Playboys Ruby and Phil Rapp

It’s the start of breeding season, and Quarter Horse News pauses to give credence to the most influential dams of the cutting, reining and reined cow horse industries. This is the third year Quarter Horse News has published a leading dams section, and it’s true that these statistics are slow to change. This is because mares have one to a few offspring per year, versus the hundreds that individual sires are able to turn out in a given year.

The cutting broodmare standings, especially, are very slow to change because there are some older and deceased mares that have produced offspring that have accumulated tremendous offspring earnings. There is no change among the top 10 in the cutting dams, although it certainly must be noted that Royal Blue Boon continues to hold an amazing lead even though her last foal was born in 1996, and not a single one of her offspring earned money during the last three seasons.

There has been some shuffling in the reining and reined cow horse lists, however. For the reiners, Natrasha, the Trashadeous mare who is the dam of 2009 NRHA Futurity Champion Gunnatrashya, moved into the top 10. For the reined cow horses, the members of the top 10 grouping remained the same, but thanks to her two-time World’s Greatest Horseman winning son, Topsails Rien Maker, Jameen Gay moved from eighth in the standings to fifth.

Earnings for this statistical section were provided by Equi-Stat and do not include money won at closed incentive events, shows where foals by privately subscribed stallions are the only horses eligible to compete. Closed incentive programs are not open to all stallion owners. Cutting is the only discipline affected by closed incentive earnings and include money from the MillionHeir along with the Gold & Silver Stakes, an event held only once but with a powerful million-dollar first prize. There are closed incentive programs in reining, but money from those (such as the Dun Gotta Gun incentive) has yet to be earned. If those earnings were counted in cutting, Poco Lady Liz has $1,233,626 in offspring money thanks in great part to the million dollars earned by her son Poco Quixote Rio and Bill Riddle at the 1987 Gold & Silver Stakes. Those earnings would have placed Poco Lady Liz among the top cutting broodmares.

Now, it’s time for a look at the best dams in the performance horse industry. There are short biographies and photos of the top five mares in each discipline, listed in the order of cutting, reining and reined cow horse.