Ep. 118 - Breeding Barn Conversations with Rachel Pozzi
When you want to know more about the horse industry from both an economic and maybe even political standpoint, Rachel Pozzi is our go-to gal for all the information. An avid horsewoman, extremely knowledgeable and competitive, she is someone Katie Schrock met through Facebook groups for quarter horse and appaloosa race horses. Introduced through Jeff Adams who raced Katie’s horse Train Wreck during her prime in Appaloosa Racing, we are excited to have her on the show with Katie and Rachel Owens-Sarno.
Current Horse Projects
“I am currently up to being the world’s greatest farmhand,” says Rachel Pozzi with a laugh. “I’m pretty much living my best life with a ton of broodmares and a ton of babies. That’s kind of what my horse career has turned into, I was doing a lot of competition before competitive, but then COVID and grad school hit hard.” The retirement of her top mare and grad school caused a “hard fork” in the road, and so Rachel revamped the breeding farm that she her parents had done for a while.
Even though her parents had dispersed a lot of the herd, Rachel came home to ten open broodmares that had 30 plus combined world championships and so she had gone full steam ahead since she came home from college. “My passion is definitely breeding the horses and making some good prospects for myself down the road,” says Rachel. “I am doing it all by myself.”
Similar to Whitley Sharp and the Outback Stallion Station episode, Rachel is doing a lot of that work by herself when she started to figure it out in 2020. She does everything but her own embryo flushing. “I also started my own recipient herd - not big enough to contract out to people but a good handful to cover my own embryo flushes,” says Rachel who is managing 65 head.
“I am managing it by myself, it’s really just my mom and I here but we both work full time - I actually have two jobs!” Says Rachel who is thankful for good employees she keeps around as well.
Prospect Herd
In 2023, her 2022 foal crop is already on the ground, which can be really exciting to grow with her program. Ideas in 2021 were foaled in 2022 which include two appaloosa colts. One is sired by Sun Frosted Rocket and he’s a leopard out of a world champion Appaloosa roping mare, the other is a blanket appaloosa by Smooth As A Cat. The concept with the Smooth As A Cat colt is that Rachel knew she wanted to make loud-colored Appaloosa’s that weren’t going to sacrifice ability.
Now more than ever, people want to ride something that looks cool but has the whole package; the incentives and the pedigree. Rachel’s parents had raised Appaloosa’s before they had gotten out of it and included some great Appaloosa cow horses and cutting horses back when it wasn’t cool, which is why they stopped. Coming back around, seeing the eye opener that people now want that, Rachel picked up the torch.
The mare from the Smooth As A Cat colt is out of, Rachel called the one lady she knew she could trust that would have mares that would produce color and she had one. Shipping her in from the Canadian border, it was a big undertaking to get the mare to Rachel.
The Sun Frosted Rocket colt was out of a mare that had a 50% change of producing color and hadn’t produced color before and then a shocking surprise hit them all when the leopard colt was born!
"These two are going to shake things up for what people’s expectations are for Appaloosa’s because you are getting a beautiful, well built horse, with all the color int he world, but you’re also getting everything you could ever want from the Quarter Horse world,” says Rachel. They also have a great herd of Quarter Horses as well.
The Appaloosa’s are really coming in with popularity so it’s exciting to see where they are going to be going.
As for 2023, Rachel has a Slick By Design out of a mare that has produced 20 world championships with a 100% world championship producing progeny record. This will be a rope horse deluxe that will be faster than fast.
“I am a little bit more excited about what I am going to be doing this season, rather than what I have coming,” says Rachel in regards to embryos she has had stashed away. “I am really looking forward too. That mare that produced that Smooth As A Cat colt with 100% color, I had the amazing privilege to buy her daughter from the same lady, that was never supposed to be available…she has all the same color genetics with a color guarantee and homozygous black. We are going to have some black leopards!”
“I keep going back and forth between making a fancy barrel horse or a fancy cow horse!”
