Real Work Makes Real Horses

You can learn a lot about animals by watching what they do when nobody is clapping. Sitting in the shop with wagons behind us, we talk with Corey Herschkowitz of the Rubuck Nevada YouTube channel, a day-working cowboy from northern Nevada who lives the miles, the sagebrush, and the early mornings that most people only see on a screen. He is passing through Kentucky to pick up a Clydesdale stud colt, and the conversation quickly turns into a practical, honest look at how working horses are made. 

We dig into the difference between a horse that is “broke,” a horse that is just “tired,” and a horse that is truly gentle because it understands the job. Corey explains why a cowboy’s long hours and unpredictable conditions can build mental toughness that short programs miss, and we swap stories about cutting horses, Thoroughbreds started with real trail miles, and how horses can learn to separate one job from another. If you care about horsemanship, ranch life, and buying a dependable riding horse, these details matter. 

Then it gets personal. We talk about road fatigue, pushing drives too hard, and a life-changing wreck hauling mules that led to months in the hospital, learning to walk again, and leaning on the horse community for support. We also compare mules vs horses, discuss longevity and hardiness, and get into feeding and management topics like hay nets, sand colic, straight alfalfa, and why dry-climate hay is a different product than humid-country hay. 

If you like real stories and usable takeaways from the draft horse, mule, and cowboy world, hit subscribe, share this with a friend who works animals, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Shop Talk

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to Hard Stuff with Hate Graft Horses and Mule, where we talk all things related to these magnificent history. Join us in the week with experts. So hard stuff. Join graph for still live discussion about these God given creatures.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Hey folks, hey, hard stuff podcast. How's everybody doing out there? I know it's been a while. Um been busy, folks. Been really busy. Just the way it goes. But uh had the opportunity to record with somebody tonight. Uh y'all may remember this face. Um, me and him recorded a podcast. What has it been now? A couple months. A couple months ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Online on the app that we use, you know, on each other's screen. So uh, but now he was passing through. Yeah. And I said, shoot, you gotta come see me. So he he made it happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Yep, making a a circle. I'm Corey Herschkowitz. I've got the Rhubuck Nevada YouTube channel. It was passing through kind of in a well,

Picking Up A Clydesdale Stud Colt

SPEAKER_01 1:40

I'm I was on this side of the continent, so we decided to come say hi. I'm picking up a little Clydesdale stud colt from the Razerglass Ranch and Wendy Prud in there. And those of you that are watching this podcast and watch my channel, maybe you guys know, maybe you don't, but I bought a half-brother. He's a weenling, he's a full Clydesdale stud colt. He's a half-brother to the stud that I have got all my half drafts out of. All right. So I will be in a couple years, I will have a stud horse and be breeding my own half drafts. So I'm pretty cool about that. That's uh he's uh that's the goal. Yeah, yeah, that's the goal. You know, we got kind of a a big empty hole around the house right now because we just lost hot lips a couple weeks ago. So it's I'm hoping that he's a little bit of a goofball like she was, because that that position's open right now. That's right. But I'm glad you got to come to Kentucky. It's pretty cool. I've never been, I think the furthest east I've ever been in my life up to this point was Iowa. So I drove I-80 most of the way over and jogged south a little ways and got to see some of the is it Appalachian or Appalachians?

SPEAKER_02 2:52

They call it some people call it, dude. We call it Appalachia. Appalachia, okay. But some people call it Appalachian. I can't even say it like they do.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

I will never make fun of people from Pennsylvania or West Virginia for being flatlanders again, because they're not flatlanders. I I always thought they were. No, you'd they're you guys are not. They'd they're not the tallest hills around, but there's some steep ones. You know, you you at least got to click toe haul off in the truck so it makes it a hill.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Well, around here, where we're at, it's just straight up and down. It'll it's just bluffs, it just drops off.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, that's different than. Yeah, that road to your house you said was 13%. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not very long, but it's pretty steep a little jag. Yeah, the old 7-3 grunted pretty good coming up it.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Well, you know how people live around here now. We had a good night. We uh he got here what 5 30, 6, something. I don't know what the hell it was. And uh we hung out a little bit and went over to my house and had supper, and now we're back here at the shop and sitting with the wagons behind us, just chilling. And I said, Well, let's just record a podcast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Well, it's it's a good spot. It's nice in here, got the air conditioning going. It's hot and muggy out. This humidity is something melts back here. I think you decided to sleep in here. I did. I I told when we walked in here and the air conditioning was on, I told Stephen, I said, I'm gonna throw my bedroll right here on the floor tonight. You guys can see Ollie, he's already passed out right there. Sleep in it. He's got that cold concrete, he's pretty happy.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

