thing about this health pen,
you've got the safety latch, you've got a split gate on both this gate and the other
gate on the opposite side of the animal so once you get the animal in here, as you swing
this around, the safety latch here will hit each one of these stops and keep it from coming
back on you. So as you push that animal in here, ease him into the automatic head catch,
the nice thing about that is it automatically catches them. You don't have to be up there
to operate that head gate. So as you push this around, this will act as a squeeze so
you can squeeze that animal in there, keep him from bouncing around. So if you need to
kick this bottom gate out to bring in that calf to let it nurse, then it makes it a lot
easier, a lot safer for both you and the cow. Another nice thing about this pen, you've
got a gate on the back and this gate, by opening it up, if you need to help a calf, then you
can bring this gate all the way open. You can open that gate all the way open, it gives
you a lot of room behind that animal to help pull him if you need to. Very versatile, whichever
way you want to go with it. If you need to work with the cow on the left or right or
a calf or pull anything, you've definitely got him captured here. Another nice thing
about this is that if you do want to use this to also vaccinate animals, you can take the
head gate off and mount it to a couple of panels to the front, remount the head gate
onto the panels and now you've got basically a tub.
The aqua tread, what we use that for is rehabilitation on horses coming off of injuries and also
surgeries. It also works really well for horses that we're just getting into shape if they've
been off for a while and you need to get them started but maybe they're not quite ready
for the outside or you don't have time to have somebody leg them up for you, we get
them legged up in here. Have you got one that we can watch getting
aqua therapy and we can watch him exercise? Yeah. We've got the perfect one.
Alright, let's go get him. I've got a halter right there.
So is this a horse that needs therapy or are you just exercising him?
This is one of our breeding stallions. This is a stallion named Gunner Special Night and
we're pretty proud of Gunner Special Night ,his nickname is Bailey. What we do with
him is this is just exercise for him. He's retired. He has won the gold medal in 2010
World Equestrian Games, both the individual and the team gold medal. He's won everything
pretty much there is to win for him so now he's going to be a daddy and is a daddy actually,
his oldest are 2 year olds. This is something we do with him besides the turnout, we keep him
fit and it keeps him mentally fit too. It's something different to do than just riding
or turning out. He is by the stallion Gunner and he's probably one of the best sons of
Gunner that is around. We're pretty excited to have him.
He seems pretty special. He's got his own corner stall and he's got his name on it and
pictures on the front. Yeah, he gets to see everything. These are
some of the pictures from the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky, the first year they held
that outside of Europe. It's a pretty special show and it was a great place for him to do well.
He had a good showing there?
He did. He won the individual gold with Tom McCutcheon and the team gold with Tim McQuay.
After the first couple of times, they take to it pretty good especially some of these
horses we're dealing with have been on stall rest for 30 days, sometimes a couple of months.
Just to get out and stretch their legs. It's something different for them to do. Either
they've been hand locked or just in a stall so for them to get in there, they can get
rid of some excess energy without hurting themselves. It's something new, it's something
different. It keeps them fresh mentally too. Do you try to keep the water just a little
bit warm for them? In the winter, we can heat the water.
The therapy program is really important. I feel like any pro athlete needs to take care
of themselves and that's how we need to take care of the horses. The aqua tread, we take
our time introducing them to it. Some horses worry about it, they don't want to just walk
down into that water so we take our time the first time and introduce them to it slowly
and get them comfortable with it, used to it. We get horses from top farm horses all
the way down to somebody's horse they want to keep in their backyard. We treat each horse
the same. They are the top farm horse or they are the top reining horse or the top rope
horse or whatever, we try to take the best care of them that we can. Our goal is for
them to leave looking better than when they came.
When I built the ranch, I actually built that for myself. It was just going to be a private
aqua tread for my own horses when I go on the road and I have some horses here, they
can stay in shape while I'm gone. Well then Tim called me and said "Can I send
some horses over there while you're gone?" And then Dell called me and everybody started
calling me so it wasn't intended to be the whole rehab center but it kind of grew into that.