2024 Horse Market Trends
“It’s kind of sad I do all of this on my own all of the time,” says Rachel in reference to her stallion database that she has created on an Excel sheet. While incentives are great, Rachel always looks for the best cross first and lays all those crosses on the table and figures out if this is going to be a heart horse that she’ll never sell meaning will she never be pushing it for a futurity - this means she can cut out the incentives that don’t mater to her.
As a business, you have to make the colts that people want and that’s going to be the multi incentive horses. Do you really need one that has everything? Probably not, but you need to know the important ones.
“I made it simple for myself and pulled all the major incentives and gave myself the opportunities to weigh out what studs are in multiple incentives t make it most valuable for other people and myself,” says Rachel. She tries to sort it down into rope horse futurity and barrel horse futurity - because they don't necessarily mix in markets. You do have some miraculous scenarios where you have people rope on one and barrel race on the same one - something Rachel really wants to keep pushing for people.
“I use basic excel more or less and broke down, categorizing stallion sin both Riata and Ruby Buckle, then Ruby Buckle and Riata, etc.” says Rachel breaking down her different combinations to whittle down what stallions will be in what. Maybe you just need two incentives, not every incentive, but can maybe expose a junior stallion that could be a good fit as well.
Pricing Colts
If you are shipping and Aritifically Inseminating a mare, it’s costing $4,000 to get that foal on the ground. That’s everything in breeding expenses and not counting semen or feed for the mare. If it’s already costing that much, you might as well invest in a better stud fee to get a better return on the margins.
A lot of people think they can breed for what they can’t buy, but not everybody is cut out to breed horses. When it’s all said and done, if it costs you $4,000 to get them on the ground, it’s probably costing more depending on where you are located and who your vet is. “I still think it comes down to trusting breeders and how they are pricing their horses. At the end of the day, it’s worth it at the end of the day to buy a long yearling that has been fitted out and taken care of since Day 1 of that mare being pregnant, rather than trying to do everything yourself. It’s really hard to have a vertically integrated process.”
Babies aren’t for everyone - they aren’t always fun and cute. They can be unruly and wild!
“Before you know it, by the time you’re trimming their feet every four weeks, tying them, putting them in the trailer… it’s a lot of things. It’s worth it to pay for a horse that has been treated right,” advises Rachel.
Data Research
What surprised Rachel was that studs you would assume were in everything, they weren’t! Rachel would have to go in and check to see what horses had been put on drop lists meaning the stallion owners hadn’t kept up with the incentives.
“Here I was complaining about the Ruby Buckle nomination,” says Katie with a laugh, “and then I saw there’s! They were a healthy five-figures!”
Until you have the numbers out there by your stud to get the money kick back, it’s really tough as a stud owner and even these charter stallions that went into these programs, to stick with it, is hard to get a return. A lot of these junior stallions will say, “I’ll pay him in when he has enough!” That’s a pretty large undertaking.
Every breeder is different because sometimes it’s whoever registered/enrolled the horse or who is on in the breeding certificate of the horse. Get your horses in and get your contracts paid in quickly so that they can pay!
This is not hobby money at all, you have to be strategic if you are involved in this industry.
Pet Peeves in the Breeding World: Nutrition & Buyers Value
There are a lot of breeders out there that are puppy mills for horses. “For nutrition, I could probably write a dissertation not only on what people think but on research-backed information that people should be doing. There is too much information out there for us not to be more cognizant of that information,” says Rachel. Sometimes it’s hard for us to recognize.
There’s so much information on the Feed Room podcast that is research-backed that you should listen too. In any event, everybody can be doing more in Rachel’s opinion.
“I think that people need to be consistent with their mares when they breed them, provide them quality nutrition and minerals - just have free-choice minerals out there for them,” says Rachel. “Make sure they have that quality forage that they need, but give them that free choice vitamin and mineral will bridge a gap for you.”
