Published: February 14, 2008 10:40 am            

It’s been ‘a good sideline business'

PRYOR, Okla. — Ranch horse competition wins are good for cowboys.

And winning cowboys are good for promoting horses.

Ask Northeast Oklahoma rancher and rider Mike Armitage.

Two horses born, trained and ridden on the Armitage A Bar Ranch, headquartered on the Rogers-Mayes County line, recently won top awards at the Green Country Classic Ranch Rodeo in Claremore. In the two-night competition, judges scored each horse on the 15 ranch teams’ ability to handle cattle and work rope, all while staying quiet,

collected and low-headed.

Top performances by A Bar Ranch horses didn’t come as a surprise to cowboy Lavert Avent. Avent is a ranch-raised cowboy who hired on as a horse rider at the A Bar a year ago. He rode off with a saddle by Claremore’s own Clark Benefield at the annual working cowboy competition held at the Claremore Expo Center.

One of the horses Avent started when he came to A Bar was Cowboy’s Boonlight, a stud colt by Boonlight Dancer out of a daughter of Doc’s Prescription.

Last November, Avent showed the colt, then a 3-year-old, at the ranch horse competition in conjunction with the Working Ranch Cowboy’s Association ranch rodeo finals in Amarillo, Texas. A sixth place finish there earned a spot in the Ranch Horse of America finals coming up in Abilene, Texas, in May.

Those events were just warm-ups for the more recent performance. Avent, riding Cowboy’s Boonlight, won the competition for junior age horses at the Green Country Classic.

Avent gives the horse most of the credit.

“Sometimes when you do a job he turns his head and looks at you like ‘how was that? Is that it?” the cowboy said.

Armitage understands what Avent is talking about.

“I try to get my hands to enter,”  Armitage said, “to make them aware how competitive it is and how good their horses have to handle to win.”

Armitage leads by example, both in the arena and back on the A Bar where he’s already preparing for his 18th annual production sale. 

Armitage won the Top Horse award at the Green Country Classic riding Cowboy’s Sugar 249, a 6-year-old gelding by Ima Son of Sugar.

Cowboy’s Sugar 249 had to step up to senior age events this year in the ranch horse competitions. That makes it tough for a 6-year-old who will now show against horses any age from 6 up.

Bloodlines are important and Armitage keeps upgrading his herd to include the current winning ones. Although foundation lines are important, modern bloodline horses have the benefit of the best traits from those

foundation sires along with improved agility of the newer lines.

“I worked with probably the greatest bloodline man who ever went to sales,” Armitage said. “He said he never saw anybody win anything on a tombstone.”

A Bar horses are bred to be competitors. The lineage speaks for itself. With 85 mares in production, herd sires include a son of Shining Spark, two sons of Playgun, two sons of Boonlight Dancer and one son of Tanqueray Gin.

A Bar is a closed breeding herd. No outside mares are bred. No horses are sold private treaty. 

Armitage said stud prospects are turned out with a few fillies when they are 2 or 3 years old, in order to get them familiar with pasture breeding. 

“That gets them ready to run with the older mares and not get hurt and gives us a chance to see which crosses may be going to work best,” Armitage said.

The production sale is held each year in November.

“After my run in Amarillo, there were several guys asked me about breeding to him,” Avent said.

“Did you tell him we’ve got colts on the ground now?” Armitage said.

At last year’s production sale, Armitage said, horses were sold to buyers in 17 states. 

“I’d say 50 percent of the horses at our sale are sold over the phone or on the Internet,” he said. The auction is live on-line so buyers who can’t attend get the feel of being there.

This year, Armitage expects to have 20 weanlings and 20 started 2-year-olds in the sale, as well as some aged ranch geldings.

“It’s been a good sideline business for us,” Armitage said of his horse program.

A Bar Ranch will sell several thousand head of cattle at the production sale that are Angus and Angus crosses. The cattle on the A Bar are black now, but when Armitage was hired — straight out of Oklahoma State University — to manage the ranch he now owns, the operation was all registered Herefords.

The ranch headquarters where Mike and Martha Armitage live with their sons Turner and Merrit was originally the Rucker ranch. At one time it totaled 20,000 acres. By the time Armitage came to manage it, the owner was Leroy McGuirk. 

Armitage first leased the ranch, then finally bought it. It now totals 1,400 contiguous acres. It is the heart of an operation that spans six Oklahoma counties, including Mayes, where Armitage runs 600 cows.

The ranch has six full-time cowboys who enjoy the benefits of the horse herd.

Armitage said one of biggest boons to his horse operation was buying the entire remuda from Mullendore Cross Bell Ranch several years ago. In fact, both the horses that won at Claremore are results of those bloodlines.

A Bar horses have a lot of color. Grays and palominos are common. The colored foal crop goes in the production sale. The rest - bays, sorrels and browns - stay on the ranch to become brood mares, stud prospects or ranch geldings.

Armitage sells about 20 breeding-age mares each year to maintain the herd size. This summer he will sell some mares at a combined sale with Dry Gulch, the Christian theme park in Mayes County, which also keeps a horse herd. A total of 40 mares will be offered in that sale, from 3 to 15 years old. Most will be bred with foals at side. 



Kathy Parker writes for Pryor (Okla.) Daily Times.

        

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