Breeding quarter horses their love
For Barry Thomas, the love of horses began with Molly, a white pony that the late A.Q. Greer gave to the late Charles Thomas for his children to ride back in 1972.
Molly was kept behind the Holly Springs Funeral Home and Charles and Juanita Thomas let their children play with Molly behind their house.
Barry was age six when his grandfather, the late Seth Thomas, would come to the funeral home after work at Firestone in Memphis, Tenn., "and lead me on that pony," he said.
"I fell in love with it," Thomas said. "Papaw would catch Molly and lead all of us (Kevin, Chuck, and Jana) on it. When the pony pointed its ears back, I'd get scared and jump off."
Mr. Charles didn't ride either, but he loved horses and wanted his children to ride.
In the 1970s, an arena beside what is now Mulay Plastics became the spot for members of the Holly Springs Saddle Club Association to ride.
"We rode there," Thomas said. "Rocky Rodes and "Half Pint"; Roger Bolden and "Mack"; Louis Green, Vicky Gray and family; the Dude Hayes family; Sidney McAlexander; Gary and Heath Barnett, who rode "Spook"; Ken Jones and "Buck"; Marsha Tomlinson; the Razz Carpenter family; and the Briscoe family from Red Banks. John David and Shane Strickland and a host of others rode with them.
"Daddy started us to going to horse shows in 1976 with the Bicentennial Show at that arena," Thomas said. "It was a little family fun. I met my wife, Karen. She was a Bolden and her family rode horses."
Barry Thomas built his arena off Highway 7 South in 1999.
The area has been coined "the barn that Jill built, in honor of son B.J.'s successful barrel racehorse, "Jill."
Thomas passed his passion for horses and horsemanship down to his children, B.J., Kasie and Paige.
B.J. was a successful barrel racer at age eight. Some of his accomplishments include Reserve World Champion in the National Barrel Horse Association and several Dixie National Championships. He was an American Quarter Horse Association Congress Sweepstakes Champion, the largest American Quarter Horse Association show in the world.
B.J. said some of his favorite horses which brought him successes in barrel racing include "Try Not to Make Me Cry For Me," a.k.a. Shamrock, and "Shez Got Boots," a.k.a. "Jill."
Kasie and Paige have always ridden but never wanted to compete. The two sisters are B.J.'s biggest cheerleaders.
"The horse industry comes and goes," Barry Thomas said. "It sort of would phase out. We never have ever been without a horse."
Thomas started breeding quarter horses in the 1980s. He allowed the arena to be used for shows including the American Quarter Horse Association shows.
In 2020, when the COVID19 pandemic shut down lots of businesses, son B.J., who was operating a laundry business, came to his dad disheartened over the laundry business decline. People were no longer gathering at churches for service and so they stopped bringing their suits in for dry cleaning.
"B.J. came to me and asked, `do you think we could make a living breeding horses?' " Thomas said.
"I told him, I don't know, but let's answer that question. Barrel racing is a huge sport and the key to winning is in the mares.
"We are now into just quarter horses -- breeding them for barrel racing. We fold out about 40 to 45 babies a year. We train right here in the round pen, ride them, and work them on the barrels."
In 2020, the Thomases began building a first-class breeding operation for quarter horses. Before, they were raising horses just for recreation.
The process Thomas uses for breeding is scientific and profitable.
A surrogate mare is bred by artificial insemination and the embryo is flushed from the surrogate mare at seven and a half days and transferred into a recipient mare where it implants.
Eleven months later a fold is dropped.
He said the ovum (egg) of the surrogate mare donor is what produces champions.
By using surrogate mares, multiple offspring from the donor mare can be produced each year. Every three to four years the surrogate mare is allowed to take a fold to term.
"That keeps her cycle working right," Thomas said.
Ultrasound is used to check for implantation at 14 days and in 30 days a heartbeat can be detected.
"To me, the barrel race is won in the breeding shed," Thomas said. "If your mother produces runners then you are going to get a runner. The mama is 80 percent. You breed a slow mama and you get a slow baby. But take a great stud and breed it to a great mama, and you get a champion."
Thomas said his operation uses four studs to breed about 45 mares a season. Using artificial insemination, either fresh or frozen sperm can be used.
Thomas said veterinarian Dr. Mike Thompson is one of the major keys to the success of his breeding program.
"He is the guru who goes around the country," Thomas said. "They fly him around the country and he gives seminars to other vets. He is just as meek and kind and unassuming as can be."
Thompson does all the embryo transfers.
Manuel Silva feeds and cleans the stalls. Son B.J. helps in the lab and trains the yearlings and Lee Mansfield rounds out the team.
The job is 24/7, just like a dairy business, Thomas said.
"Everything folds here at the arena where we keep them 45 to 60 days under one roof prior to folding. Keeping the mares inside makes it possible to control the mare's diet and eliminates problems such as fescue that can affect the baby's health in utero and affect the mare's milk production" he said.
The folds are weaned at four months.
"We want them to fold in January and be through by June 1," Thomas said. "We are working to have a product worthy to sell and so we have special females to breed that are second to none. We are holding on to some of the fillies to go into the brood mare band."
Now, to report on some successes of the breeding program, Thomas said Julie Plourde, from Canada, was the 2023 International Rodeo world champion in barrel racing, riding a colt out of one of his mares, "Gotta Go Tafame".
This mares' second colt was "The Barrel Futurities of America's", number two horse of the year based on most money earned and ridden by a 12-year-old girl.
Additionally, Brett Monroe, of Georgia, has been riding "HB Firewater Vanila," bred off Thomas' stallion "Vanilla Gold."
Summing his projects up, the winners and the losers, Thomas said, "I am good at trying things out that don't work. I can't tell you the things that do work. I've tried a lot of things and had failures and successes. A champion is won when you pair a great stud with a great mare."
And behind every successful man is said to be a successful woman. Barry's wife Karen is that person.
"She's and integral part of the operation," he said. "She keeps up with the registrations and paperwork and pays the bills. She works very well with the American Quarter Horse Association. She's a team player, always on board for whatever we do."