When it’s foaling time, it’s not just dumping calories into a mare thirty days before foaling - that just causes a caloric shock for those babies whether or not that mare was lacking nutritionally. It’s about maintaining through the whole pregnancy.
Obviously nutrition starts when a horse conceives but, when it comes to young horses, Rachel looks at the track industry for their success in racing three year-olds, whether it’s quarter horse or Thoroughbreds. There are complete breakdowns and lack of breakdowns int he race horse world, but Rachel has seen just as much, if not more, breakdown in the cow horse and barrel horse industries., There’s a lot more research in how to bring up a racehorse and how to fit them.
Walking is incredibly beneficial. Naturally if you have babies in a big space, i.e. turnout…., they’re naturally building that bone density by playing together. Any time you are restricting them from playing and romping with each other, it’s not good. Or if they have turnout, they need that incentive to romp around.
“Their legs are like elephant legs, they’re huge! They’r fit and they’re strong! Those horses are about to step onto a track tomorrow and they’re ready! Why aren’t we doing this more in the barrel horse industry?” Says Rachel about the yearling select sales for the racehorses.
The bone density goes back to genetics, but it goes back to fetal nutrition as well. You aren’t going to get a frail baby and turn it into a tree trunk overnight. There is a perfect relationship between nutrition and conditioning, you can’t do one without the other. You can’t do all of the nutrition and none of the conditioning or vice versa. When it’s incongruent or not event, you’re going to have weak bones.
The other thing, in all of these babies, in building the bone and density, it’s also their soft tissue as well. There is a lot of research out there on Thoroughbreds on starting them at two and three, they found consistent injuries in three year-olds than the ones started at two. The ones that had the extra year to hang out, did more harm than good. They had less time and care in building their bodies and legs.
If you look at lower extremities, they’re usually done by three years old. You still haver to think that if you aren’t putting those bones under any degree of stress, they aren’t going to get better. You don’t wait until you are fifteen or twenty to start doing a sports like gymnastics. You’re going to see them starting young.
Don’t just trust a viral Facebook post, talk to people that are working into the research and data.
Rodeo - Getting Started
“I actually showed horses for twelve years and I liked doing all that stuff - the showing, the western pleasure, the jumping,” says Rachel. “That was an interesting world - that was my only world! I showed cutting a lot too and I kind of got into barrel racing because the mare that took me to college and the college finals - we just had her.”
“I literally went out to our pasture and pulled out eight horses, tied them to the fence and said, ‘one of you is going to be my barrel horse!’ I am not even exaggerating,” says Rachel with a laugh. “looking back at some of the horses I tried, I think of how tragic it would have been.”
“I do have a mare that I competed on everything in,” says Rachel, “I probably racked up over 1200 points on that horse. I did win a reserve world championship in barrel racing on her in the Appaloosa Association and a pole bending championship.” The mare had been a cutting horse that they had done everything with as a great ranch horse and she turned out to be really awesome.
“I learned the hard way, training her from the ground up, and she kept getting better and better,” says Rachel. In her Freshman year of college, she was taking her to the winter barrel races in Arizona where she came close to qualifying for the American. “Thinking back on it, it’s like ‘oh my gosh, my horse was so green!’” The next thing Rachel knew she had a college scholarship to rodeo on her and then started pro-rodeoing.
“We did place plenty, but it’s fun doing it on a horse that you have some business being there with. If I could do it over now with that same horse and knowing what i know now, I would do it completely different because I am not afraid to say I wasted that horse!” Says Rachel, “we all have to have that experience and we all have to have one that is that good that we don’t know is that good at the time.”
Future Plans for Competition
“I have got five, five year-olds, that were coming along really well but two got injured,” says Rachel. “I am admiringly really behind on my four and five year-olds. I had told myself I would futurity on them but I didn’t and that’s fine. I’m going for the whole, ‘make a good horse that is age.’”