After they started sending me horses the vet started asking about sending horses
here and with Barb, she's so well respected in the industry, and with all the vets, they
felt really comfortable having Barb looking after their clients.
This is our speed control. That's a walk right there. Now he's just walking.
How many minutes or how long does he go a mile or how long does he stay in there? When
we first start them out, we just do a few minutes and when we first bring them in, we
bring them in a couple of times, let them get used to coming into the water, going out
of the water. We can increase the speed on them and all that does is keep his respiration
up. I think I should get my bucking bulls down
in there to exercise them a little bit. Do I need to grab him a towel or something?
In the winter they would probably like that. He's a big ham.
We have 11 different patterns that we run. But they all consist of the same type of maneuvers.
Every pattern we have, we either spin 4 or 4 1/4 spins and that's both directions. Then
we have either 3 or 4 stops in every pattern. You have a lead change from each direction,
left to right and right to left. Every pattern calls for those maneuvers. Now how they lay
out is different for each pattern, a little bit, that's you know you spin 4 times, you
circle 3 circles each direction, some of them are fast, slow, some of them are fast, fast
slow. It just depends on the pattern. For some of us that don't know, reining would be to
rein a horse would be to move it with the reins.
Exactly. It's kind of the horse and the rider working
together is how it's judged? Absolutely.
There's no animal in there, it's just the horse and rider in the arena. Willfully guided
horse is supposed to be rewarded. Sit back with your shoulders just a little bit. A little
different than the bull riding. A little bit different.
You're going to drive that horse up in front of you. You're kind of feel like you're sitting
in the rumble seat a little bit.
Cord you know your family is tied together cause of rodeo and all of that and the horse business has done the same thing for our family -
it's kept everybody together. We go to horse shows, we're together all the time, we all have to
take our clients and have dinner with them and stuff at the horse show but we spend a
lot of time just with our family too. It just keeps everybody close. We are tied together
by the nature of what we do, our backgrounds and stuff, but you know it also doesn't dominate
our conversation. We do a lot of fun stuff together and we don't always talk about horses.
So that's what makes it work I think. Sometimes it's just taking the kids to a movie, sometimes
it's going to dinner. Whatever the case may be. It works out great. My kids are so lucky
to be close and have this much of a family. All my brothers are right here and Kate likes
to go golfing with them. The horses really keep us all together. All of our businesses
are very family oriented. I spend about half my day at my father and
mother's ranch in Tioga where I ride a couple and then my husband and I have a ranch in
Aubrey where I spend about half a day and my son and daughter both do the same thing.
My daughter has a pony hunter that she rides with my mother who does the hunters and jumpers
and has a tremendous business in that world. My husband is a million dollar rider and serves
on several boards for the NRHA so we do everything together. Our family is pretty much horses,
horses, horses. It's what keeps us all together. My grandfather lives here on the ranch, my
husband's father trains cutters. Growing up, Tom trained pretty much everything. People
sent him horses and they had to train it to do something whether it was rope, run barrels,
cut, rein. I've been really fortunate to have a lot of success in the reining horse world
but nothing brings me more joy than watching my son, Joe, try and do the same thing. The
passion that he has for it is just amazing. He made the level 4 non-pro finals in the
Reining Futurity last fall at 12 years old and that's the youngest in history. Up to
that point, I was the youngest in history. My daughter is only seven and she is really
starting to love doing the hunters and jumpers. She has a little pony she takes to the horse
show and she jumps and this weekend I'm going to go and watch her do that. It's just
really fun to watch them both love something as much as I do and enjoy it and want to do
it and I think it the back of his mind, this is what he's going to do for a living so it's
good to see that he really loves it. We're very proud of Cayden and Carley, they're both,
Carley is not as old, she's only 7 and Cayd's 13 but Cayd, from the time he was able to
ride a stick horse around, he would run reining patterns. He just loves the reining. For me
it's great, he likes to spend time with me and we have a good time. I really enjoy helping
him learn to train horses and we get along so it's great to have a family together.