Ranch Horse Production Sale
Looking ahead, in 2017 we will hold the first annual 3 year old futurity. This show will be open to all, but Neason Ranches and 7L Ranch have sweetened the pot for folks that purchase their colts by paying a nomination fee into the The Heritage Days Production Sale Incentive Fund. This year's sale colts will be displayed at the HDC and will be sold through a silent auction over the length of the event.
Neason Ranch Performance Horses
The Neason family has a long standing heritage with horses that began in the mid 1800’s when John G. Neason moved to Texas and settled in modern day Grimes County. His son, John Edward Neason, started a dirt moving company in which he built roads and laid foundation works for buildings in Houston using men and lots of heavy harness horses and mules. It is said that there was nothing John Edward liked more than watching his stock and his men eat, often throwing a “little extra” grain to the horses and mules, and encouraging his men to “get a little more”.
William Eli Neason (Bill) was born in 1924, the youngest of John Edward’s six children. He carried forward the horsemanship, along with the Neason name in Grimes County. Like most rural families in the early Twentieth Century, Bill had a set of dairy cows that he milked twice a day, as well as beef cattle, and did a variety of jobs to provide for his family, from raising hay to raising horses. He rode a lot of his mares in a common sense approach to know what he was raising. This was at a time when the American Quarter Horse Association was still in its infancy, and much the same approach used by the fledgling association, as they inspected and qualified horses based on ability and type, before the bloodlines were locked into a studbook. Bill also started horses for the public and often used his two sons to help him. His sons also started horses for the public while in high school. Bill’s oldest son, William Eli Neason, Jr. (Bill), after graduating from college, married and moved to the Rolling Plains of northwest Texas. He took a job as a cowboy on a 15 section ranch, looking after yearlings, at Gilliland, Texas in Knox County. While there, the young married couple had a son and named him William David Neason in 1973. A few short years later, Bill Jr. moved his young family a few miles north to Foard County at Crowell, Texas. David says, “Crowell is the town that shaped who I am. While many people and places have left their mark on me, growing up in the shadow of the great ranches in that area, like the WT Waggoner, the Pitchfork, the Four Sixes, and the Triangle, helped me know I wanted to continue the heritage of a cowboy and a horseman.” Today, Gilliland is a ghost town. Bill Neason, Jr. lives outside of Waco, Texas where he raises American Quarter Horses, and David Neason lives back closer to Grimes County, just outside of Bryan, Texas with his wife, Katie, where they are raising the fifth generation of horsemen in the Neason family. Neason Ranch Performance Horses was started by the fourth generation of horsemen and working cowboys that have long been designing and breeding their own horses. To this day, some of the horses trace back to the original lines and are still in use in the day to day work. Utilizing the original genetics, our breeding program is also incorporating the bloodlines of selected and proven mares from the WT Waggoner Estate, the Muleshoe Ranch, the Pitchfork, and the Circle Bar programs. David says,” All of the mares in our breeding program were ridden until they were mature, finished horses. You can put your confidence in the versatility and performance of their offspring. They will excel in the arena and they will hold up to daily use on the ranch.” |
7L Ranch
The 7L division of the Historic Boyt Ranch has long been the cattle and horse headquarters of the ranch! It was started in 1904 by E.W. Boyt, who came to Texas at the age of 15 on a cattle drive from Mississippi. He was involved in many horse dealings in order to save enough money to start buying what became the historic Boyt ranch, such as locating horses for Roosevelt's rough riders and breaking and trading teams of mules for local businesses and operators. His son, Cecil was one of 4 children and the cowboy of the bunch. At one time the 7L Ranch had over 200 brood mares, consisting of heavy king ranch / old sorrel breeding, because of the durable and cowy characteristics that they brought to the program. Today, the 7L Ranch is still a very traditionally run operation across various regions in Texas and still possesses the old foundation King Ranch genetics in its brood mare band, as well as some modern out crosses, for the same reasons as before. The horses that are used day to day are wired to work, play, or compete. You'll be pleased with the versatile ability, mental soundness, sheer toughness, cowy instincts in each of the colts available to you.
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