It's a lifestyle living

Day-Working Cowboy Life In Nevada

SPEAKER_02 4:25

like that, man. Tell the folks kind of, some people may not have heard the last podcast. So let's tell them a little bit about what you do and where you where you live and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So I'm from northern Nevada and I'm a day working cowboy. On that, in that area of the country, the Great Basin, cattle are turned out on government allotments, and they vary from sizes to tens to hundreds to some of the bigger ones who are over millions of acres. So they go out there depending upon the allotment, depends upon the time of year. And branches will need more manpower when it's time to brand, time to gather, process, and stuff like that. And they we use day workers to up the manpower for a couple days or a week or something like that. And I go around and kind of like a mercenary, but for cows, I guess. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

So it's a lifestyle, man, being out on the road and traveling and trucking, it's it's gotta kind of get in your blood a little bit. It does.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

And it the traveling and the hauling is just a it's a necessity. Yeah. I do miss being home. I got two kids. I got a little boy six months old, and a little girl that's almost three. So I miss being away from home, but what gets in your blood is being out a horseback in the sagebrush, and and you have to be totally self-sufficient on what you have, not your toolbox, not your cell phone, nothing, because you have your pocket knife and a lighter a lot of times in your horseback, and that's you know, that's your emergency system right there if something happens, and that's that's a feeling that makes a lot of people really nervous, but it's also immensely calming for me.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

It would make me nervous, I'll be honest, straight up. Sure. I've never done it. Right.

Finding Peace On Horseback

SPEAKER_02 6:15

I mean, I've never been out, I've been there at West, but I've never been out on a horse doing what you do.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

It's it's a different world. This it's where I find the Lord is is you know, in the fall, especially the early fall, or some ranches start gathering the late summer, you know, your horseback as soon as there's just barely enough light to ride, and the sun's not up for another half hour, and that real quiet, right when the first rays of sunlight hit something, that's where I find the Lord, and that's that's where peace really comes to me.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

It's a feeling you can't describe, ain't it?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

It is. It's it's a it's a inner peace and an inner calm that you could take the biggest full breath of air and sigh it out, and it don't even compare.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

When you're riding that horse, though, that horse and you get close when you ride it day in,

Building A Horse Through Daily Work

SPEAKER_02 7:10

day out, it's your work partner, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yes, and no. I've got a string of horses right now. I I had uh three horses in my work string, but of course, just losing hot lifts and back down to two right now, which is a pretty low number. For a full-time working cowboy, it's too low of a number out there. You just eat them up for a day working cowboy. You know, I can take two horses and go for a week, and by the end of the week, they're played out, they need some time off to rest and recuperate. When I was hired out, like full-time as a riding job and taking care of my deathers, I had a string of seven horses. And in that string of seven horses, you'd have one or two you really liked and got along with, and they kind of become your friend. And all the way down to I had some horses that just when you woke up on that day and you knew you were riding that horse, it just put you in a bad mood. I mean, you just flat didn't like him, you didn't get along. He was a jug head, and you know, it the the guys before you might have been not as handy or or maybe handy the wrong way, so he learned tricks to have have his chance to get you down or kick you or something like that. So yeah, there's not always, you know, that there are days where the romance is there and you're on one you really like, and there are days where it's it's just a a cage match all day, and by the end of the day, you know, maybe he did or didn't do whatever his bag of tricks is, but you're just glad the day's over and you got through it. You can take a young horse and make a good horse without working like that. Oh, yeah, that that saying sweaty saddle pads, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think the the desert, how do I how do I articulate this? The desert terrain and the jobs that you're gonna ask a horse to do out there over, say, a calendar year, it teaches them so many different aspects of being a horse under saddle that by the end of even just their first calendar year, you could probably take them to town and sell them as a pretty nice horse if you're any bit of a horseman. But what really, really makes them nice in the desert is when a horse gets to understand, and and maybe the draft horses you deal with too, the same, but they get to understand that there's a job, and at the end of the day, that horse accomplished that job, whether it's gathering or processing or you know, riding through yearlings in the feedlot, whatever. But once that horse understands a day's work and he understands I did my job today, that's when they really become cool. And that's when you can take them to town and sell them for good money. And you're not worried, oh, you know, he was good today, but you know, if they go turn him out for a couple weeks and then get on him, what's he gonna do? Once they get to understanding that job, it don't matter how long they're turned out because they just know.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

