Ep 31: Creating a Good Citizen: A Boutique Reseller Shares Her Approach with OTTBs

Ep 31: Creating a Good Citizen: A Boutique Reseller Shares Her Approach with OTTBs

 [00:00:00] You ready to see how the sausage is made, June? Okay. Yup. Bring on the sausage. Oh boy. Hi, and welcome back to OTTB On Tap.

I'm Nev. And I'm Emily. Nev, what's on tap this week? Today we're talking to June Hillman, barn manager of iconic Castle Rock Farm in Pennsylvania. A thoroughbred breeding facility with a small boarding operation that we happen to call home. Castle Rock Farm has a long history within the thoroughbred industry from standing some notable and sought after stallions to raising youngsters and acting as a partner farm to the aftercare non profit Turning for Home.

June, thank you so much for joining us. Can you introduce our listeners to your background with horses and riding? And your involvement with Thoroughbreds in particular. Yeah, first of all, I'm really happy to be here today. I grew up, I'm gonna say pretty diversely. , I didn't do much with Thoroughbreds as a kid.

I was in a farm where they had a lot of therapeutic riding. And then I bought an off track thoroughbred, was my second horse, and I rode him in a hunter jumper barn. We did jumpers at a fairly low level, but I was his only rider and I trained him. And then shortly after I got married, we moved to Hillsover Farm, which was run by Richard McDevitt.

He was the president of the Devon Horse Show, and he Had a small breeding operation and I raised, it was more like a nursery. I probably had six to eight mares and every year they actually came to Castle Rock to have their babies. And then they would come back to me afterwards and I would raise the babies until they were two or three.

And I broke a couple there. It was really small, really quiet. And when that went away, I moved to Castle Rock in 1995. Wow. We brought with us at the time, well, I lost track of them, but then I bought my first two broodmares that I had raised at the other farm. Okay. So did you learn kind of on the job then with jumping right into a breeding farm or?

A hundred percent. Yes. I didn't know much about breeding. When I came here, we had one very live stallion who is the sire of the stallion that we still have now, Power by Far. , his sire Power of Mind was a Mr. Prospector and he was, very popular stallion at the time and just learned everything from the ground up from, , following mares with the teaser and doing the actual breeding, doing all the vet work, doing all the book work, everything like that.

Oh, wow. Okay. And is your family also involved with horses? No, more my husband's family that was horsey, my family not really at all. Okay, but your husband is involved in racehorses? He has racehorses now. He grew up with siblings that owned various types of horses, either eventing horses or just pleasure horses, driving horses.

He's probably lucky that since he grew up in a little bit of a horsey family that he still even puts up with horses. Well, it sounds like we need to get him out on a trail ride soon. Maybe with a couple beers or something. Sounds good. There you go. So June, can you tell us what it's like running a large thoroughbred breeding farm?

I would say it's a lot of things. It's very busy. And it's very rewarding. And probably the biggest lesson that I learned is that you're going to take a lot of hits and you better be able to just turn around and keep right on going because you're dealing with the very young, you're dealing with horses, a lot of times the very old, because you have older brood mares and the amount of.

Bad things that happen are equal to the amount of good things that happen. Yeah, that's fair. I think when we have like 65, 70 horses on the property right now about that. Yes. And we were standing for live stallions. So we were breeding, I'm going to say up to a hundred mares a year, because each stallion had 25 to 30 mares.

And we were foaling out. Forty five mayors. There was a mayor in every single stall in the entire property. Yeah. It was different back then than it is now. So, yeah, because right now you have ten? This year? Something around that? Overall we ended up, we had fifteen.

Okay. Gotcha. I cannot imagine having 40 plus foals running around and just the, the images in my mind must've been chaos, but also like really cute at certain times of the year. Yeah. Fun. A lot of fun. And you know, babies, they're great, right? I guess they're great or they're really not.

But maybe you have a different perspective on that. I feel like her perspective is the same. No, but breeding, breeding is fun. And you guys don't see us get to do as much actual breeding as we used to because our stallions are older now and they're mostly pensioned, but the whole breeding process is awesome.

And I guess not too many people actually get to know an OTTB as a breeding stallion. , right. Yeah, you know, Nev and I [00:06:00] often talk about how cool it is that you really get to be involved in all the aspects of the process from, the actual breeding to when they're first born, teaching them to, go out to the field with their moms, weaning, , breaking them or sending them off to the track, and then you also get them back on the flip side quite often.

Mm hmm. And it's just so unique and special that you're able to do that. Yeah, to follow an animal for its entire life, not everybody gets to do that, and I feel like it is super special. Yeah, so let's take a step back and talk about some of the notable stallions that you have stood at Castle Rock. I know you sent me a little bit of a list the other day, and first up was one named Patton.

Can you tell us about him? So yeah, Patton was by Lord at War. He was a graded stakes winner grade one stakes. He won the Breeders Cup sprint at Gulfstream and he had 18 starts and , six wins, three seconds and three thirds. When we got him, he was an older stallion.

 Normally in Pennsylvania, you get a horse after they've been in another bigger state. You know what I mean? They go to a big state when they first start, if they're going to be a good horse and either in Kentucky or maybe in California, and then they end up going to smaller states as time goes on.

While we had him, I thought that he might get popular again because in 2007, he had a baby that won a 2 million race in Dubai. And so that was pretty exciting. And I was like, wow, things are going to go crazy here they didn't. And I guess it's just because once a horse is past being popular and being fashionable, they don't really come back that well, but he ended up at old friends.

He was important enough to end up there. And he was not unlike the rest of our stallions, a real sweetheart. So yeah, , he was a good one. Yes. One thing that is so cool about Castle Rock Farm is that the, Stallions that are still there are literally alongside, they're in another barn, but kind of alongside the driveway where their turnout paddocks are, and you pull in and oftentimes they'll come up and mug you for treats or whatnot, which is probably a bit of a different life than a lot of stallions get to live, but they're super friendly and super sociable.

It's really cool. Making stallions in that type of an environment where they are able to go in and out of their stalls as they please. They're not real pent up. Yeah, though, when Emily had a horse van and parked it next to the stallion barn, the horse van would come up and one of the stallions in particular would get very excited, like you just brought him a truck full of mares.

