Branch River Ranch Andalusians - Read About Our Ranch News!

• Articles for Wisconsin Horseman's News by Julie Stammler | Aug09 |May09| Feb09| Jan09| Nov08 | Jun07 | May07 | Feb07 |

Manitowoc / August 09

It has been a long time since I have been able to meet the deadline to get an article in. Again, I am trying to complete deadlines before leaving on a much needed July vacation. Wisconsin is a beautiful place to spend the summer months but when you work and run two businesses from your personal property we find that a week away gives us total down time to be alone.

We had 3 fantastic Andalusian foals born this year at the ranch. The first foal born on April 15th is the Phenomenal Perlino Andalusian colt Ciro BR who is absolutely breath taking. He has very square conformation, a huge trot and a very uphill canter not to mention great color for breeding. He is out of our Multi National Champion buckskin mare, Rhianna BR who is showing First and Second Level dressage this year. Ciro's sire is the well known Saphiro. Ciro tested Ee for the red factor, AA for the Agouti and CrCr for the cream dilution. This means he is homozygous for the cream gene and will always produce buckskin or palomino foals when bred to a non grey mare.

The next foal came on May 21st and is a very exquisite filly who we named Arianna BR. She is out of our Mia (Rhianna’s mom) and by our multi national champion stallion Gentil MOR 1 who is showing Second and Third Level dressage this year. Talk about being bred for movement and confirmation this filly has a lot to live up to. Mia is now retired as a brood mare and will spend the rest of her years with her best friend Reina del Sol eating green grass and enjoying her days with simple trail rides from time to time.

Ten days later on May 31st the black filly Rhumba BR joined us. This should be an excellent cross with ease of trainability and a future as a competitive dressage mount as our goal. She is out of our 5 yr old black mare, Macarena del Sol who has showed great promise in her dressage training and has that “to die for” movement. Rhumba’s sire is the black stallion Falcon CEN who has been putting out several fantastic foals. A 2 yr old Falcon CEN filly just won her conformation class at the all PRE (Pure Spanish Andalusian) show in California. Size, color, beauty, temperament and fluid movement is our goal for this 2009 foal.

We have taken time out from foaling to attend two dressage shows so far this year at Silverwood. In May we took Rhianna BR, Gentil MOR, Garbeau and Alessandra Schwartz’s mare Vixen MC. Garbeau, the youngest of the group at the age of four competed in Training Level for the first time and in test 1 & 2 she scored a solid 65.217% and 64.643%. She is such an easy mare to work with and nothing ever frazzles her. She will make the perfect horse in the competitive arena as well as the all around show and family worlds.

Rhianna scored 67.632% in Frist level test four and competed in Second Level Test 1 for the first time with a score of 60.789%.

Gentil MOR scored 58.81% in Second Level Test four and competed in Third Level Test 1 for the first time with a score of 52.564%. Not bad for never even running through the test at home first!

The second trip back to Silverwood in June we brought just Gentil MOR and Rhianna along with Alessandra Schwartz’s mare Vixen MC. Rhianna’s scores stayed much the same while Gentil improved in Second Level Test four with a 62.857% and in Third Level Test 1 he scored 59.744% for a second place ribbon. We will be going to Sorensen Equestrian Park for the July 18 - 20 dressage show and the following weekend to Wisconsin Equestrian Center on July 27 - 28.

We have been busy trying to get photo shoots in to update our website. Between rain and extreme heat we have been able to update several photos and even got a foal shoot in of our 3 newest additions which are all featured on the “For Sale” page. We also were able to update the photos of the now yearlings who still had pictures of them as young foals. Until Next Time...