You can make good horses like that. I mean, some of the highest horses now in today's time in the riding horse world are trained by what you do. Not somebody taking a horse and being a horse trainer and saying, I'm a horse trainer, I'm gonna work this horse for 60, 90 days a year, whatever it is, right, and then sell it for big money. Yeah, some of them do bring big money, of course. But the real horses that bring the biggest money that last and work for people are horses that are done with what you do,

Broke Versus Tired And Gentle

SPEAKER_02 10:45

really.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yeah, and that that comes back to, and I this is not a dig on horse trainers. I have friends that are horse trainers. Yeah, I have friends that are horse trainers and will openly admit they are not cowboys. And and what I see the difference is that horse trainer, say he's got eight horses and he's barn, and say a cowboy's got eight horses in a string. That horse trainer is gonna ride all eight horses six days a week. That cowboy is gonna ride once or twice a week, but he's gonna put more total hours per week on that horse than that horse trainer. And that horse that the cowboy's riding, he's gonna have to do his job fresh, he's gonna have to do his job tired, hot, cold, doesn't matter the weather. And again, this is not a dig on horse trainers. I'm not trying to pick this fight, but I see a lot of horses getting sold as gentle when they're not gentle, they're tired. Yeah, there's a big difference there between broke and tired, and well, between broke, tired, and gentle, I should say. And you know, if just my opinion, if I was looking for a high dollar horse, like I'm turning out, but I was buying it from a horse trainer, if he said, you know, I I only get each horse rode once or twice a week, but I ride, you know, half a day or better, well, that shows me that that horse has the stamina and he's got the mental capacity to be really physically tired and still think rather than saw up or get mad or give up and quit. There's there's a lot to be said for putting a horse in a situation that makes them so mentally tough that the little stuff doesn't bother them anymore.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

You can really also find out what a horse is made of, or what you can find out everything about them doing that too.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Oh, yeah. It's amazing how many horses, you know, like I've showed up to places in in the string of your horses, and you kind of judge the book by its cover, so to speak, and then find out you were dead wrong. Because that big handsome sorrel Geldon with four socks and a big nice blaze. He's a plug. I mean, your legs are more tired than his by the end of the day, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

So it goes back to like these draft horses and mules. The best teams we get in sale are the teams that's been on the farm three or four years, two years, whatever, that's worked the that's worked the job day in, day out. Goes back to what you said. You bring them here, you lay them off, you get them back out, and when they see that harness go on them, they know it's work time. That makes the best horses. It does. I mean, it just does. A trainer can train a horse, and it does take a trainer. I'm not down on trainers either. Right. But really putting the horse in the job and working them day in, day out does a whole lot more. Goes back to people. I compare horses to people a lot. Sure. If you take a young man and put him at a training facility and train him for six months and turn him loose and he don't work that job he trained for, didn't do no good. Right. Working the horse and putting it in the experience for the job you're training him for, it works. Right. It just works. You familiar with the cutting horse industry at all? I love it, but I I don't know a lot about it.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

So I am when I was in high school, I loped for Tom Long, and he's a big time cutting horse trainer, and I haven't been in the industry since, but I remember him telling me one time I and I just showed up, I put my phone number on his bulletin board, and he called me. I had honestly had no rights to be riding cutting horses because I was just a bareback rider at the time. I said if I was Tom then and no what I would not have called me. But, anyways, he told me, he says, the Australians they got an advantage in the cut and horse world over us. And I said, Why is that? And he says, Because in America, our cutting horse world for the most part, the horse leaves its stall, gets saddled up, goes to the arena, lopes a bunch of circles, works a cow, goes to the wash rack, goes back to his stall. He said, The Australian cutting horse trainers, they'll go out and they'll cowboy on them, Australia's version of cowboying, but they see real work. He says, and it makes them so much mentally tougher in the cutting horse arena that it's an advantage. The risk, of course, is badger holes, rocks, you know, whatever else kind of injury that the average working horse sustains and works through, and you don't notice, you're gonna notice it in the cutting horse world. So it's a trade-off. But in when he told me that, that's when I kind of started looking at a horse that's done real work versus a horse that's

