Ep. 116 - Outback Stallion Station's Whitley Sharp
We’ve been wanting to have Whitley Sharp from the Outback Stallion Station of Caldwell, Idaho, on our podcast for a very long time! In fact, she recommended her husband back in Season 3 to have her husband, Dr. Jared Sharp, on the podcast for our veterinarian myths! We were very excited to be Whitley’s second podcast ever, with her first one being with photographer Thomas Duncan’s rodeo podcast Chute Talk!
Growing Up With Horses
“I grew up with horses,” says Whitley, whose mom and family were all team ropers and barrel racers. “I, from day one, have always had a pony… and it has kind of escalated from there.”
Before she could walk, Whitley was doing leadline barrel races at the local barrel club, was super involved with 4-H, Junior Rodeo, High School Rodeo and college rodeo. “It’s been something that I have stayed passionate about and I couldn’t imagine life without it.”
Post college, Whitley’s barrel racing career took her to getting her WPRA card which started as a permit gift from her husband. Even better? She filled it in the first few months. Whether Columbia River Circuit or Wilderness Circuit, she toes the line of which side she can go, but has decided on Columbia River Circuit for the 2023 season.
“For the last couple years, I haven’t gone as much as I have wanted too, because we have a lot of futurity and derby horses,” says Whitley. “We went to Rock Springs for the Royal Crown and tried to go a little bit more that direction. This next year I have a few horses that I would like to get seasoned at the rodeos that were futurity and derby aged last year… I’d like to get them to a few slacks and get them seasoned as I can.”
You can always notice when someone with talent, skill and knowledge, start putting all the pieces together. Currently, Whitley is building a dominant string of horses and for 2023 her trailer is filled with talent. The barn holds everything from weanlings to aged, open rodeo horses. Horses you may see on the road is a 2022 Futurity horse named Bahama Mama “Palmer” that is four and has been the “biggest blessing” to the Sharps.
“Normally I wouldn’t say that a coming five year old would be ready to go to the rodeos, … but confident is the best word for her,” says Whitley. “Nothing scares her, nothing phases her and she goes into the arena as if she’s done it a hundred times.”
Additionally, Yoda Cat will be going. “I do feel like numbers of runs are limited, so he has earned the status of running where it counts.” Mr Flash out of a Moon Flash and Corona Cartel breeding is a stallion that is a former futurity horse that has already run at a few rodeos. While he will be in the breeding barn, he will get out and around. An Eddie Stinson gelding that is the same age will be in the string as well.
“We have three coming four-year olds for futurity horses in 2024 who are all in training,” says Whitley about the prospects coming through the mix. All three are in training with a different trainer and are all by the stallions that they own.
Stallion Station
“I graduated from Oregon State with a degree in Ag Science, and I didn’t think this is where I would end up,” says Whitley. Being with her husband who is a veterinarian, she had gone with him first to Texas and now to Idaho. Seeing the sports medicine side of things and the constant need for improvement, meant that Whitley got to combine her work and passion when the opportunity arose to purchase Outback Stallion Stations with a few other individuals.
“I was doing a lot of communications, I had had a job at the Idaho Cattlemen’s Associations,” says Whitley. “I was doing all of that and driving an hour to downtown Boise every day that was getting to the point that I wasn’t super excited to make that commute but I loved my job. After we bought Outback, we were looking at someone to manage it and everyone was pointing at me!”
Caught of guard, but extremely flattered, Whitley still isn’t sure if she was even interviewed for the job, but is so glad and thankful that she has gone down that path and is in the position that she is at. It’s been a learning curve and journey that she has taken day-by-day and you hope that every day you have learned something from the last.
“I love the people that I get to work with every day,” says Whitley.
Day-to-Day Operations at a Stallion Station
“Breeding season is not for the faint of heart,” says Whitley with a chuckle. Starting heavily on January 15th and closing July 15th, and during that time they’ll have 130 mares on site. From embryo transfer they’ll do AI to carry and last year alone they flushed 240 embryos. “It was a really good year and we are thankful that all of our clients trust us to do all these awesome services for us.”
They also collect 15 stallions Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They’re also running to the airport to drop off semen shipments and pick up semen shipments. Starting the day at six in the morning, the staff will end the night close to midnight. Not being close to a major airport, despite Boise being a decent sized one, they are breeding mares 10:00 pm to midnight if they had to ship counter-to-counter.
