The best of the Skipper W sons… Skippers King

Years ago we had a breeding program starting, we bought some foundation mares, and bred to some powerful studs in our state. We joined the American Quarter Horse Association, and started showing our horses. We did an outstanding job showing in the late sixties and early seventies. In 1974 we raised a really nice stud colt. Out of 27 times shown, he was in the top three spots 26 times, winning 18 times. We ended up State Champion colt. One Monday morning after coming home from the Quarter Horse Congress, we found this great colt dead in his stall. We were broken hearted.

This is where the Wiescamp story starts. We had been reading about and looking at the Wiescamp horses. I wrote Mr. Hank Wiescamp a letter, telling him of the loss of our good colt and sent him pictures. I told him how much his horses impressed us, and did he have a stallion I could start a breeding program with. In about a week we heard from him, and he invited us to his ranch to look at his colts and all his horses.

We made the trip in early spring. And met the most interesting person who became our friend and business associate. He showed us mares and stallions that knocked our socks off. He changed our whole theory on breeding. We saw stallions that had the personalities of gentle giants. I saw stallions and mares that made me gasp. We spent three maybe four days with him. We saw some of the great stallions, Skip Depth, Skips Reward, Skip Barette, Skip Scoot, Skip N Go, Skippers King.

Hank said he named Skippers King just that because he was the king of the Skippers. This horse brought tears to my eyes. He was so massive, yet refined, had a small foot but round, had large beautiful eyes set on the side of his head, small little ears, his neck did not need to be sweated, he had this beautiful arch where his head joined his neck. His shoulders, back and hips were proportioned perfectly, and he was 21 years old.

My daughter, who was not afraid of a horse, walked right up to him, and as I started to protest, Hank said, he won’t hurt her. I saw this big beautiful animal act like a gentle gelding and nuzzled her like he loved the world. And we knew right there that we were going to concentrate on the Skippers King family, because of the total picture this horse represented.

Our palomino stallion, Tender’s Coin, proven broodmare sire, winner of over 850 PHBA points, top ten in the nation, and his son Skips Tender Classic, are very highly concentrated Skippers King bloodlines. We feel that Skippers King was one of the greatest sires Hank ever raised.

Rita Faulk