Pat & Sharon O'Toole

Our son Eamon recently purchased a stud colt, nine months old, with an eye towards putting more cutting instinct into our horse herd. Years ago, a friend of my father's gave him a stallion off the race track. Buddy had injured his foreleg, and was not sound enough to be raced, but still had the potential for a long, happy and fertile life. Buddy was related to horses that even I, a casual race fan, had heard of, like Native Dancer and Ruffian. He came to us without papers (but free!). Unlike some outfits, we have always ridden a lot of saddle mares (smart, hard-working) so we just bred Buddy to a few mares each year. A good many of the horses we ride today are his daughters and sons--mostly daughters because he threw more fillies. They inherited his speed and good disposition. If they were "cowy", they got it from their Quarter Horse moms.

Sadly, we lost Buddy a couple of years ago, after a long and happy life of hanging out with mares. Eamon did a lot of research and settled on this colt. He is a real cutie, is well bred and has a good disposition.

Eamon's new stud colt
Home Ranch

Meeting the neighbor
photo by Sharon O'Toole

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Making snow angels
Home Ranch

Home Ranch
photos by Sharon O'Toole

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February lambs
Powder Flat, Moffat County, Colorado

We raise our own bucks, Rambouillet and Hampshire, so each winter/spring we lamb early in the sheds. This is in advance of our main lambing in May and June.

Antonio with twins

Lambing crew
Richar, Antonio and Vladimir
photos by Sharon O'Toole

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Pat and Eamon loading the truck
Powder Flat, Moffat County, Colorado

Last fall, we trailed two bunches of sheep to the Powder Wash country. Normally, we would winter the coming yearling ewes at this ranch west of Baggs, while we trailed the rest of the ewes north to the Red Desert. This year, we were doing landscape reclamation work on disturbed energy production lands in the Powder Wash area, and we needed more hooves on the ground. The reclamation work is done for the season, and the Powder Wash country is pretty snowed up. We decided to truck the ewes north to the Red Desert to join our other ewes. We brought the sheep into our headquarters at Powder Flat, where they climbed onto three semi trucks for the trip north.

Nene, Antonio and Megan
Powder Flat corrals

Bringing up the ewes
Powder Flat corrals

Pepe and Jose
loading the trucks

Smells like money
photos by Sharon O'Toole

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Critical winter deer habitat
near Slater, Colorado
photo by Pat O'Toole

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Siobhan and puppies
Home Ranch

Suzie (after a year's break) has a new litter of puppies, born December 17th. We plan to keep two for the sheepcamps, but I am shamelessly promoting the rest for sale. They are registered, working parents, and very photogenic--along with Siobhan. We also have two litters, with four still available, at the sheep camps on the Red Desert. Those guys are about the same age, purebred, but not registered. The great thing about raising puppies is that we can have fun with them, but don't have to suffer through adolescence!

Black & white female puppy

Red and white female puppy

Black and white male with short hair

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