Tips for Working with your Vet in Breeding Season
Work with a Professional
If you are interested in breeding and want to get your mare bred, work with someone that is familiar with breeding horses. Whitley recommends going to someone that does it as their specialty. There are a lot of great places in the northwest that offer these services.Understand Each Step
Ask a lot of questions about the process so that you understand steps one through ten.Culture Your Mare
Culture your mares before you start breeding. It will ensure she has a clean uterus and that there is no infection. A lot of people can be discouraged if they spend a lot of money shipping in semen to breed that cycle and then have no pregnancy, that can be because a mare has an infection. Don’t be intimidated by that word, it can be treated fairly easily as it is common. It is a small cost to pay that can really save you a lot of headache in the long run.Progesterone Test Day 5 Post Ovulation
Work with your veterinarian to do a progesterone test because a lot of the time, specifically in older mares, they’ll be low in progesterone and so, because of that, they can’t maintain a pregnancy. You’ll need to use regumate or progesterone shots. They are seeing more and more that younger mares that you wouldn’t anticipate to be low in progesterone to be so. It’s not a heavy cost or add on to what you are already doing if you have the ability to test for progesterone day five post ovulation, that will increase your success rates substantially.
Breeding Options Today
Everything at Outback Stallion Station is Artificial Insemination (AI). You can do a deep horn AI with someone breeding with frozen semen. Again, going to someone familiar with reproduction is advantageous as they will be comfortable breeding deep horn. Standard AI is with cooled semen.
If you are going to AI your mare to carry, you can check for pregnancy 14 days later for ovulation. Make note that after you have bred, the soonest you can see anything is in two weeks. Heartbeat checks are typically done two weeks later, but they can show between day 21-24. The four week check (two weeks after the ovulation check) is usually most convenient for the clients.
For embryo transfers, they usually flush embryos eight days post ovulation. That can vary and could be seven days or, in an older mare, they will do a nine day flush for some extra time to produce quality embryos that are large enough and healthy enough to transfer. The embryo transfer process is, in most cases, one fertilized embryo.
“I tell people that they should feel very, very lucky if they get two! Be thankful for your one,” says Whitley. “If your mare double ovulates, your vet would tell you right away and tell you that there is a possibility for a second embryo. We would let them know and then we would call Oxbow, our recipient mare provider, and let them know that there is a second chance for another embryo and needing another recipient mare.”
Outback has a great relationship with Oxbow, who is under new ownership this last year. “They are very easy to work with in that sense and usually the mare owners already have their contracts in place, so they have it accounted for that they know that the client is flushing embryos. Calling on a double embryo flushing is not a problem at all usually.”
Many clients will leave their mares January through July and they’ll flush them all season long. In the perfect world, with no double ovulations, someone could get two embryos every thirty days. “The embryo flushing process is not a super invasive process… it’s not something that is strenuous on the mare themselves. Most of those mares that are here with us, they live with us more than some live with their owners. They are comfortable, get to exercise and live a pretty good life.”
Recipient Mares
“We have many clients that will use their own receipts. I think it works wonderful for people who live in somewhat close proximity to our vet clinic where they can come in and drive their donor mare and recip mare in,” says Whitley. “I think if you are paying board somewhere and driving in your mare and recip mare there will be some costs there.”
Using your own, can be really successful. You know the mare and it’s nice to know what you are getting, but you also have one chance or opportunity versus if you go to a recipient herd, there might be ten mares that matched up with your mare that day and they will go through and palpate all ten mares (for example), and let you know who is the number one best choice. The odds of your embryo holding and having a viable breeding is higher with the donor herd due to getting the best candidate.
You can miss cycles trying to sink the horses up as well. If time is of the essence, they will try to use their recipient mare, but will prepare the recipient herd as well.
Note: If your mare has a double ovulation, you will often need to purchase a second breeding to the stallion in order to register them.
Pricing
“I do believe that when embryo transfer first came to light in the equine world, it was a lot more expensive because it was new and the procedures were different and things like that,” says Whitley. “It has gotten to a fairly cost-effective place, I believe. We are all living in times when things are expensive and I think that for us… we have tried to keep things as cost effective as possible.”
When it is all said and done to lease your mare, get her bred, and board her for a month, you may be somewhere close to the $5,000 range in total. Some people might come in under that depending on how fast their mare was ready to be bred when it was dropped off. If that is what you budget for, you shouldn’t be too far off unless you have an absolutely disastrous experience.
“I tell people when they inquire about what it’s going to cost me, ‘it could cost you $250 to $500-700,’” says Whitley.
Owning Stallions
“Owning the studs goes hand-in-hand with what I do every day so it’s been a good decision to invest in myself and our business,” says Whitley.
