This is our 15yo son’s filly, who is coming three. What do you see?
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[TD=“width: 14%”]SIRE side of pedigree[/TD]
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[TD=“width: 15%”]El Rey Rojo 1963
0347133 chestnut
H- 8.0 P- 0.0 [/TD]
[TD=“width: 17%”]Rey Del Rancho 1944
0007340 chestnut
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 14%”]Bolsa Rojo 1979
1524217 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 17%”]Colorada Riche 1947
0073802 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 15%”]LA Bolseria 1969
0617238 chestnut
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[TD=“width: 17%”]El Nino 1956
0073874 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 14%”]HO Rojo 1997
3736277 chestnut
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 17%”]Bolsa Nueva 1961
0270617 chestnut
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[/TR]
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 15%”]Bingo Brudder 1980
1643647 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 17%”]Docs Sugs Brudder 1976
1198473 bay
H- 27.0 P- 26.0 [/TD]
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 14%”]Miss El Reinia 1992
3295632 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 17%”]Forbidden Flowers 1975
1088353 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 15%”]El Reina Rojo 1982
1940502 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 17%”]El Rey Rojo 1963
0347133 chestnut
H- 8.0 P- 0.0 [/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 17%”]Adana Pachuco 1967
0617129 chestnut
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[TD=“colspan: 4”] [HR][/HR][/TD]
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[TD=“width: 14%”]DAM side of pedigree[/TD]
[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 15%”]Paseo de Noche 1976
1178752 chestnut
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[TD=“width: 17%”]Otoe’s Hand 1968
0617085 chestnut
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 14%”]Paseo Lauros Freckle 1999
3812681 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 17%”]Una Noche 1960
0143778 chestnut
H- 2.0 P- 0.0 [/TD]
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 15%”]MS Lauros Freckles 1990
3005745 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 17%”]Lauro Chiquito 1983
2017248 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 14%”]Taps 15 2009
5184437 chestnut
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 17%”]Freckle Face Girl 1979
1541407 chestnut
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[/TR]
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 15%”]Hired Hand’s Dee 1968
0537412 chestnut
H- 2.0 P- 5.0 [/TD]
[TD=“width: 17%”]Hired Hand’s Rey 1960
0146744 chestnut
H- 19.0 P- 7.0 [/TD]
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 14%”]Cherokee Hired Hand 1988
2726650 chestnut
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[TD=“width: 17%”]HH Dee 1951
0040329 chestnut
H- 32.0 P- 34.0 [/TD]
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 15%”]Peppetta Babe 1982
1977256 buckskin
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[TD=“width: 17%”]Lord Peppy 1960
0204833 sorrel
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[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 14%”] [/TD]
[TD=“width: 17%”]Queen Bar Babe 1979
1568467 buckskin [/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Sorry. There’s really nothing in that pedigree that is familiar to me. (Or if there is, it is pretty far back.)
Thanks, beau, for the response. Her breeder takes a lot of pride in having old King Ranch bloodlines only - they are meant to be good using horses. Although they could be performance horses, these are really working ranch horses. She’s a wonderful filly in terms of temperament.
I think those are all working ranch and cow horse lines. She should be a good minded, hard working mare! 
My mare has Rey Del Rancho way back there too. She might have a heart attack if she ever saw a cow though 
Props, this filly is pretty cowy. Quick story: She was just about eight months old and living temporarily in a friend’s 1,000-acre pasture. Three young bulls were also housed in this pasture. The bulls were lounging at the gate one day. The filly wanted to pass through the gate. She walked right up to the much larger bulls, snaked her head at them and got low and dang if they young bulls didn’t hop up, say “yes ma’am!” and trotted off, chased by the filly.
She’s that classic King Ranch color, too, that dark Santa Gertrudis red. We’re real pleased with her!
The Hired Hands we have had were wonderful horses to work with and ride.
Good workers and no backtalk, just show them what you want and they would get it done with a smile.
The Docs Sugar Brudders were a little more quirky, as many of the early Doc Bars could be.
Some were also more aggressive, to cattle and to other horses.
Guess that your filly may be one of the dominant ones.
If she is, good to know, to keep her in line and backed off her cattle.
Better not let her get into the bad habit of being aggressive to them or other horses.
When a horse is so dominant as to go right on top of the cattle, or even into full contact with them, biting and pushing into them, they can lose the advantage of space and the cattle will, scared, run by them and then you have to chase them to control them.
The less dominant horse can use their natural instinct to back off their cattle to learn to hold power over a cow’s movement.
That is what we want, cattle to respect the horse and do what is asking, not be scared or even beaten up by a horse.
Some of the early cowhorses had that aggression problem, why the rule against biting cattle was in the first competing rules.
Traditional King Ranch horses first had a faded, yellowish chestnut color, many of the Hired Hands did, not the brighter, copper shiny reds of later lines.
Today you still see all those reds in their offspring.
They also didn’t want much white, many early ones were plain colored, as was the tradition of good cowhorses of that time.
In a way that was sensible, as in the West and SW sun can blister any white parts and especially white around the eyes causes growths there over time in horses kept outside.
Some of those horses also tended to be later maturing and the ranker ones took a few more years to become quiet enough for more than tough cowboys.
The talk was, if you can get them to 6, when they finally would get a brain, without them hurting you, they were said to have a quick trigger to buck, you had a very dependable partner from then on.
Especially true with the Mr San Peppys, although not so much with his sons and not at all with his brother and his sons.
As always, that all is not relevant to any one horse itself.
We have to evaluate each horse as it stands in front of you.
While inheritance can tell us so much in general about the offspring, that is why we breed to horses with known history of certain traits, each one of them can and will be it’s own mixture of traits, a guess which ones come thru and not all are inherited with the same characteristics and moderators to those.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Bluey. Our son is just now starting her and it’s gone well thus far. It’s the first young horse he’s ever started. She will be three in one month. She will be late to mature. She is plenty large enough to start and her bone is good, plus our son is not doing anything but walking and steering at this point. While she is not weedy looking, she clearly has more growth and maturity to come. The breeder told us that his colts/fillies go through a terrible awkward stage where you want to hide them behind the barn, that they wouldn’t be as big and muscled as other bloodlines at ages 2 or 3. Then one day, he said, when they’re about four, you walk outside to saddle up and wonder “what amazing horse is that?” - it’s your horse, finally catching up to itself.
And as you observed, those old school King Ranch breeders didn’t want white on a horse. The filly’s breeder wants no white at all, and our girl only has a narrow stripe and a snip. (The breeder actually apologized for her having even that minimal amount of white.) The rest of her is that dark blackish-red. Almost maroon.
Thus far, she’s non-aggressive in our little home herd of three horses and two donkeys. The donkeys wish she wouldn’t pester them to play so much, but this doesn’t seem bullying or aggressive, just young.
There may well be a time when we’ll have to curb or manage her aggression with cattle. She is a confident being in general, and when she is put around cattle again someday, she may well get too amped. But we’ll see. Our son wants her as a classic all-rounder, a horse he can take to our friends’ ranch to help gather and sort and one he can ride around the neighborhood at home.
And when he goes to college in a couple years, she and I will have a fine time!