Well, you can always be hopeful, right? Yes. All right, and so you had a couple of other really interesting stallions in the past. This one was named Awad? Awad. Yeah, I I don't know much about him other than he won, in his career, about three million dollars. Wow. So he was, and that was back in the day.

And he also, I believe, ended up at Old Friends. He was, by caveat, and his, the mayor's name was Dancer's Candy. He raced for seven seasons. Wow. That, that says a lot. Yeah. , it's interesting, I have his pedigree pulled up and he has no inbreeding whatsoever, well at least through the fifth cross, which well, I guess maybe in stallions it's different, but and older stallions too, but nowadays a lot of the horses that you look at coming off the track have a lot more inbreeding.

Just a little. Yeah, there's just a few very prominent lines that you see over and over again, right? Yeah, and I just wanted to mention Harry the Hat, because I know that when I first got into off the track thoroughbreds that Emily spoke really highly about Harry, the hat progeny.

And so when we moved to castle rock, it was the most amazing thing to get to see Harry in real life. And if anyone's ever met him in real life, you know what an incredibly special stallion. He was. And can you just speak a little bit about him June? Cause I know you loved him dearly. Yeah, I'm maybe going to cry a little bit right now. I haven't really thought about Harry that, like, I mean, I think about him, but you just made me feel a little misty about him because Harry was basically a Chester County icon, right? Yeah. And. To begin with, he was royalty in thoroughbreds. He was by Seattle slew and he was out of an affirmed mare.

And then the fun thing was that we had an Aladar stallion in the barn at the same time. So there was that like little rivalry there from that. But Harry, , he did produce stakes performing horses. And he retired. In 1995 to us

 Harry was known in the community also for his sport horses. Yeah, that was the big one. And he's actually the only horse that we had that we would sometimes collect and ship semen and everything like that. And he's the ultimate gentleman too. You could literally walk into the breeding shed, put an AV on him.

and walk out of the breeding shed and you didn't need, you couldn't do it on the ground. You didn't even need a mare to collect off of, for him to jump. He also, little kids would come to visit him. Anybody could go in with Harry and do anything they wanted. You guys know that, but he was like that even as a young horse.[00:12:00]

And so where did the tongue thing come from? That was always him. go, he'd come over to the fence and he'd stick his tongue out and he'd want you to play with it. Yeah. It was so funny. I actually just got a picture about a half an hour ago of a Harry the Hat youngster who's now going training level in Benning that we sold to Jane Sleeper and Ashley Norris.

His name's You Ain't Lyin And he went to the RIP with them. It was probably one of the earliest horses that I ever sold. Oh, wow. That's really cool. Yeah. And she just sent me a picture of him, about an hour ago. And he looks fabulous. Oh, neat. And then another got a lot of stallions, but really two more really special ones.

Partners hero, I think a lot of. Thoroughbred, sport horse, aficionados know the name Partner's Hero and, and I believe that they're fairly sought after as sport horses as well as Harry's progeny. But he was another really special one. I think maybe the Partner's Hero is even more than Harry's because, maybe because he had more babies around than Harry did. My horse is a Partner's Hero, we know we all say that. Seeking after him, right?

He's famous.

What's something that makes them stand out? Are there any, is there anything, like, characteristics that you could pick out that he passed along to his youngsters? I think they're very big, elegant horses. He was the type of horse, he looked like he would have wanted to run on the grass. And you know how they're like big, rangy horses that cover a lot of ground.

And he probably stood well over 17 hands. And he was just very large and in charge of himself. Yeah, I think a lot of are that way too. , I met him once or twice before he passed away and yeah, he had a lot of presence just even in his stall. He was a big horse that just kind of kind of knew he was pretty special.

Yeah. He was at North view for many years before he came to us. And at North view, he didn't have the best reputation as far as being nice. But then once he got to Castle Rock, He became like the rest of the stallions. You could go in with him. He was friendly. He, you know, I really liked him a lot. Yeah.

Well, so to follow up on the stallion rundown, can you tell us kind of on average the amount of foals that you guys have had per year? I know that you said like back in the day it was, , 40 to 50 now kind of how many are you averaging per year?

I think now we keep it a more even keel. Last year we didn't have very many. We only had five last year and I'm not sure even why that happened, but this year 12 to 13 horse that we're going to keep and then the year before that we were around 15. So I think under 20 is a place that we're comfortable with.

 I think next year we have 12 in full. Yeah. We, we've changed a little bit to where we're not thinking quite as much about the breeding horses and doing a little bit more with the boarding. And, you know, times change. You can't afford to raise that many of them of your own either. Right.

And one of the things we really love about Castle Rock and watching you work with the foals is I think you guys have a bit of a unique way of handling them from birth. Can you just talk a little bit about your methodology and handling foals from day one? Well, we do handle them, which I don't know that all places do handle them, you know, in and out of the stall, halters on day one, leading them and just basically trying to make them good citizens because I feel like if they're not good citizens first, then it makes it harder on them throughout their lives.

Yeah, but the Day one, they get a halter on, they see the vet. The day two, they're out into a paddock for a little while and we don't ever lead the mare and let the baby follow. And we also don't do it with two people. When we lead the mares, we lead the mare on our left side and the foal on our right side, and we do that from the first day.

And I would say by day two or three, they're, they're pretty well under control. Relatively speaking.

You've let me help with that a couple of times. And it's a very humbling experience for somebody who I feel like I have a lot of horse experience and pretty good common sense around horses. And you told me exactly what to do. And, , when I started to fail, you stepped in and told me how to fix it and how to get going.

And it's really cool. Cause I think imprinting on them at such an early age makes a huge difference. And when we first moved there. There were probably 15 babies on the ground and , we were really excited about them, but you said, well, just go in the stalls and play with them anytime you want to.

And we both kind of looked at you like, what? One is the mayor going to attack us. And two, you know, we can just go play with the babies. And it's a really cool aspect of the way that you raise them because they're around dogs, kids, people coming and going. , to the point where maybe I take it a little too far and I go in there and just hang out with the babies all the time, but a lot of the resident mayors, they were raised by us.