Chiquita Cat is by Highbrow Cat out of the mare Chiquita Pistol and is the sire of Yoda Cat who they had purchased first. They decided to breed a few mares to him because they wanted to replicate that and were in McCall on vacation and called the current owner to buy a couple of breedings turned into buying the stallion. “We got Chiquita Cat a month or so later and he got to go from Texas to Idaho and he really has been our biggest blessing,” says Whitley. “He has the absolutely best personality and we feel like we hit the lottery with our stallion purchase. I had been around his babies but had never been around him. He’s one-of-a-kind.”
“We now have five weanlings by him and they’ve all been so fun, so smart and very, very good-boned, big-hips, and honestly just everything that Jared and I personally look for in a baby,” says Whitley. “This is our first foal crop, personally, of his.”
Then they added in PG Dry Fire which was a more well known sire in the northwest by the Kalafetics who stood him at Outback prior to Whitley and partners to purchase him. They were getting out of the breeding business and so it worked out well for them to add him to the program. Breeding Mable, Stetson Jorgensen’s great steer wrestling horse, to PG Dry Fire was actually in Whitley’s first year working at Outback Stallion Station.
Mr Flash is the most recent stallion purchased from Jordan in Arizona. A First Moon Flash and his mom is a Corona Cartel bred mare. “He has a really good record in Arizona. He has been running and was doing well,” says Whitley. “I am excited to see what he does. I feel the First Moon Flash horses are incredible.” One of the most recent absolute athletes from this sire is Wenda Johnson and her 2022 NFR Average Winning Horse.
“Ours, at least, have all been so kind and gentle. It’s nice to have that, especially when they are a stud when they’re so much bigger and stronger than a standard horse. To feel safe and comfortable around one is really important for us,” says Whitley. “If they get to a point that they are dangerous to handle or be a round, we won’t have that.”
“We also have Our Dry Fling,” says Whitley. “His first foal crop is in the futurities in 2022… He has one baby that has set one or two arena records, super shows, extreme millions… There was another here locally that was phenomenal and won several races and the title of Idaho bred barrel horse of the year.”
Managing Outback Stallion Station
There are a lot of great horses and names in the pacific northwest and when Cross Country Ranch, the legendary ranch that stood racehorse and rodeo horse super sire Judge Cash, dispersed quickly last year, Outback Stallion Station picked up the torch of keeping rodeo horse breeding alive in the northwest.
“Jared and I’s mind is always rolling on what we can do next or how we can do better and advocating for the industry as a whole. We are probably a bit more extreme in going all in and not everyone may be as willing to take as ‘all-in’ risks as we do,” says Whitley with a laugh. “I think the biggest thing for us and a reason why people can put their faith in the services and the stallions that we are offering is that we are a part of the industry as well. We understand why getting this baby on the ground is so important to you, we understand the excitement of having a baby you raised yourself going on and doing great things because we know how that feels. We are in it - he team ropes, I run barrels. We get why people are wanting and why it matters so much to someone. We are relatable in that sense.”
“We have big hearts and we want it to work out for everyone. It’s rewarding!” Says Whitley. “Breeding season gets so crazy and we are there seven days a week and I feel like I am constantly working, and I feel like for those six months I am working in the business… and then August through December I get to sit down and plan out the following year to plan out how we can improve and what we can do next.”
Fall Frenzy Youth Championship Showdown Barrel Race in Idaho
“I always laugh because it’s my favorite race of the year and I don’t even get to enter!” Says Whitley with a laugh about their race that partners with Sutfin Performance Horses and Idaho Equine. “Jared and I had thought about this idea and how we would love to sponsor a youth race so we threw a bunch of ideas at Abbey Sutfin. Abby is incredible and takes every idea you throw at her and brings it to life and never says no!”
In 2022, they had just over 200 entries which was doubled from the year before. The goal behind the race was to give these kids an opportunity to run at money that they normally don’t get to run at and make the entire night about them. The hope was to inspire the kid that sits in the stands and wants to do that someday.
“The most rewarding aspect of it is, in those 200 runners, I promise you those kids have the best run of their entire life that night,” says Whitley. “It’s the most humbling and rewarding - just an amazing experience! There are little kids that improve by a full second and I think it’s because there is so much excitement…. Parents and family members that don’t normally come to the barrel race to watch, are all there. We give them all a free dinner… Everyone there watching gets a free meal. We do introductions with smoke machines and spotlights so everyone walks out and they get their own bio.”
“It’s like a mini-NFR. We try to make it something the kids look forward to year after year and I hope that we can continue to do it for many more years! I hope its something that everyone needs to come to at least once.”
Positivity is a huge aspect of the Fall Frenzy and keeping that positivity in life as general. “I think it is really easy to go down the opposite path and in today’s time of social media - I mean we are all guilty of it at times!”