Real-World Starts For Young Horses

SPEAKER_01 15:40

just been trained on, so to speak.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

This guy I know. Back when I was, I guess it's been 10, 12 years ago now, I had an Amish neighbor here in the county where we're at, and he trained horses. And he asked me, do you know this guy asked me, do you know somebody that'll train for me? So I hooked him up with my Amish neighbor and helped him out. And he had thoroughbreds trained out of Lexington, rode horses on raced horses. He brought these yearlings or two-year-olds to Eli, the Amish guy down here on the creek. Eli knows nothing about horse race. He has not a clue. And Eli's like, How am I going to train a race horse? That guy said, I don't want you to do no racing. I want you to take that horse and ride it like a trail horse. He said, Take that two-year-old thoroughbred, teach it to saddle, and just take it to that creek and ride it, go up them hills and around the mountains, ride them on the road, just give them 90 days of experience riding under saddle. That's all I want you to do. Let them be a horse. Let them be a horse. And you know, some of them horses that Eli trained down there went on to be huge race horses. Because that start that he gave them just putting them out and let and doing things with them. Sure. That makes sense. He said it helped them going into the racing chutes. I guess they call them chutes, don't they? The gate. The gate. I think I don't know that. But there's somebody cringing right now. Loading in the gate. Yeah. He said it makes them smarter. They walk up to that gate, they walk in like they got sense. He said it just makes a world of difference. Oh, I believe it. It's kind of crazy. I never dreamed they'd train racehorses on Creek. No. And but he did now. He sure did.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

It's amazing how a horse can differentiate jobs, so to speak. Oh, yeah, it is. When I was riding bareback horses in high school, I won the the Reno High School rodeo on this little appy, and she bucked across the pen and I rode her. I was, I don't know, 71 or 72 points, whatever. And the buzzer went off and she stopped and stood there flat footed. I broke my hand out of out of my rigging and kind of grabbed the pickup man. Well, that appy didn't hardly take a step, so there was no movement, no momentum. And I kind of did the fat kid wobble thing on the pickup horse trying to get away from this bronch. And the pickup man was kind of laughing at me, and and I said, What? He says, You know, she's broke to ride. And I says, Well, no, I didn't know that. She just was the number on the day sheet that I or on the draw sheet. And he kind of laughed at me. He's like, No, she ain't gonna kick you, she's fine. So, whatever went on a little bit, about 45 minutes later, they went out and ended up second or third place in the team rope and healing on her.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

She was a pretty cool little horse. I know one thing. If you I've never seen the horses you trained, other than YouTube. Sure. Your horse, I've never watched you in person.

Working Dogs And Firm Discipline

SPEAKER_02 18:35

I just met you tonight. Right. But if you train horses as good as you train this dog, you're probably pretty good. That just all comes back to work. He is a good we went to my house and he left him in the back of the truck. Yeah, he didn't leave, stayed right there. You're hearing me talk, ain't you? Trace up.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

No, it he's the first working dog I've ever had. And I honestly, I think I just got lucky with him. He just his disposition and mine mix well. We had our disagreements when he was a pup, you know, and and I'd watched a lot of guys I really respect work their dogs, and and I don't know, somebody's feathers are gonna get ruffled over this, but you gotta be hard on them when they're pups. And I'm a huge believer that there is an absolute hard line between abuse and discipline. That discipline needs to be very firm. Don't ever abuse one, but that discipline needs to be firm. If you watch coyotes in the pack, that lead coyote or alpha coyote, one of them pups gets to feeling his oats and does something wrong, that alpha coyote jumps him and I mean puts him in his place on the ground and holds him there. And I always kind of thought, you know, that in Ollie's mind, him and I are just a pack. Yeah. And I every now and then, even he's a little bit older now, so it's a lot less common, but I had to kind of remind him, hey, I'm the alpha, you know, and you it it always he cries like a baby when he gets in trouble. So it always looked way worse than it did. But what was super, super efficient with him is get him, get a hold of him, get him on his back, and have him by the throat, not choking him, but by the skin of his throat. And then I'd just take my middle knuckle, and we call them Charlie horses. You hit, you know, when you was a kid, you'd hit each other in the thighs and give him a couple of those, and not hard enough to hurt him by any means, but kind of hard enough to get his attention, and then he'd you let him up, or sometimes you just get him and hold him on his back like that, and he stands up and he's like, Whoa, hey, we'll play by your rules. I'm sorry about that. And that kind of was what it what it took to get his attention, and then he was smart enough to realize my tone of voice would change before that. The pup I got now, she ain't smart enough.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