I mean, we have mayors that are fifth, sixth generation out there. And I feel like after a while, you know, it's just born into them that they know what's going [00:18:00] on. Yeah. They know, they know us from the get go. You know, and their moms are very accepting of us coming in and say, that's nice that you had this baby, but it's ours for a minute.

And they don't geared about it or anything. And it's safe. Have you had issues with mares that won't let you come in? Does that happen at all? Or since you know them so well, you've been able to kind of avoid that. We had one, one mare that I can really note, whose name was Luba Valet. And she had a baby that we called Maybelline, and Louboutin Vallee was downright nasty.

Her baby was the nastiest thing , I can remember. I'm sure she had more than one baby, but I particularly remember Maybelline. And the mayor didn't like us, and the baby was right on board. It was. And she was a point of allay, so that makes sense, right? Right. And of course mares have different ways that they are, and I think some families definitely have a better way about them.

You know, some female families, I tend to think that female families are stronger and a better indicator of what kind of a horse you're going to get than the stallions. Yeah. And so if you, if you know your mares, I think that's something that's pretty important. Yeah, you hear that a lot, that the mare, I guess maybe because they imprint them and they're, they spend so much time with them, but they tend to pass on a lot more usually than the stallion does.

Yeah, the babies hang out with them, right? Yeah, they're not hanging out with dad.

Everything's going right.

And kind of one of the unique things about our farm at Castle Rock is that the lower barn is right on a fairly busy country road. Where there are cyclists and tractors and just sometimes little tiny Shetland ponies pulling little carts, all kinds of crazy stuff. So the babies, are exposed to a pretty big world at Castle Rock, don't you think?

I think so. Yeah. They get to see the traffic. They all have that big puddle that has made them all very good event horses. They're, they're water trained from the beginning. Yeah, exactly. No excuses. Lexi, if you're listening. They do hear a lot. They hear the train. Oh, yeah. Oh, right. The train's right there, too.

Yeah, I forgot about that. And so, when it's time to get them ready to go to the track, and you guys don't do as much braking on the farm, but you do sometimes start them doing some stuff on the farm. Can you explain a little bit about your process, in terms of teaching them to wear tack, and get some basic foundation of their next life?

Sure. We had a couple of years where we had a professional here that was running the boarding program when it first started. And at that point in time, we were doing the breaking of, of most of the babies that were born here. And we just did the basic things that anybody would do. Get them in the barn and And Emily's face.

 I'm just like mouthing over here. Oh yeah, it's so easy. You Just break them. It's fine. In fact, there's holes in the ceiling from, you know, saddles crashing through with But, yeah, I was always in charge of all the ground stuff because I love doing that kind of thing.

And also, I don't love climbing on their backs. And It's a good trade off. Just do, the normal things as they're single and then a saddle and then we would line drive. I love the line drive and I love to do work in the round pen and we would get on them in the stalls first and just turn them in circles, belly up on them, all the normal things that people do.

And then eventually we would just take them out around the Hayfields when she started riding them and we would pony them off of Lily. And Lily was doing like four sets of trotting at that point in time, if you can imagine trotting the hills. Lily is a large, is she a draft cross? A draft cross, yes.

We'll post a picture on the episode. She's lovely, I've paper chased her, but she's rather earthbound. It was a lot to think that she was going to canter and trot around those hills for a while. in a day sometimes, but she did, she was helpful. So yeah, so we would do that. And then now they go down to a Rents Training Center in South Carolina.

And they go down generally when they're two years old. And right now the schedule for the babies is that after they're weaned. Hopefully at that point, stay out until they're ready to go. So they might be a little feral when it comes time to get on the van. And that point is just get them over for a few days over to the barn.

And I have a little method where I close the barn up and I throw a big metal divider down on the floor. And I just let them traipse around in the barn over top of the metal divider. And That generally does the trick when the band comes, they're ready. They're not scared of that weird sound and they figured it out.

They don't have as much separation anxiety anymore. And then we just. Drop the ramp into the barn isle. Yeah. In the history of you being at Castle Rock, can you remember any of the babies that went on to do really big things in their careers? Well, right now, yeah, we've raised our share of stakes [00:24:00] winners, and right now we have Farmo Power, who has won several hundred thousand dollars, and He's won a couple steak races and he's by Uncle Lino, but he's out of a power by far mare.

And many of our mares are, are power by fars. And it seems that , that's like his best thing, I think is that he has brood mares that produce. Yeah. So I think he's a pretty decent brood mare stuff sire. J. D. Bari was She won a couple hundred thousand dollars back in the day. We had a bunch of mares that were by him that were very good.

And Power by Far, I know we didn't touch on him earlier, but he's another, stallion that stands at Castle Rock, or has stood there. Another character, he's the one that came running up when I drove the horse van up the driveway, but just a really, really lovely horse. And he was quite the racehorse too, because Power by Far, he has a In his first year, he had 11 starts with 7 wins, then 5 of them were spins, and 3 seconds and 11 thirds.

I didn't you tell me he was quite savage on the track? No. Maybe it was somebody else you were telling me about. In the breeding shed. , he was a lot in the breeding shed, but he was always a very confident young horse.

 You knew probably the first time you saw him as a little child, like when he was a foal and he was going out to the field and stuff like that, he just thought very highly of himself and he, you just knew he was going to be a good horse. We're gonna get to this year's full crop, but there is one in the barn right now that you actually said reminded you so much of Power by Far when he was younger.

So, changing gears a little bit, we touched on this earlier, but one of the very special things that you get to do occasionally is get a thoroughbred back that you helped to breed and raise and then went to race and then it comes back to you. Yeah. For retraining and rehoming.

Can you tell me a little bit about that process and how that is for you?

It's very satisfying we get them back in more than one way. Sometimes we get backhorses that we raised and other times we get them through turning for home.

 A lot of times you're going to, keep track of them, as they get claimed or they go different places. And well, you know, Nala that we just got back, I definitely kept an eye on her and she's getting ready to be a good horse for somebody.

