In 1984, I visited with Guy Ray Rutland, who was Quarter Horse racing’s all-time leading breeders of Register of Merit qualifiers. From 1945 through 1983, Rutland and his wife Mildred had bred 499 race ROM qualifiers, nearly twice as many as the second place breeder. Guy Ray and Mildred also annually appeared among the top breeders of Most Wins and Most Winners.

Among the stallions Rutland stood at Rutland Ranch in Independence, Kansas were Gold King Bailey; Gold King Bailey’s sons Gold Pacific and King Leo Bailey; the Thoroughbred Carrara Marble, by Coldstream; Jet Stop, by Jet Deck; Star Bright Moore, by Star Deck; and Bar Money, by Three Bars.
Rutland’s stallion Pacific Bailey was ranked with the leaders in both the All-Time Leading Sire and Maternal Grandsire lists.

Besides his enthusiasm for his horses. Rutland promoted Super Sup Horse Feed, a formula that he invented and now markets through a company based in Republic, Missouri.

Q: How did you first become involved with horses?
A: I was born and raised on a ranch and always had horses and naturally, like any kid, always liked horses. When I was in Okemah in the 1940’s, a fellow wanted some saddle horses hauled to Chicago for him. He looked me up and l hauled them. I knew kind of what he gave for them and I knew what he got for them. I thought that was a pretty good deal and maybe I ought to try that. And that was the start of my horse business.

Q: So, the horse business has always been your livelihood?
A: No, my daddy was a cow rancher and had cattle. Horses were sort of a sideline for me. My horses would beat my cattle and pretty soon I made the remark that I would rather have one good mare than ten cows. My dad kept telling me that I should let those old horses alone and stay with cows. He would say, “You are a good cow man and you know horses will break you.” But, I guess I never heeded him and just kept on. Finally, he just gave up and said, “Boy, those horses sure do ruin a good cow man.”

I have always bred to be able to market all my horses.

Q: You never convinced him?
A: No, but he was proud of me. He liked them too.

Q: Do you still raise cattle?
A: In about 1958 or 1960, I sold all of my cattle and horses have been my 100% living since then.

Q: Did you start your breeding operation with mares?
A: No, my real start was with Gold King Bailey. A friend was looking for a good palomino stallion. He offered to buy him if I would stand him and he would have the privilege of breeding his mares. I would collect the outside stud fees until the horse was paid for.

In 1946, we were looking for a colt of breeding age, but a little yellow yearling caught my eye at the Oklahoma Quarter Horse Association Sale in Ada. I liked him enough to wait for him and paid $1,250 right then for him.

Gold King Bailey was Grand Champion Palomino Stallion in Fort Worth and Denver. And he was one of the good race horses down around Pawhuska.

Q: So, you started breeding both for show and race?
A: I’ve always bred to be able to market all my horses. I would rather sell 95% of my colts, instead of 5% of the AAAT runners.

Q: Conformation is very important to you?
A: I’d rather have a good-looking AA horse than a sorry looking AAA horse. You do find exceptions. Pacific Bailey’s dam wouldn’t have passed my conformation test, but I figured she would produce a race horse. I lean toward racing and I’ve tried to get as good-looking an animal with as much breeding and quality blood as I can.

Q: What do you look for in conformation?
A: I look at a horse like I would a top athlete: wide at the shoulders and narrow at the hips, good muscling and straight legs. I’m a fanatic about a good, straight hind leg and a good inside gaskin.

Q: The mares that you started with, what were the predominant bloodlines?
A: The first Quarter mare I bought was a Hank H mare. In the 1940’s and 1950’s the bloodlines were King, Leo, Vandy and of course. Three Bars. I liked those lines. They were popular and I tried to stay with them.

Q: Did you like the same lines in your stallions?
A: I did. Pacific Bailey is by Gold King Bailey who is out of a Leo daughter. Bar Money is a Three Bars son.

Q: Didn’t you try to purchase Leo at one time?
A: I saw him in Pawkuska and ran him through my computer as a good horse. I tried to buy him but couldn’t. I’ve always liked the Leos.

They have good hind legs. Pacific Bailey’s sire is out of a Leo mare. Pacific Bailey’s daughters have that good hind leg and good hip and are producers like Leo daughters. I think one day Pacific Bailey will over-take Leo as a leading maternal sire of ROM.