I've she just kind of she's a potato, she's kind of she's different, but I never seen a dog so well behaved. I mean, he's great.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

He's yeah, he he likes this cold concrete right now.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

I bet he does.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Boy, if we had if we had a laser pointer,

Road Miles And Pushing Too Hard

SPEAKER_01 21:40

though, we could get him pretty stern and going.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Y'all may see me yawning some. I've been up since five o'clock and it's about 10 something.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah. Yeah, I I started driving this morning about seven.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

How many days have you been on the road?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Today's day six. You're tired. So yeah, I'm I'm doing Alright. I took it pretty easy coming across the country. I didn't push it. You know, I didn't I didn't need to, I should say. There's no reason to, really. No. No. I've I've I've done those 24 and 36 hour straight through drives before. I was out at Cow Camp in 2018. Yeah, 2018. And the cow boss came out. I got back from my circle I was riding that day and went into the cabin, seen the boss, the cow boss's pickup. Went into the cabin and he's standing there, he's drinking my beer. And which I mean I drank plenty of his over the course of our relationship. So whatever, it's fair. Yeah. But uh he says, Hey, you're going on vacation. I says, No, I'm not. I got too much stuff to do right now. You know, I got we just moved all these cattle. I need to get salt scattered, and then we're gonna start shaping the deserts up together, and had this list of stuff I was trying to get. And he says, No, he says, You're going on vacation. Your wife's grandpa just got hit by a semi and he's in the hospital. And that we were working in northern Nevada at the time, and my wife's from Wisconsin, and I said, Holy crap! So we drove, I jumped, I unsaddled my horse and cleaned my camp up real quick and drove back to the ranch. It was about an hour back at the ranch, and talked to Bailey. And we jumped in the car and drove, I think it was about two hours to Fernley, Nevada. And I'd been up all day at that point. I told her, I said, I gotta get a little bit of sleep. So we rented a hotel and slept for about four hours, and I left Fernley, and I was past Kearney, Nebraska before we stopped driving and slept in a truck, stopped there for about two hours and drove the rest of the way up to Wisconsin. So that was that was the hardest I've ever pushed it. But we got there in time to where we saw grandpa before before he succumbed to his injuries.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

And that was good.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

He woke up, him and Bailey and I were the only ones he talked to after his wreck and all that. So yeah, I've I've pushed it before, and now if if I can do anything I need to to avoid pushing it, driving like that, I do, because it's not worth it. Like an old guy always told me, better to get there than not. Exactly. Yeah. Be smart. Well, I mean, gosh, on the roads. I I wrecked a pickup in high school. I fell asleep and I put it on its roof and slid down the center light on the roof. And I was I was fortunate. Me and my friend, neither one of us were hurt. A dog that was in the back of the pickup didn't do so well, but it's it's one of my biggest nightmares is to have something happen with a trailer full of horses behind me.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

2017,

A Wreck, Recovery, And Community Help

SPEAKER_02 24:50

June of 2017. Some of these people may not even know this about me, but I was in Atlanta. South of Atlanta on I-85 in Noonham, Georgia. Had a load of mules and my 2012 F-350. I run under a semi. Fell asleep, I guess. Oh jeez. Went right under it. Oh, jeez. You can look it up online. You can see the wreck and everything, the whole story. Wow. But I guess the Lord spared me for something.