But You know, when they're little, like I really like this one and I think that I'd like to know it again in the future. That's kind of, that's kind of how it works. And then when you get them back, do you, do you think about whether or not they one, remember Castle Rock because it is a pretty iconic property and two, if they remember you.

I think that they do. Yeah. I think that they do. I think that when they come back to the farm, they definitely are comfortable there. Maybe some of them are too comfortable there, you know, cause it was where they were raised. But, one of my broodmares that I raised at the other farm, when I got her back after I moved to Castle Rock and then bought her and brought her here, I knew Beyond a shadow of a doubt that she remembered me like right away.

It just, it was obvious that she did. It just, you could just tell by the way that they treat you. And you know, they immediately start to talk a little bit and stuff like that. And I raised her and I raised her mother and bought both of them and brought both of them here to be brood marriage for Castle Rock.

So that was kind of special. And then, yeah, I think it's nice and it's also a nice selling point when you're talking to people and you're like, Hey, I've known this horse basically since conception. Yeah. And well, it's true. And so I can tell you what it was like as a child, what, you know, what things have gone wrong with it along the way, how many owners it's gone through, all those kinds of things.

And I think that. You know, there's people that actually really value that when it comes time to buy them. You know what they really value though, June, more than anything? The baby pictures. Oh. I know. June likes to flash those around when you're like, oh, that's a nice horse. And she's like, wait till you see the baby picture.

And then suddenly you're like, how much money is in my bank account? And then how quickly can I send the money? You should just advertise them using their baby pictures. Well, Mama had such a sweet face that her baby pictures were amazing. She was a big horse, but she still had a baby face about her, which was really cute.

Yeah. And then, can you tell us a a little more about the PA Breeder Program, and then also your family's involvement with racehorses today. So the way that the Pennsylvania Breeder Program works is that you, if you have a baby that is born in Pennsylvania and your mare has to be here for a certain amount of residency, which I'm not entirely certain what the requirements are at this point in time, but the mare has to live in Pennsylvania for a certain amount of time and [00:30:00] then the baby be born in Pennsylvania.

And there's two different tiers. If it is Pennsylvania sired, then any time it hits the board, if it's first, second, or third, you get 40 percent of the purse of your winnings added on, on top of what you originally won. And then if it's not PA sired, if it's just PA bred, but it was sired by something in Maryland or in Kentucky or whatever, then it's 20%.

So it's still pretty lucrative, you know? And then there's also, certain races that are PA restricted that are just only for the Pennsylvania bred horses. So that's also a really good thing because then you don't have some, high flyer from somewhere else coming in and. stealing the race from you.

So that's, that's pretty important. And then you and your husband or your husband has a race horse or race horses now. How many of you guys have right now? We have one. Well, no, kind of a lie. So we have one that's a racehorse. We have one that's a baby racehorse. So,, I guess over time we've probably had Just for our family, we've probably had maybe eight that were, we got into owning racehorses later as we, had a little bit more money.

We weren't poor as church mice anymore. But the original reason we got into having a racehorse was because my second broodmare, it was her last baby and Joe was like, this is, I think Jungle Dahlia had died or maybe we just knew that she wasn't going to be able to produce anymore. And Joe was like, I think we want to be able to kind of have a little bit of a legacy here.

So we bought the baby and we put it into training and we raced him and , I'm going to say he was successful. He broke his maiden and he made a little bit of money. And honestly, if you get to the races. You're successful. That's kind of how I feel about it. And so we had him as a homebred.

We had one other that was a homebred and then a couple that we owned in partnership with with another breeding farm that's that's local to the area and They they were all successful in their own rights I think we had one one that that never broke her maiden and but she went to be a good event horse You And she was actually a nice OTTB.

She came back and she got sold and she was super fancy. And then the one that we have right now is of the same female family. She's a granddaughter of my older broodmare. And we're kind of, again, wanting to have a little bit of a connection to the old family. And so, and there's not too many of them left.

So we thought, why not? We'll just do it. Yeah. It's really special that you're able to follow them over such a long period of time. And like you were saying, when someone's looking for a horse to buy that's off the track, you can literally hand them a whole history. And that's so rare, versus someone that can look up race records.

You kind of, maybe you get to talk to the trainer or you do some digging. but you get it all firsthand from you, which is so cool. Yeah. And it's not lost on me that that's a really special thing. Yeah. It's very unique for sure. So every year at castle rock, you come up with a different theme for the foals names. I think the year that we moved in, it was fast things. So you had Ninja and Cheetah and some other Fest type names. And this year it's all quarterbacks. So can you tell us a little bit about this year's full crop and the ones that you're really excited about, including your own? Sure. Is there any in particular that you want to know about?

 The first one Mahomes, he's spiking crops and he's out of a giant's causeway there, and he's. He's kind of special. Very special. He looks like a chess piece. Yeah. He looks like a Dutch horse in a way, but he's growing out of that. You know that my favorite and, and don't tell my personal baby this, but my favorite is Eli who is uncle Lino and out of a power by farm there.

And , he's the one that is just. I don't know, from the day he was born, he was super, super special. And I had the opportunity to be half breeder of either him or his, what would have been three quarters brother, who is also a full brother , to our good horse, who's running right now, who's made several hundred thousand dollars.

And I chose Eli over the full sibling, just because. He just radiates being special. Yeah. I mean, the very first day that I met him, you were like, what do you think? And I was like, I think he just knows that he's special. Like there's no other way to [00:36:00] describe it except for that you walked in and he was like, Hi, you're here to see me.

And from day one, not only is he super cocky and full of himself, but he's so personable. And I if you follow our Instagram or Tik TOK or anything, you've seen. Countless videos and or photos of me with him with his head in my lap in the stall, or June's actually laid down and spooned him for a nap before.

He's just an unbelievable creature that just loves humans. And he just knows the whole world is about him. Yeah. He's that way. And when we were teaching him to lead and you'd take him out, he would play on the end of the lead rope, but never hit the end of the lead rope.

But he would come out and jump up and down and do all these things, but he had every idea of where you were and that he was not going to kick you and he wasn't going to strike you. But he just, I don't know. He just was very well within himself. Yeah. And I think that also make him like a super trainable horse and he just seems to have every quality.