Shaping her breeding program around what she would want to show and compete. “Any one of the babies that hit the ground, I may decide to keep,” says Rachel. “I do have a few 2022’s and a 2021 … Sun Frosted Rocket out of a sister of the mare I college rodeo’d on that is really exceptional.”
Do you sell out and just breed? “I could sell everything I have and could buy a great string of horses to make the finals on, but i don’t know if I would ever really be whole if I wasn’t breeding horses so I have come to terms with that. When it’s my time, it’s my time to get back out there with the horses,” says Rachel. “I had a five year plan eight years ago to get a great horse again… I was going to work, make a lot of money, save it, buy some nice horses and go!” That was more than five years ago but Rachel says it’s okay that she’s passed it.
“I can go whenever I want too and I’m okay with the fact that I’m not trying to make the NFR on $5.”
Financial comfort is the thing that Rachel wants to make sure is safe and good - there is a lot of pressure to do it while we are young before you are married or have kids. Building the family life is hard in the rodeo world. It’s okay to build a life and have a family and purse those things. We don’t have to “do it right now” and we don’t need it “done yesterday.”
The hope is to reach those goals on home grown horses. “I kind of kick myself sometimes knowing how much money you have spent on breeding the past few years,” says Rachel. “But, it’s fine!”
PRCA RULE CHANGE - RACHEL POZZI
“This may or may not be directly related to anything we just talked about, I would really, really like to see the entire PRCA focus on members more,” says Rachel. “I know there is going to be someone out there in upper management of the PRCA, it’s not a member-based association anymore. I am not talking about the WPRA, I am talking about the representation of competitors in general, it’s super poor and it could be a lot better. I know that this is kind of sore spot for a lot of people.”
“Whether or not we are ever going to see a change, probably not, but equal representation for card holders and I know that it might not ever happen until we see a giant protest at the finals. Literally, first performance, no one shows up!”
“I won't got into the ugly details of why this needs to happen,” says Rachel.
“Also, I would like to see, it’s not a rule but it could be, but there is no governing body of any sort in the horse industry - it’s the Wild West. There is no checks and balances to make sure anyone does good business except their peers. This is business, and there is a lot of money to be made, and horses subsequently get the short end of the stick when it comes to budget cuts,” adds Rachel. “I would just like some sort of checks and balances, I’m not sure if it comes down to the producers or the associations, that basically rewards good breeders, good owners, and good trainers for doing good business. Subsequently, not punishing those that do bad business, but reward those that do good business.”
“Let’s raise the standard of what people get for their money and people putting in what they should to these horses,” says Rachel. “It’s hard work! I’m not asking for a Gold Star on the back.”
For example, the Gold Buckle process has the vetting process but they also have the option that consigners can accept or deny the last winning bid for the horse to say if that person gets there horse. This is an auction where the classic thinking is that “highest bidder buys the horse,” but with this, at the end of the day, the seller gets to determine whether or not the winning bidder is worthy. It’s little things like that that push people to care about their reputation from an auction stand point because, auctions, traditionally, there are a lot of ways around it.
Deep thoughts on the rodeo trail with Rachel Pozzi… “I’d have to say, be okay with doing things at your own pace, on your schedule, in your life and what fits your life best. Recognize your life, nor your horses life, nor the equine industry is not Amazon prime. You can’t click now and get it in two-days!”
We are in an age now that we have that habit as a society that we need it now and instant gratification. Rome wasn’t built in two days and as far as it comes to horses - be okay with sitting on a horse for a while, putting some time on a horse, etc. Even if you have the money to replace that horse tomorrow, take five extra minutes (figuratively speaking) and work with that horse. There is a lot of horse turnover in the industry because of that nature. We didn’t use to really have that as much and we see the same things with buying and selling horses with the expectations for that. Be okay with things at your pace and the industry isn’t going to do that either. Have some humility in that too. Be okay if you didn’t research your goals yesterday.