unknown 25:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Right. But I broke every bone from my pelvis down. Holy crap. My jaw four times, three vertebrates in my back, four ribs. Wow. I was in Grady in Atlanta, Grady Memorial Hospital for like 30 or 40 days. Wow. I had to learn to walk again. I'm all rods and pins. Huh. That's to be here. Man, it's a blessing to walk. I they said I wouldn't. Well, good job proving them wrong. And I was going to therapy, yeah, trying to learn, and they kept holding me back. They were scared, I guess. And I had people driving me, of course, to therapy. And uh one day I got up at mom and dad's. I had to stay at mom and dad's because they had to take care of me. I I couldn't walk, I mean. But I went to therapy and I told them, I said, they said, How'd you get here? I said, I drove. And they said, You can't be doing that. I said, Well, I did. Yeah. And after that day, I took my walker with me, hobbled to the truck, and got in that front seat, and I drove everywhere I wanted to go. I was back on the road hauling horses like within a year. Wow. Back at it. So I hate I I hate to ask, but how'd the mules fare in that? Oh, all of them perfect. Good. None of them died. Wow. They took them to a vet somewhere. I can't really remember. And the lady I still talk to her from time to time, she reaches out to me. Her name's, I think her name's Kim. She lives in Alabama. She came and got them. Oh wow. At the vet. Jeez. You know, I was down from June to the end of October. Well, I can imagine. And I was selling mules at the time still. Used to sell all mules. That's all this company did was mules. That's all we done. Haste Mule Company was actually the name before we started doing draft horses, too. And um I video, you can go back on YouTube and see me in a wheelchair videoing mules. I videoed mules and rode the buggy on my wheelchair. My buddies picked me up, set me on the wagon, and we still tried to keep working.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

It was tough. Oh, I bet. Got some good customers out there, man. Good people. Yeah. We had people uh that I never even dreamed. Mom and dad kept a notebook of all the people come seeing me, like 300 and something different people. Wow. I had people come to see me, I didn't even know. Kind of wild.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

That uh that's one thing I've noticed in this industry, whether it's it's the the the Teamster, the wagon draft side of it or the cowboy side of it. Like earlier this year, Mark Bossert gotten a pretty good wreck last winter. And you can see the horse industry, you know, we rally around our own when somebody needs help, and that's pretty cool to see.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

Oh, I they donated stuff to me and they kept me afloat.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Blessing, huge

Mules Versus Horses And Feeding Stories

SPEAKER_02 28:20

blessing.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Oh man, it was man. So is there how much of a I don't know anything. I've only been around a team of horses once in my life. How much of a difference is there between a team of draft mules and a team of draft horses? I always tell people it's whatever you like the best.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Is is your is the methods any different, your training methods or anything like that? Not really. I think it's all goes back to how you work them and bonding with them. Sure. I mean, once you bond with that team, it's gonna click. Once they connect with you, you connect with them. Whether it's mules or horses, it don't matter. But some people swear a mule's the best. They don't want nothing else, and some people swear they don't want no mule, they want all horses. It's just like forward or Chevy. Sure. I mean, it's what you like. Sure. It's not I mean, yeah, there's benefits to a mule over a horse, and there's benefits to a horse over a mule. Well, it it what are the benefits one over the other? Well, for one, a mule will live twice as long. Okay. I mean, we had a mule here from Texas back in the winter. A guy brought it, he bought some horses from us, but he didn't want them. He said, I just don't need this mule no more, give her to somebody. She was legit 42. Wow. It was a team of them, actually, and they was old. You could see it. They pulled wagons when wagons was the main mode. But a mule live a long time. I didn't know that. And they're more hardy. You throw out nice alfalfa to a mule, and you got moldy hay, that mule I swear will eat the mold first. And they handle it, huh? They handle it. And they'll eat anything a horse won't. Really? In the pasture. It's crazy, they're like a goat. That sounds like my Mustang. Yeah. Mustang, they kind of resemble. Yeah. They're, you know, they're used to being on the wild and eating what they can get. Right. Here in Kentucky, we got a lot of distiller syrup from the bourbon plants. Okay. It's like a corn mush, like the byproduct of bourbon. I knew an Amish guy down here on the creek. He fed that syrup to his mules by the tub. That would coll like a horse and kill it. Yeah, you'd fermented? Yeah, you'd you'd gas one up. He fed that stuff to his mules like it was going out of style.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

I knew an old boy from Bakersfield would feed his horses reject carrots. The fruit and the green, like everything, all of it, by the dump truck load. And he said, them horses will not make themselves sick eating them carrots.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

I bet they got fat.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

They were in good shape and they were shiny and they had pooped that was Cost and Cone orange. He didn't do no hay or nothing. He just he says the pile gets low. I order another dump load of reject carrots. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've tried to feed the best we can here and take care of them the best we can, you know. Right. I mean, but when