Plus he's beautiful. Yeah, he is beautiful. And then you have your baby Brady, . Can you tell us a little bit about his breeding and what you're hoping to do with him? He is by Blofeld who is by Quality Road and he's out of a Rimrod mare whose second generation is Lemon Drop Kid. And she's a special mare to us because we had a very special client who passed away last year.

And he was, I'm going to say nice enough, his family was nice enough to gift us. But I, also fully realized that being gifted an animal that creates other animals that cost money, it's a little bit of a white elephant. It was a fabulous gift, but now here we are. Yeah. And we're making more babies. But yeah.

And Brady was born on Mother's Day, so that was pretty special. He was the last hole of the year. And we still haven't named him, but we've got all kinds of fun names , in the thought processes, but we haven't come up with anything that the Jockey Club will, has accepted. Oh, really? You mean your, your creative names , not safe for work names.

We're not going to talk about it here,

Then I'm going to have to label the podcast as explicit content. Right. Right. We can't do that. Well, yes, but the naming is fun and I think naming is special too. It always takes me way too long to name things. People get mad at me.

I'm like, but it needs to be right. Yeah. It doesn't have to be right. And. And so many, how many people like go to buy an off the track thoroughbred and it's got this horrendously bad name and you're like, I have to live with this for the rest of my life. AKA JD superstar. Oh, we're just about to talk about him.

I'm so glad you brought him up June. I was just going to say that somewhere in the chaos of running a boarding facility and a breeding facility, you find time to ride your own horses. And you have a very cool off the track thoroughbred known in the barn as Jay. Can you tell us about him? How you ended up with him and his breeding and stuff like that?

So he is a partner's hero out of JD Safari, and she's a power by far mare. She was the very first racehorse that I was ever involved with. I was half breeder of her when I guess our second year here. I was half breeder of her because of, because she was out of my mare. And that was really special because she won 200 and some odd thousand dollars.

And she made it so that my family and myself could go on some really nice trips. And it was all her money was play money. Yeah. And JD, my JD is her second foal. And the first one his name was Castle Rockstar. We sold him after he, he came back to the farm and then got sold. And I don't know what he's doing now, but he was an event horse for a while.

And my guy came back after a not so good career. He beat the ambulance every time out and won after his race. But he came back here to. be a sale prospect and the rest was history. He's still here. He wasn't going to go anywhere. No, he knew where his bread was being puttered. He's a really cool horse.

And I know you always joke around about how much you dislike his jockey club name, but it's JD superstar, which I think is very fitting because you guys tend to go out there and win everything. But Jay is one of those horses that if you saw him, you'd go, is he heart Morgan or , he's got hair for days.

Like it's unbelievable. And he's just, I think confirmationally a little bit of a, an anomaly he's built a little bit downhill, but he just moves so nicely, jumps so nicely. And I think he's just a great example of , you don't really know what you're going to get until you sit on it.

. I'm like, did I offend you? Oh God. I know, I'm like, what are you trying to say about her horse? Well, no, I was thinking about the similarities between him and Charlotte. Charlotte being another relative in the barn, and she's built like a pony, , but , [00:42:00] they both move so nicely.

 So he's the difference when you take, so Charlotte and our race horse now are from the older broodmare.

And then if you take the power by far and add that in. Then you have the next ones, like, my JD is out of a power by far mare, and I think that when you get that, that's when you get the ones that are a little bit more rangy. Yeah, yeah. Power by far, his sire was 17. 2. Oh, wow. Yeah, so that's where, that's where it adds in a little bit more size and stuff to that mare line.

Yeah. No, , he's really cool. He's all, he also happens to be in a very committed relationship with my horse currently. So and can you tell us what you've been up to with him since you've owned him and how long have you actually owned him for? . He's in the range of, of 11 to 12 and we dabble in eventing and I say, for me, it's beginner, novice, novice for life.

 I'm happy there. It's a fun place to be. I enjoy, I enjoy dressage. I enjoy the training process. I have no real aspirations to do more. Because it just, it doesn't appeal to me. I don't think I have the talent or the skills. Or the drive to go do more things, but to have a horse that can semi reliably go out and go to a horse show eight, 10 times a year and come back having done well, that that's good enough for me.

I enjoy that. I enjoy that a lot. It sounds like that's what everybody wants, right? Is to like have a nice horse that you can practice on and get lessons on and improve yourself and then go out and show it off. Yeah, I mean, I think that's an acceptable goal to have is to have something you really enjoy, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's great to know what you want to do and not feel that you have to be pressed above that level and just have fun. And especially, having him as a horse that I raised and knew for so long, that makes it even better. Yeah. He was not a favorite foal. Well, I was just gonna ask you, do you have any funny stories about him?

Or have there been any particular challenges that you've dealt with, with him? I mean, you know our challenge. Beside stitches. He doesn't like holes in the ground. , or it resembles a hole in the ground. So, that's been a challenge. But other than that, , he's got a pretty good Head on his shoulders.

And, and I enjoy getting lessons and, maybe going to the occasional clinic. When I had more time, we were traveling around a little bit more than we are now, but somehow life seems to get you busy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you're running a giant breeding and hoarding facility and retraining and rehoming and selling.

 That's a good thing about, about being here is that I was able to have a life on top of having the horses. I feel like I was able to have a life where I wasn't 24 7 busy. Why is that?

Because it was different than getting into an exclusively showing type of barn, where, you know, people, you have to be dedicated to going on the road and stuff like that. Starting out with the breeding aspect of things is a little bit more grounded. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. Switching gears, we wanted to talk a little bit about your partnership with Turning for Home and that Castle Rock is a partner farm with Turning for Home, which is an organization that's based out of parks in Philadelphia and they help to rehabilitate and re home thoroughbreds off the track.

So can you tell us a little bit more about them and how long you've been working with them? So, we got our first horse from Turning for Home in 2013. Okay. Pretty sure. So it's been a little over ten years at this point, and in that time, I don't do six or eight of them at a time. I try and just have maybe two, maybe three around, unless I get greedy.

