Friday, October 11, 2019

Something Different

This morning Amy and I drove to Foley, Alabama to visit Claude and Carole Lipscomb's Black & Blue Ranch. They have an amazing Blue Roan Quarter Horse stallion named Four Blue Cannons CL
Claude explained that Cannon is 12 years old but really 21 years old. 21 years ago he was breeding for THIS stallion and was able to accomplish his goal on April 22nd, 2007 when this stallion was born. He IS everything Claude wanted for his breeding operation.  He is a big Ranch bred very sweet smart stallion. 
Claude had a load of hay delivered right before we arrived so of course I needed to check out the hay. I had never seen hay like this.
 It is from a non bearing peanut plant. In other words it does not form peanuts but the leaves are nutritious and dry quickly and that is most important here in the south. Claude explained most of the time they only get 3 days of sunshine between the rains. The hay smelled good and was bright green. They call this the alfalfa of the south.
 The hay was unloaded with a tractor 10 bales at a time. Sure wish we would have had a way to unload with a tractor when we were growing up. 
We climbed aboard Claude's gator and our first stop was to check out Claude's big registered Texas Longhorn bull named Brazos Rebel 636
He was busy grazing but soon lifted his head to check us out. 
In this pasture were lots of gorgeous spotted black and white or bay and white longhorn cow and calf pairs.

From there we visited his chickens, yes they have chickens. In fact Claude developed 3 different kinds of chickens. The first he showed us were his black and white Bantam hens and roosters.
Amy really wanted to bring a couple home and Claude offered to give her a couple but how in the world would we bring home 2 chickens along with our 3 babies and 5 adults for the 14 hour trip home. I told her, "no!" Claude also showed us his black and white flock of big roosters and hens. 
He obviously LIKES black and white spotted, at least in his chickens and cows. Claude told us not to mention that he may be a little crazy as he doesn't sell the eggs but has given away probably around 20,000 eggs and chickens since he has been doing this. I don't think he is crazy, I think he has a soft heart. We met two young stallions both born on the same day. On Sunday March 13th, 2016 Claude and Carole went out early morning to feed and discovered a brand new colt up and nursing, then they saw another mare had foaled and that colt was wet and had not yet stood up. They watched for a bit then drove to church. As soon as they got home from church they came out to find that somehow someway the mares had switched foals. They decided to leave them as both mare and foal pairs were happy.  They named one Switch Ta Fame and the other Switch Ta Streak CL. Amy is standing next to the 3 year old blue roan stallion Switch to Fame and Claude is standing next to Switch to Streak.

We headed to another field that held horses, steers and bulls. His horses do not chase the cattle, Claude told us it was because they have grown up together.
 Above are 2 blue roan mares along with a beef bull and a Texas Longhorn steer with horns of well over 100 inches. Below some of the mares came up to check out the gator. 
 That nose in the picture below is of an Angus bull who wandered over to check us out.
Below is a yearling bull his wife picked out. They had visited the farm selling him and decided not to buy, but the next day Carole changed her mind and they called back and bought him. His name is Wile E Coyote CL. He was born Feb 28th, 2018. 
 I had to get another picture of those LONG horns on that Texas Longhorn steer. 
If you would like to see the rest of the pictures from this morning click HERE.  IF you are interested in purchasing one of these special registered Longhorns I HIGHLY recommend buying from Claude. His breeding program is one of the best I've ever seen. The animals are all well cared for and all were well behaved. Claude also has some amazing mares and stallions for sale. There are some Ranch crossed with Racing bred which produces good minds along with very athletic horses.  Please visit his website to see what is available by visiting http://www.blackandbluequarterhorses.com/

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