Hay Nets, Alfalfa, And Dry-Climate Hay

SPEAKER_02 31:30

people love horses and they want them, they'll feed them the best way they can. Right. Oh yeah. What I tell people, you get a method that works for you, it works. There's no this horse industry, equine industry as a whole. You can say there's a right and wrong all you want. This is the right way to do it. This is the wrong way. Do it this way. I don't believe that. I tell people, yeah, there's a fundamental right way. There's always the fundamentals. Develop your own technique. Yeah. That's what makes people differ. What works for you may not work for me, but if it works for me, it's right. Right. And that's what matters.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yeah. And kind of agriculture's the same way that there's a saying is the most expensive words in agriculture is that's how dad did it. Yeah. And yeah, and you know, horses kind of the same way, because like my whole life growing up, we fed horses twice a day. And it it worked. You go out, you check on them, you know, you see, make sure everybody's acting the same. Because you got the horses that you go out to feed, and they stand in the back of the pen and wait, and then you got the one that's trying to crawl through the fence to come say hi to you. And you know, if one of them's not in the right spot, you notice it. And my wife and I started, we were lived at a place that had a lot of sand, and we had a lot of sand colics. Wait, we had five sand colics in six weeks, one winter, and uh didn't lose any, but you know, had the colics. And we were talking, we says, 'We gotta, we gotta change something.' This isn't working anymore, because we were just throwing hay twice a day in some troughs, some aluminum troughs or galvanized troughs. And of course, you know, they eat the most of it, but they throw a lot of it out and pick through the sand. And so she says, Well, let's let's try and buy one of those big hay nets. And because we out there we feed the four by three by eight bales. She says, Let's throw a big bale in a hay net and set it on a bunch of mats and see what happens. Well, it was kind of good, kind of bad, because you know, if somebody's got shoes on and they go to paw the bale, you get the shoe stuck in it, anyways. But we started feeding with hay nets, and the sand colics all quit. And so it was like, well, this is right now, but it was also kind of felt wrong because you didn't get that twice-a day interaction with them, you know. You go out, you look at them, and they all just kind of happy and content. So I thought everybody was sick at first. But that's and that's just it, you know, and and some people they don't like the haynets. Oh, they can't never get enough, this and that, because they just pick all day. But you gotta, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to take like a performance horse and make them rely out of a haynet for all their nutrition because I don't think they could do it. But for like my horses who are on a haynet all day and all night, and they might work once or twice a week, I think it's just fine for them. Yeah. A lot of people don't know how we feed straight alfalfa, but we do. I and and that's another thing, you know, straight alfalfa forever. People were saying, oh, it's hard on their kidneys, hard on their kidneys. Well, I what six or eight months ago, I saw a vet study released saying that it's not hard on their kidneys and that it's actually better for their stomach than a mix is.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

Well, it don't take as much. No. It's high protein, and we don't feed grain. I mean, we use grain to catch stuff if we need to. Right. That's it. We've well, you've seen how we fed tonight. Just poured it to them.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

And they do good here. I mean, some people don't can't understand how we do it, but we're your alfalfa is not local though. We get it from out west. Yeah. Yeah. You you can grow alfalfa here, but it's horrible. Sure. I mean, you cannot compare to what that desert irrigated land can grow with alfalfa. Right. We can't compete. Right. And it's so good hay.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Yeah, and well, we can we can cut it and bale it, and it never gets. I mean, it's like we get mad when the dew gets too heavy on the hay. So let alone the actual moisture from humidity or rain, it doesn't happen. I mean, we get hay rained on, of course, but like the the the good hay that you're getting, it wasn't rained on nothing like that. And I don't think that happens in this part of the world. Like you see hay in the windrose here and it's brown already. Oh yeah, it goes so quick. My my father-in-law was out to our house last summer, and he says, I thought that that the hay was all green in the bale around here. And I says, Well, well, it is. He says, Well, that stack of hay right there, it's yellow. And I says, That's a two-year-old stack of hay. Go pull a little bit off of it. And he reached up, grabbed a corner of the bale, pulled it out, and of course the sun bleach is, you know, two inches or so, and then it's just as green as the day it was baled inside of it. And he says, I can't believe that.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

You cut one of them bales open out there, it's yellow. You cut it open, it'll blind you.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Yeah, and it smells just like it was cut.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

Unreal. Yep. They keep it outside too. Yeah, we don't even tarp it.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

