Equus – August 2019

EQUUS 498 91

ever to beat the great Clabber in a
match race---but a wonderful ranch
horse and sire of ranch horses. In
1943, after a spectacular career as
a rodeo roper, he was purchased
by Channing and Catherine “Katy”
Peake, who owned Rancho Jabali in
Lompoc, California. Upon their herd
of Waggoner-bred mares, Driftwood---
nicknamed “Speedy”---produced
hundreds of great rope horses.
Jimmy Williams, the brilliant
California trainer who worked with
many of the Peakes’ horses, described
Driftwood’s foals as “the best. You
ask ’em to do anything, and they’ll do
it. They want to learn, and they have
the ability to do something when you
have fi nished [training] them. I think
Speedy is as good a sire as there is
any place.”
From this high point, the JA’s
horse breeding program has
maintained momentum to the present
by incorporating a broad array of
bloodlines that have historically
produced the most useful and
versatile ranch horses. Its current
broodmare band is primarily founded
on a stallion named Claude, foaled
in 1949 and purchased by the ranch
in the 1950s. A Midnight descendent
through Chubby, Claude carries
multiple crosses to Peter McCue
via Joe Reed and A.D. Reed, with
tail-female tracing to Tom Campbell
(a part-Morgan) and Pony Pete, a
great-grandson of Steel Dust. Claude
was succeeded by another excellent
stallion, Favorite Hand (1957). A King
Ranch product sired by Hired Hand,
Favorite Hand is intensely inbred to
The Old Sorrel, an all-around ranch
horse known for tractable disposition.
The JA also used Two-Eyed Jack
(1961 by Two-D-Two, another sireline
descendant of The Old Sorrel and of

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