Nestled in the heart of the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, Spotted Fever Ranch raises Quarter and Paint horses, commercial black baldies and German Shepherd dogs. Our goal is to produce blue roan paints that have the build and disposition to do many different jobs and dogs that are very healthy and can go in almost any direction with the emphasis on being a family member first.
After many years of random breeding of good horses and not getting the results that we wanted, we are now concentrating on line breeding foundation Quarter horses and crossing them on our Paint horses. The research we have done shows that many of the all time leading Quarter horse sires that have influenced the breed the most have been the product of intensive line breeding or often inbreeding. Line breeding requires concentrated effort in not breeding horses with health defects and therefore the gene pool quality is raised and the offspring become more predictable. If you have succeeded in culling all horses from your breeding program that have any known defect, then breeding cousins to cousins (line breeding) will generally give you success for the attributes that you desire from the bloodlines that you have chosen.
The foundation line that we have chosen is Hancock and the specific stallion is Blue Valentine. He was on Western Horseman's list of top sires of working ranch and rodeo horses and we truly admired his build and disposition and the way he passed it on to his offspring. We got our initial seed stocking of 4 horses with this breeding from the Broken Bones Ranch in Lander, Wyoming in 2015 and are off to a great start with our blue roan paints.