And I, I've re homed. upwards of 50 horses for them in that time, which is, , a decent amount, I think. And my model with it is that I try to make them into super solid citizens before I rehome them, because I think that's their best shot at life. And it's a great program. They will, they will do surgery on horses that need surgery.

They give them the downtime that they need. If you're getting a horse from them, hopefully you are getting a horse that has been rehabbed right back to the point where it's going to be a useful horse. And , as we all know, a lot of those horses are able to go on and, and have really good lives.

And it doesn't mean that every horse that comes through Turning Fur Home has been rehabbed for something. They also get a I'm too slow [00:48:00] or my owner cares about me. And so They want me to go through the program because they want the horse to have that protection for life of being in the program.

Right, so once they are in the Turning for Home program that means that Turning for Home will provide a home for them if needed down the road. Yeah, , if something God forbid were to happen to you or your situation were to change Turning for Home, all you have to do is call them, And they will call a partner farm and you're responsible for getting it banned back to wherever it needs to be, but they will take the horse back into the program and provide a soft landing for it.

Wow. That's amazing. Back that were other people's horses or on occasion, I've had to take back horses that I had originally. sent out, but not too often. But you know, people's lives change and it's not always the horse's fault. It's not always that the horse didn't work out. Sometimes it's, you know, they have a husband problem.

And and then you also train and rehome thoroughbreds on your own, as well as the turning for home horses, right? Correct. Yes. And those come through, , just connections that you have at the track or the, the farm owner's connections and that kind of? Yeah, it comes from , again, knowing what they were as babies and, and hopefully following them to the point where you, , think that you want them back , and, you know, maybe pushing a few, buttons to hopefully get them and also, , just knowing some people, occasionally there's that random call of this horse needs a home and are you willing to take the chance and just go get it or whatever.

 I don't consider it to be rescuing them because somebody would take them, but I've gotten some good horses that way where it was just like, okay, it's done and It's time for it to find a place. Do you want it? Those are always good ones Yeah, so it's pretty safe to say that most if not all of the horses that you have in your program either you have you know the training for home information where you probably get a really good amount of information from them in terms of any known issues or problems or history.

And then the other side of that is horses that you've got are ones that you either raised or you're getting from people that you know quite well, generally speaking. Yeah. And, and I will be able to have a good history on that. Yeah, for sure. You were talking about making them into good citizens.

Can you explain what that entails and what your kind of retraining methodology or processes and how that's evolved over time? I guess it probably has to do with me and my own situation in that I don't feel like I want to ride anything that doesn't have manners, anything that I don't have.

, a brain to brain connection with so tend to do a lot of things on the ground I want them to Come to the bar and hang out Allow you to do all the things That the normal person wants to do with their horse because most of your customers aren't Boyd Martin most of your customers are The lady that wants a nice horse that she's going to play with.

And then she's going to go to a show and then she's going to do this with it and that with it. And they better want to follow you around the barn, know how to be tied, go on a lunge line successfully. And also,, to go up to our arena that is out in the middle of nowhere, where there's a lot of creatures running around, et cetera.

They also have to have. A pretty good mindset, I think, to be able to go up there, work alone, maybe working company, have other horses come and go. And I think there's a lot of things you can do on the ground with your off track thoroughbreds that get them in a good mindset to be a better citizens when you get on their back and , already have a trust of you know how to stand still, just do things that actually mean a lot.

To the average person. Yeah. Like a lot of things that maybe you take for granted with the school horse that you learned riding on, that it knows how to go on cross ties and that it knows how to stand there to be groomed or stand for the farrier or all those little things that maybe the horse coming straight from the track doesn't know.

Yeah. Mounting being a big one. Yeah. , I was just gonna say, as long as I've known you now for the last four years, I've watched you put first rides on a lot of thoroughbreds. And one of the things that you have kind of a zero tolerance policy for is any sort of shenanigans when your foot goes in the stirrup.

And that comes with a ton of patience, but also just a lot of knowing when is the right time to swing your leg over and all of that. Like you said, the ground groundwork that you're doing to make sure that when you bring the horse up to the mounting block and you go to step in, you're not going to, you're dealing with a bronc when you swing your leg over.

Yeah. I feel that I've [00:54:00] seen too many horses in action. to put myself in a place where that's something that I can risk. And I don't want to risk that for the random person that's coming to look at my horse. Exactly. And that was one of the things that when Emily and I were doing this as you kind of had to always feel like you were probably going to be , a lot of times more experienced or at least day to day, more experienced than anybody that was coming to try your horse.

So you had to make it to where the horse understood that. Not everyone's going to get on with this much grace, or with this much finesse, or this quietly and you want them to be able to tolerate a lot without getting too upset, and I think one of the things you do so beautifully is you make the horses really tolerant.

Oh, well thank you. I appreciate that. And for people that , can't imagine what our barn setup is like, maybe I'll do a little time lapse one day this week of what it's like to go from the barn to the ring because our farm is 100 acres and it's almost a 10 minute hack to the ring and it has a very small perimeter fence and no gate and you have to pass a lot of paddocks with a lot of horses.

And sometimes, even when you're on the most trained horse in the world, you can feel very, very far away from the barn. So, I think that Or there's, like, buzzards up sitting on the light posts of the ring and then they all decide to fly away the second you get into the ring. Yeah. Or there's deer in the hayfield.

It's also surrounded by hayfields. It's absolutely gorgeous. You couldn't ask for a more picturesque person place to ride, but sometimes you're up there and you're just like, Oh God, I just wish anybody would show up right now. But I think yesterday was all about, there were hay bales and they were being made into a hay bale Stonehenge outside.

I was on angel and I was like, okay, you're not afraid of things, but 10 minutes. So this is It's going to be all about being okay with these hay bales. You know, hay bales grow up overnight because they're not normally there. Right, right. They were great the day before. So we definitely want to talk about Angel in a minute but before we do, he's a little favorite of mine currently

are there any notable horses that have come through your program or through Turning for Home that you wanted to mention. I know there was a real special one a couple years ago that you had that I think jumped out of a round pen. And yeah, he, he showed his penchant for wanting to be an upper level event horse by jumping out of the round pen and touring the farm on his first day.