Q: Leo was double Joe Reed bred. Do you think this line-breeding had anything to do with his prepotency?
A: Yes. I think in the right horses you can bring out the strong points with line-breeding. Of course, you have to know what you’re doing.

I bred Pacific Bailey’s mother back to him. We got a filly and turned around and bred back to Pacific Bailey again. There was an improvement in conformation with each cross.I’ve got a AAAT producing daughter of Pacific Bailey that I bred to Pacific Bailey last year for the first time. She got a real good filly and I put her on the list to breed back to him.

If the poor boy has him, a horse is inbred. If a rich man has him, he’s line-bred. I guess my horses a re inbred. I am going to try a little more of it. I don’t tell people to do that. But I think it is fine with the right horses.

Q: How do you out cross?
A: I crossed my old Gold King Bailey mares on Star Bright Moore. Then I got Carrara Marble, a Thoroughbred horse, and crossed him. The Bar Money cross on Gold King Bailey mares is a good one. I cross those daughters back on Pacific Bailey.

One good example is Bobby Bar Bailey, a AAAT stakes winner by Bar Money out of Kit Gold King, by Gold King Bailey. She was a multiple AAAT stakes producer when crossed on Pacific Bailey and her colts nearly always topped our sale.

Q: What about your Thoroughbred stallions?
A: I’ve always been for the right infusion of Thoroughbred blood. Ilike a Thoroughbred that looks like a Quarter Horse.

Carrara Marble was my first Thoroughbred stallion and he was a good-looking horse. My new stallion. Native Arrow, looks like a Quarter Horse and I think he will prove himself as a sire for Quarter Horses.I’ll always select a stallion for a cross a year or two before I’m ready for him. I start by figuring out what bloodline I want, and then I try to find the best stallion. Native Arrow is a couple of years ahead of me now. I wanted to get Bar Money, Jet Stop and Pacific Bailey rolled in to one, and then cross that back to a Thoroughbred horse that looked like Native Arrow. He came along a little ahead of time, just by chance, and I liked him well enough. It was kind of like when I found Gold King Bailey as a yearling.

Native Arrow is a son of Exclusive Native who was the leading sire of Thoroughbreds for two years. If he doesn’t prove to be a good sire he’ll be the first one that I’ve missed.It’s my customers that have made me the leading breeder.

Q: How many broodmares do you have at this time?
A: I’m almost ashamed to say that I have close to four hundred mares and fillies that I’ll breed this year. lean name them all and tell you their breeding.A few years ago, an inspector for AQHA was going around checking the mares of big breeders. He came here and I told him to alphabetize their papers, and we went to the different pastures and rolled cake out on the grass for the mares to eat. We went behind them in the pick-up and I named them off.

In an hour and a half, we’d looked at 150 to 200 mares. This fellow said, “I don’t believe it. I’ve been all over the country checking mares for years and you’re the first one who could identify them like that.” He figured it would take all week to look at them, and we did it in an hour and a half.

Q: Do you sell the majority of your horses as weanlings?
A: I offer all the weanlings every fall in my Annual Production Sale. My first sale was in 1967. Prior to that I sold by private treaty. But my numbers increased and I saw the need for this type of sale. I would make more money if I kept the babies and sold them as yearlings, but I sell them as weanlings because I just don’t have the space to keep them.

Q: The sale is held here on your ranch?
A: It is held here inside the barn. There is a 60’x60′ clear span in the center that we use as the sales arena. Right now we have portable stalls set up in that area.The barn was completed in 1973. It is 252 feet wide and 320 feet long and contains 148 16’xl6′ concrete stalls with 16′ alleyways. We also have an office and a breeding area. Thirty portable stalls can be set up in the arena area.

Q: Do you put all the weanlings in the sale?
A: I put them all in and try to sell them all. This is my only income, so my intention is to sell everyone of them. Once in a while I might keep a filly as a replacement for an old mare. But I can’t keep them and run them all.

Q: Who are the buyers at your sales?
A: Most of my customers are poor folks like myself. They are looking for a bargain — they want to buy one as good as the best for a lot less.

My old customers are some of my best customers. Some have been coming every year since the first sale and they always go home with more horses.It’s my customers that have made me the leading breeder. They take the horses and train them and run them and prove them.

Like when Jumbo Pacific was a weanling colt in the sale. I bought him back for $900. I had him gelded and was going to make a race horse out of him. But I sold him the next spring to Joe Thomas, the fellow I had gotten his mother from. Joe paid $2,500 for Jumbo Pacific, That $2,500 turned into a pretty good investment. And that’s why my customers keep coming back.

