TOA Blog Hop: Horse History – Stampede

Gator Stampede was born April 28th, 2001 at Woodland View Farm in Western Ohio. The farm is owned by a vet and his wife who seem to have a small breeding operation and used to have Stampede’s Sire, Alota Gator Bait. Based on my search, Alota Gator Bait now stands at stud at a local farm in my city, which is a bit weird considering that barn otherwise only has Arabian stallions…

Alota Gator Bait is all Thoroughbred, and it appears he was race bred originally. It’s interesting that he has been branded with the farm initials just like Stampede.

As far as I can tell, Alota Gator Bait doesn’t have many accomplishments besides making babies. I’ve noticed that it is popular to use him as a cross in the Quarter Horse world, and from what I’ve seen those are his more impressive offspring. I did see one post that said a lot of his offspring show at Traverse City (A show series in Northern Michigan), but I’ve only seen one that came to my barn for a B show and he did not excel (as in refused out of most classes). Funny story because he is Stampede’s full brother (same sire and dam). Hopefully the horse got better later in life!

Stampede’s Dam, Virginia Cousin was also a Thoroughbred. She definitely raced, then was retrained and showed on my local circuit for many years before retiring to breeding. I think Stampede takes after her more than his sire.

So Stampede was definitely bred with every intention to turn him into a hunter/jumper and not to race, which I think it pretty rare for his breed and really neat. Plus he was an adorable long-legged baby!

Stampede was purchased by a local barn owner as an investment. He was purchased as a two-year old from the breeder. The barn itself was mostly western, but there was an english trainer with a small contingent. I actually leased a horse at this barn after my freshman year of college, and I remember Stampede being there. He was hard to miss since he was already over 17 hands and just a baby.

The Inlinkz code is closed, but I still had fun!