Olaf Growald
There’s a windowless room at Valley Equine, a horse breeding facility near Stephenville, that’s home to a plethora of pricey microscopic organisms that will soon be mailed around the globe. While they might not look like much now, these organisms have the potential to become champion cutting, reining, and barrel-racing horses.
While on this October afternoon, Valley Equine houses well over 100 horses, these clean and roomy stables aren’t their permanent homes. Most horses at this facility are here for one purpose: breeding.
Olaf Growald
To remind everyone how this works, and if you’ll pardon the explicit language, this means collecting eggs from mares, semen from stallions, creating embryos from the two, and placing this embryo into the uterus of a surrogate mare. This process is a sort of equine form of IVF, and it’s how most competitive performance horses came to be. For Valley Equine’s part, from conception to birth and on to their sale as yearlings, the facility is well equipped to handle, complete, or deliver every stage.
And by deliver, we also mean they literally ship stages of the process — globally. Whether it’s embryos, semen, eggs, or yearlings, their horses’ genetic jackpots are in high demand.
“Overseas, it’s mostly all over Europe and Australia,” Valley Equine general manager Lisa Szwejbka says. “Their reining season offsets ours. Our season will go from Feb. 1 to July 15, and theirs will begin Sept. 1.”
As it’s currently not breeding season in Texas, a time Szwejbka calls sales season, the 100-plus horses on the property during our October visit happen to be here for other reasons — some were even pregnant. During breeding season, Valley Equine will have 300-plus horses. While these horses are no longer training for cutting or reining, they’re far from retirees; they haven’t been put out to pasture. They still have one more job to do.
One horse that’s had a permanent stable during this time is Metallic Cat, the 2008 Futurity champion who has sired horses that account for $63 million in winnings, the second most ever — right behind his father, High Brow Cat. He might also be the most famous horse in cutting, thanks to a brief yet important cameo in “Yellowstone.” The Futurity World Championship will carry his name — officially the NCHA Metallic Cat World Championship Futurity.
Carrying what seems like a fail-safe genetic makeup, an embryo slapped with the name Metallic Cat fetches a pretty penny. In late December 2024, an embryo by Metallic Cat and DT Sugar Chex Whiz broke records when it sold for $64,000.
Olaf Growald
Concerning the creation of such embryos, Szwejbka poses a very pragmatic question, “If you know something’s going to potentially win you money and do well and be successful, why would you not create it?”
While the family trees of all breeding horses are researched and gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb, Szwejbka says Valley Equine will also send out for tests to ensure horses don’t have any potential genetic disorders.
“It’s one thing that quarter horses and Arabians tend to have problems with,” Szwejbka says. “We send it off to UC Davis, AQHA (American Quarter Horse Association) and request an equine disease panel. And they’ll send it back and tell us whether they’re carriers or not. And, from there, a client can make their decisions.”
The American Quarter Horse Is THE Cutting Horse
Olaf Growald
As we enter the stables that Szwejbka says only house cutting horses, she says that it’s the funniest side of this world.
Universally, cutting horses are quarter horses; they’re the ones with the cow sense. “Not only are [quarter horses] strong, but they’re also smart,” Szwejbka explains. “They can do multiple different things at any given opportunity. Some of the best ones outsmart a lot of people, too.”
Regarding physical attributes, Szwejbka says, “They’re also not 17 hands. You’re not having to get ladders to get on top of them. And I just like an easy keep. I want something that’s going to be intelligent, but also intelligent enough to make sure that I stay on the back.”
Quarter horses were bred for the distinct purpose of handling cattle, requiring trainability and short bursts of speed and agility — sounds like cutting.
Some of the most fun they have at the Valley Equine facility is watching all of the performance horse events and seeing the horses they knew as yearlings, or maybe even embryos, competing, winning, and, well, making them proud.
“If [competitors] have any of our mares’ or any of our stallions’ names, we’re like, ‘That’s our baby!’ And it is quite a giant chunk of them that we recognize.”
Olaf Growald
Top Earning Sires of All-Time
- High Brow Cat – $91+ million
- Metallic Cat – $63+ million
- Dual Rey – $49+ million
- Smart Little Lena – $35+ million
- Smooth As a Cat – $34+ million