Out from having a screw in his ankle. I'll never forget that day because Nikki and I were up at the upper barn and he came running up the driveway into just complete freedom. And I ran and got a bucket of grain and he looked at me and was like, absolutely not, and did the most beautiful trot past us.

And you came running up and you go, he's sound. Yeah. And I was like, so beautifully sound.

He's gone off to do some really cool things. I mean, what are you going to do? That's just, that's just me after all the years where I'm like, Oh, a loose horse. What's going to happen? Well, we used to always joke around like, Oh, if they jump out of the round pen or they jump out of the Hitchcock pen, their price goes up immediately because you're like, you could clear the round pen panels from , basically a standstill.

Yeah. I mean, it's not even a round pen. It's a 12 by 12, 12 by 12. square gates, right? So you can have the opportunity to do anything other than just spring over it. And it was still intact. It's not like he crashed the whole thing. It was still intact. Amazing. He just left. So what is he doing now? He has done two, two stars, I believe.

And he is, at Woodstock eventing with one of Ryan's girls, and She's a great girl. I still talk to her. She sends me pictures. Not unlike a lot of people that I've sold horses to. They generally love to send pictures back to you and tell you how, they're doing with them. And he's one that I, I love the mare that he's out of. And so I'm really happy that she got him and that she was in a position to really go on with him. Yeah, I don't think they're not done going on. I don't know. I don't think so. And I think right now he's on some, ranking for horses in the country right now.

I think it's either by his age or experience, but he's on a short list of horses that are at the top of , their particular level of eventing right now. And yeah, she reached out to us about doing an underdog story because he had a repaired condylar fracture. Is that right? A condylar.

Yes. Yeah. And so, , I think he's like such a good ambassador for, you know, somebody realizing the injury, taking care of it right away, rehabbing it properly and realizing that the horse is going to set its own limitations. Really. , as long as it's repaired, I think that some people consider those conjurer repairs as bionic once they're done properly.

I don't know that I've ever had a conjurer that was not fine. I think they all seem to come back pretty good. And so could you talk to us a little bit more about, cause you do take horses that are a little bit more of a risk, not always, but sometimes I think you kind of do this thing where you go, well, I feel like I should take one that needs a little bit more time or a little more care.

fill in the blank there because I just had a really nice one. And I think that's a very nice thing that you do in the [01:00:00] OTTB world. But can you just tell us a little bit about why you shouldn't discredit a horse just because it's got an old injury, a previous surgery, things like that.

Imperfect x rays. Imperfect x rays. The list goes on. Because I think that, okay. They're all individual cases who are going to tell you, as time goes on, whether, whether they're going to be okay or not. I think that nine times out of ten, you are not going to be doing that thing that they did when they hurt themselves.

They're never going to go back to that level of stress in their lives. And so, if they're properly rehabbed and put back together. They're probably going to be fine , for most things. And also I think it's a whole different world once you get off the racetrack and you're living a life where you get turnout.

So your whole physical being is going to be working together, , to keep your body good. Sure. As opposed to the horse who, , is not getting a lot of exercise and then getting a lot of exercise in a short amount of time. And. Also, you've got all the things going for you as far as body work and stuff that are going to make these horses feel better.

We have a lot of things that we can do to horses now to help them that we didn't before. Absolutely. And, I think that the best advice that I get from my veterinarian, because I'll say, okay, I have this one and it's got this and it's got that. And so, what do you think's gonna happen? What's it gonna be able to do?

And she'll say, well, you need to go ride it. And then, once you've ridden it a bunch, you're gonna know what it can do. Yeah. I think that makes a lot more sense than looking at an x ray and being just blown away and saying this horse isn't gonna do anything when it's already doing a lot of things. Yeah, no, agreed.

 The horse is going to tell you. The horse is going to tell you if they feel comfortable or not.

And there's a lot of horses running around out there that have had issues that , maybe are really properly rehabbed, but. Somebody's going to see it and go, Oh, well, I can't do that because I need to go on with this horse and jump all the time. And you're like, well, , that thing is just not ever going to bother it again.

So are there any types of injuries that like either don't scare you off? And you think really, generally speaking, like we're talking about the repaired condylar fracture. , they're not gonna scare you off from taking the horse on and those are anything that you try and avoid if you can. I would hate to say this because I know that so many of them have it, but something that, that makes me nervous is a horse that has kissing spine that is bothering them. Mm hmm, right. Okay, so that's Clinical kissing spine with clinical problems. So if you have something that is really weird in its back, then yes, that's going to bother me.

And that's only because my , very favorite mare had an issue where she really, really liked to buck. And I never wanted to look at her back, but I probably should have. And , so that, just makes me personally a little bit nervous, but. Will I take most things, if they call me from turning for home and they say, Oh, we have a horse with a sesamoid that needs to be rehabbed.

I would love it if that fracture wasn't directly in the joint, that would be good. If it wasn't displaced, then I would love that and think it was going to rehab well. Knees, especially in the upper joints, I feel like are , sometimes okay. seem to do well. Bows are fine. So more likely there's not something that I hate.

, it's just that there's a lot that I think are okay to go on with. And speaking about knees, you have a very special horse in your barn right now. That's from Turning for Home and he had a past knee injury or knee surgery. He had surgery to remove chips. He may have even had a fracture. Okay. And he does have a spur on the outside of the joint.

But tell us a little bit about him and, what his name is and tell us the goods because he's a real sweet little horse. He's a great little horse. , his name is Angel Eye Blue and he's five years old and he's did what, these are my favorite horses. He's the ones that I start out with and I'm like, I don't know if I really like you.

And then I work with them a little bit and next thing I know they're learning things and they're doing things and he's just the sweetest horse in the barn. He's learning. He's for a smallish type of horse cause he's around 15 three and he's a fabulous mover with really good rhythm and he's learning things and he just shows up.

He shows up all the time and he's. He's got a lot of [01:06:00] energy, but he allows you to use your leg. He's just a fun little horse. And he's been having a little bit of a hard time finding people, because his x rays don't look great. But I think for, the person that is going to go on a trail ride, and they're going to do some work at home, and they want to go do a dressage test, and then maybe run around and do a paper chase, I ride him.