You don't need to be well, they might they might tarp it a lot of places, but in Nevada, we'd we will tarp horse hay, of course, because you don't want that little bit of mold to happen, but like our cow hay, it's two years old, you know. If if you have a good year and maybe your numbers are down a little, whatever, and hay prices are kind of down, so it's not worth selling. Two-year-old hay, and it feeds just as good as if it was that year's hay. It's so dry out there.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Dry.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Yeah, we I was kind of laughing when I was driving here today. I seen some guys raking and bailing at you know, 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon. You don't see that too often out there. It's the opposite. We have to rake and bale at night to get enough moisture to where we just don't knock the leaves off of it.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

But it's a different world, isn't it? Oh, it is. Yeah. When I come out there, I'm still shocked. It's just, I say, how are them cows living in that field where they live? Yeah, out in the desert. With nothing. They're uh they're a different breed. No pun intended, there. The people are too.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

You have to be to live in that dry climate.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

The dry is I mean the the the dry is easier to deal with than the humidity. Well, for a lot of reasons. I mean like my flatbed pickup. I got the head tore off it right now because I blew the head gasket in it. Well, it's gonna be a couple weeks before I get back to it. I just sprayed a little bit of WD-40 on it and left. I don't think you could get away with that here. You couldn't. You'd rust stuff and you'd ruin the head, ruin the block.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

Yeah. You'd be going taking the machine shop, getting it refixed.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Yeah, no, I'm there. We just little spritz of WD-40, and I did put a tarp over top of it so dust didn't get on it, but I can go feed in the morning before seven o'clock, yeah, walking through the grass.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

I gotta go change socks and shoes. It's so wet from the dew. Yeah. We get dew like y'all get rain. Yeah, that's not a joke.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

It's just a different world, man. Once in a while, i in Fallon, where I live there, it's flood irrigated. And like if we got a field of hay down and the neighbors got hay still growing and heat irrigates it, it'll get the dew will get so heavy on that, just that the fields next to it, that we won't be able to bail it that night. But what you do then is you wait until eight or nine the next morning and you go bail it then. That works.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

All right. Well, I

Where To Find Us And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_02 39:35

feel myself falling asleep. Yeah, I'm ready for getting some sleep too. I'm pretty tired. Yep. It's been a long day, but I'm glad we got to do a little podcast and talk. Yeah, it's fun. I'm glad I got to meet you in person. Yeah. That's good. Hopefully, next time we'll be able to stay longer rather than just show up, eat dinner, and go to bed. Come and have a rest and stay a couple days. So, guys, tell them where to find you on your YouTube and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Rubuck Nevada is the YouTube channel name. I'm on Facebook too. Right now, what's today the 10th? To the 10th of August. My YouTube channel, I'm it's a little bit slow right now. I'm busy with some other things going on. I do have a couple more episodes of some day work planned to get edited and put together and get back out there. One of the biggest things I tell everybody that's new to my channel is if you have questions, ask. You know, whether it's questions about horsemanship, lifestyle, or kind of like our conversation here in the West, if you're from back east, or I even have people from Europe that ask questions. I I feel like that kind of my mission with my YouTube channel is to share the knowledge that I got the hard way. If I can make you know a young kid's learning curve a little bit easier for them, cool. Whatever you can do to help. So, yep. Then Facebook is Rubuck Nevada also. And if you're a roper, check out rubucknevada.com. I got some ranch rope for sale on there. Good.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Guys, thank y'all. God bless each and every one of you. We appreciate you. Glad you listened tonight. Trying to get back into these podcasts. Hopefully, really soon. I'll start doing some more as soon as we get some chances to do them. But we stay busy. As you can see, all these wagons behind me. We sell wagons and teams. And today I shipped a team to New York, Newcomb, New York. Another team is going to Smoot, Wyoming. Tomorrow we got a team going to Vegas. It's just a lot to handle every day here with customers. We had customers here this morning from Connecticut. It's just, we've been really busy. But I don't want to drop this podcast completely. I want to try to keep it going. So hang in there with us, you faithful followers. We appreciate you. If you're new here, click that subscribe and follow us. Join our community. We'd greatly appreciate it. The website is www.drafthorsesandmulesforsale.com. God bless you, and we'll see you soon on the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

As another captivating episode of Harnessed Up with Haste Draft Horses and Mules draws to a close, we extend our sincere gratitude to our listeners for joining us on this enlightening journey. We hope today's discussion to your appreciation and understand the magnificent creatures. Remember, they've better continued to be on this podcast. Stay connected with us on social media and share your stories. For more information and support, visit reports at FieldForSales.com. Thank you for being part of our community. Until next time, be harnessing your cure. Farewell for now.