Q: You have been very successful in the horse business and very obviously enjoy what you are doing. You also seem to have a lot of respect and affection for your horses. Is that true?
A: I like horses. And I think that a lot of horses are smarter than the people that handle them. They need tender, loving care. If they misbehave, well then correct them, but use common sense. Most bad habits in horses are man-made.

Bar Money is an example. He had a bad reputation when I got him as a three-year-old. He bit me one time. I got my whip and spanked him and told him not to do that anymore, and then I hugged him.The horse sold in 1966 after my partner died. I wanted to buy him, but my last bid was $130,000 and that didn’t get him. He later sold for $165,000, a record at that time.

Five years later, I had the opportunity to buy him again, so I went to see him. They had him all locked up to where you couldn’t even see in the stall. But I walked in and said, “Hello, Money,” and he came up to me and put his head in my arms. The fellow that was showing him sure looked relieved. He said, “Did you know that horse is a killer. He’ll eat you.”Bar Money has the kindest disposition. It’s just that he had been mishandled somewhere down the line. Tender, loving care and common sense is all that it takes.

Q: Have you realized the goals and objectives you had when you started with your horse business?
A: When I got Gold King Bailey, I wanted him to be a show horse, a sire and a maternal sire, and he was all of those.Then I decided I wanted to be the leading breeder of winners in the American Quarter Horse Association, and l have achieved that goal. as well as being the leading breeder of Register of Merit Qualifiers.

I have two more goals in my life. One of them is to breed an All-American Futurity winner. Naturally, I’d like to own him and win myself, but that’s not as important to me as breeding him.My other goal is to let my children take over the operation so that I can get out a little more and sell the horse world on my Super Sup horse feed.

I would rather invest in horses than anything else I know

Q: How did you get into the horse feed business?
A: A few years ago, I set out to make the best horse feed for my own personal use. My dad taught me many years ago how to feed livestock. Contrary to the opinion of most horsemen who say that there is no better feed for a horse than just plain oats, they need corn, oats, bran, vitamins and minerals. They’ll do much better on the right mixture than straight oats.

People started noticing how good my horses looked and how well they were doing. They wanted to know what I was feeding them and would I sell them some. It got around by word of mouth and one thing led to another. My formula was based on observation and trial and error.I attribute some of my success as a breeder to my feed, because it develops so under horses. It helps by closing open knees and eliminating epiphysitis and ankle joint problems. It works on all horses.

Carrara Marble was on the list to die when he was 25. I started feeding him my Super Sup formula and he came back fat and slick. We put him to sleep at 32 years of age, not because of old age, but because of a freak accident. We were going to breed ct mare to him and he slipped and hurt his back. He died like a champion.

Q: Stallion progeny races have made a big impact on the industry in recent years. Weren’t you our of the first to organize a race like that? Wasn’t it one of your goals?
A: I started a Gold King Bailey Futurity at Terre Haute, Indiana in about “1950. I added to it as the number of stallions at my ranch increased.

I really don’t know if that was the first race like that. I just thought that it would be an incentive to get guys to buy the colts and train them and run them. It was a kind of bonus for them. We didn’t have many futurities and things back them. I know one fellow that had some little gripe about the way I was doing it, and he wanted the Association to make me stop, but they told him to leave it alone.

Q: What advice would you give to someone starting out in the Quarter Horse industry today?
A: Buy the best that you can buy. With the competition today, the best is not too good. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that cost makes the horse. When I first started selling my colts in Indiana years ago, people judged the horse by what it cost. “My horse is better than yours because it cost more money.” That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

When people come to me to buy mares, I try to help them pick out the best lean for the price they want to pay, just like I’d buy for myself. Always try to buy the best you can for what you have to spend on your horses.

Q: How do you feel about the future of the horse industry?
A: I am optimistic about the future of the horse industry, I got a letter from someone awhile back who wanted to know what would be the best investment — gold, silver or oil. I scratched all of those out and wrote in “horses.” I’d rather invest in horses than anything else I know.

We have our ups and downs, like anything else. The economy hits us, but by the same token, it hits the farmer and the businessman. 

I think I’ll just stay in there and try to raise the right kind of horses. I’d still rather have one good mare than ten old cows.