He's my favorite ride right now. So I ride him all the time and every day he's sound and happy to go do his thing. I literally feel like every time I get to the bar and you're just getting off of him. I was just gonna say today, Emily and I went for a quick lunchtime hack around and it was a billion degrees , and I asked you what you were doing when I left and you were like, well, I'm not going to ride my own horse.

I might just go get Angel though. , that's how much she likes this horse. He's just , such a little, doer. He's the horse that most adult amateurs need. He's he's a bright Bay. He's cute as a button. And also really well bred.

He's really well bred. And I think he's really fancy. Yeah. So I think he could go in a lot of different directions and I think he's going to love having his own person. He's definitely that type of personality. He wants to have a person and hang around and get, his everything brushed, not me running hard and being like, okay, angel, come with me.

It's time to go ride. Somebody doting on him. Yeah, for sure. I think he'd stand in the cross ties all day long and let you tell him how cute he is. Yeah, pretty much. Well, we will be sure to include some pictures of Angel. Yeah, maybe a link to his most recent sales ad. I also just wanted to say that one of the other things that's kind of unique about you and probably a benefit to a place like Turning for Home is that your connections in the breeding industry allow you to Connect places like turning for home with breeding programs that are looking for recipient mayors and things like that.

So there might be a couple of horses that have come through that really do have career ending injuries could be quite useful in a breeding type of environment. And I think that that's a really cool thing that you're able to do for turning for home. Yeah. We actually have one that just went to be a recipient mayor at a large farm in the area.

And then I've used New Bolton as well because , they will get really good homes as recipient mares. Because you figure anybody that's doing that is not somebody who's breeding on the cheap. Right. Right . And they want to keep riding their mare. Those recipient mares get really good homes. Yeah. And , I put some New Bolton. several times over just for that purpose. Yeah. We're so lucky to have them right down the road too. Okay. I'm going to put you in the hot seat for a second. Are you ready?

Are you ready? Who me or you? No, I'm going to put June in the hot seat. Oh okay. What is the hardest part about reselling off the track thoroughbreds? The hardest part about it, not keeping them. No. Oh, that's such a good answer. Okay. So since you answered that perfectly, I'm going to go on to a little bit of a touchier question, which is if you could give potential buyers a message, what would that message be?

That message would be regardless of whether you liked my horse or didn't like my horse, and are going to buy my horse or are not going to buy my horse. Please get back in touch with me after you leave the farm and say, Hey, thanks for whatever. It was a good time, but this is not the horse for me. And the people that do that are the people that I respect.

And I think that I don't know, probably not for the Jessica Redmans of the world. They're probably able to move on and just be like, ah, it's just one more person that I'm going to be able to check off the list. Like if you don't get back to a big seller, it's something , they're going to forget about it.

But somebody who is a little bit smaller and it's a little bit more personal and you've put a lot of time and effort into these people, it's nice to get the past. You know, personal. Yeah. Thanks. Your horse is lovely, but not for me. Or I found something more suitable or I'm going to continue looking

it's something that people should know. And you know, when you're talking on the internet or whatever, if you're done with that conversation, just let the person know, Hey, you know what? I found another horse or I you're a little too far away because we're out here waiting to connect with you.

Yeah. That's, that's a great piece of advice. Sometimes you wonder because , you think the showing went great and the person leaves and you're like, okay, we made the match and then poof, you don't hear anything and it's just a little weird. June does things a little bit the way that you used to do things, Emily, which is that you put a little bit more time into most of the horses and sometimes people would come out and try the horse and you'd be like, this is it.

, This is the writer we've been looking for. This is the home we've been looking for. And then just ghosted. And you're like, well, okay. But you never know, you know, they went to the next farm or whatever. If you, if you didn't like something that you saw, it would be great for the [01:12:00] seller to know, and then maybe fix that the next time or whatever.

I think that most times I can provide a pretty good, , experience for people when they come here. Yeah. And so , hopefully they do walk away, , with a good outlook on what they just saw, but you, you don't want to just be left hanging. Yeah. All right. We have one last question. Are you ready?

It's a big one. I'm going to make it juicy. If you weren't running a giant breeding, retraining and boarding farm, what would you be doing? I'd be at the beach. I always say to my husband that the only thing I would ever leave horses for is water. But I don't even know, I've never had a real job other than I sold shoes once for a hot second.

So I don't know what I would be doing, I'd probably have to come live with one of you two. Where did you sell shoes?

Oh my God. That's amazing. I couldn't figure out how to run a credit card. And they got tired of that after about the eighth time that I couldn't figure it out. well, that was back to horses. , I , honestly, I don't, have any other real interest. You do like cheese. I do like cheese. Maybe I would be eating cheese on the beach.

And music. You like music. I'd be following Delora. Yeah. There you go. Well June, how can our listeners connect with you about horses that you have for sale? I guess probably the best way would be by watching my Facebook page, because that's really about the only thing that I keep up with. Yeah. And I , I do that or my Instagram.

Courses that are going to be available generally come by the Facebook page pretty quickly. So people can just directly message you. That's just your name, June Hillman. Yeah, people can directly message me and , I'm really good with my phone. I don't care. I'll give you my phone number.

You can call me. You can text me. Any of the above. I like to communicate with people. June is somebody who actually likes to talk on the phone, which is mind boggling to me. Well, I , I don't like to talk on the phone with friends. I like to talk on the phone and not long, long texting things.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Sometimes it's easier to just get things said in a quick conversation. Yeah. Get a nice feel of somebody and, find out if that's really what they're interested in. Yeah. And we're going to do a whole special episode just about turning for home. So for our listeners that think that we just kind of breeze past that, we definitely want to feature them and find out their whole backstory and who they're connected to in the thoroughbred world and everything like that.

So look forward for that in the future. All right. Well, thanks again, June. And if you liked what you heard today, please leave us a five star review on Apple podcasts. You can follow OTTV ONTAP on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and reach out to us with interview candidates and topic suggestions at ottvontap.

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