ProRodeo Sports News - January 12, 2018

DNA registry helps breeders track stock bloodlines BY SCOTT KANIEWSKI W hen Steve Stone wanted to start tracing bucking horse bloodlines, he realized a registry was needed. For decades, bucking horse breeders who understood the registry’s value. Among the PRCA stock contractors that have submitted their horses’ DNA, in addition to Sankey Pro Rodeo & Robinson Bulls, are Powder River Rodeo, Burch Rodeo and Bailey Pro Rodeo. The process isn’t free, of course, which is why Wade Sankey hasn’t had all of his horses’ lineage traced. But he is in the process. “We have been a proponent for DNA registry for a

breeders and contractors delivered to each other with handshakes and words. But there was never proof a horse came from a specific bloodline. With advances in genealogy through DNA, it didn’t have to be that way. Proof existed. But where to start? The easy answer was at the top. The hard answer led to more questions: which top and could Stone and the soon-to-be- created Bucking Horse Breeders Association get there? Those answers trailed a path to the legendary breeding stallion Custer, owned by Wade Sankey once upon a time. But Custer died in 1994. And that plat of land outside of Cody, Wyo., that held Custer’s remains was no longer owned by the Sankeys. In fact, it wasn’t even owned by the man who had bought it from the Sankeys. “We’ve got more Custer blood than anybody on the planet,” Sankey said. “If we don’t go find that DNA, then it’s lost forever. Not only does it put the DNA registry below where it should start, but it puts everyone further away from the beginning.” So how to get access to Custer to exhume the horse for its DNA?

long time, but nobody has done it,” Wade Sankey said. “We kind of gave up hope that it would ever happen. So when Steve called, it was a no-brainer. It’s the best thing in the world for the bucking horse industry. It’s also great for the rodeo industry because the livestock is half the sport. The horses need recognizing as much as the contestants do.” Ike Sankey called the new land owner, Clark McElroy, to explain the situation and to see if there was any way that maybe the Sankeys could exhume Custer. Lucky for them, McElroy had already heard the legend of Custer. “Somebody somewhere, somehow had told him (McElroy) that that horse was buried there,” Wade Sankey said. “He’d always wondered if this was going to happen, if someone was going to show up and ask. So when we brought it up, he was just thrilled, he was just super-excited about it.” The big dig commenced. idea about a registry based in DNA coding. Toby Tooke, Feek’s great-grandson, was approached by Steve and his partners to see if Toby wanted to contribute to the site with historical horse DNA. He was all in. “Everything was a handshake back then,” Toby Tooke said. “... Nothing was documented. For them to actually do it with DNA, that’s what’s really cool.” Among the bones Toby Tooke contributed were TRACING FORTHE FUTURE The Sankeys weren’t the only ones who loved the

Above: Custer. Below: Gray Wolf, a Hall of Fame horse proved to be an offspring of General Custer.

DIGGING DEEPER

The legend of Custer starts with General Custer, a bucking horse bred by ProRodeo Hall of Famer Feek Tooke and his son, Ernest. Tooke has been described as the “Henry Ford of

his industry.” He pioneered a bucking horse breeding program that matched registered Shire stallions with cross-bred mares. Among the foundations of the Tooke bloodline were fabled horses Prince, Timberline, Gray Wolf (also in the Hall of Fame), Snowflake and the 1,875-pound General Custer, thought to be Custer’s sire. Custer didn’t rodeo much, but he sure could buck. According to Sankey, Ike Sankey bought Custer fromHarry Vold. “The first time he (Ike) saw that horse, Chris LeDoux had him and Custer almost killed him,” Wade Sankey said about Hall of Famer LeDoux. “We never rodeoed with him (Custer) that much because we knew what he was. He was a bucking horse.” So they studded him out. Over the course of the last quarter century, plenty of breeders and contractors claimed to have horses with direct lines to Custer. But there was little proof. Until now. A few years ago, Stone’s son started riding bucking horses, so Stone looked at getting some practice horses. “Listening to the way everyone talked about how the horses are bred, I questioned them about there being a registry,” he said. “How do we know this is how the horses are bred? I could say the same thing they were saying. That got my wheels rolling. … “This is such a legitimate industry, I can’t believe there’s not a DNA- verified registry.” That led to him writing software and developing a website (buckinghorsebreeders.com) where breeders can track stock bloodlines. UPAND RUNNING While Custer’s remains lay buried, Stone found stock contractors and

some belonging to Gray Wolf and General Custer. Ernest Tooke had held on to them, setting them in a “washer-and-dryer box in one of our grain bins,” Toby Tooke said. A lab at the University of California at Davis does the genetic coding for the BHBA. The more horses entered in the registry, the more accurate the bloodlines. The BHBA is just getting going. In addition to tracking lineage, the registry lists years horses went to the National Finals Rodeo and if their offspring reached the Finals. In less than two years, nearly 1,000 horses have been registered, Stone said. That growth is expected to continue. “It’s gone so good,” Stone said. “It’s because there are real horsemen, like the Sankeys, the Burches, the Franzens, that see and know the value of a registered horse.” Custer’s legend continues. But through DNA coding, Stone said it’s been discovered that Custer is not an offspring of General Custer, as originally thought. Stone believes Timberline may have been Custer’s sire, but without DNA proof (Timberline is long dead and his burial whereabouts are unknown) that can’t yet be proven. There is also talk that there will be a push this year to get Custer into the Hall of Fame, immortalizing the “undisputed, top bucking horse-producing stallion that’s ever lived,” as Wade Sankey put it. And Custer’s remains? “We didn’t think it was appropriate to move him, since that guy (McElroy) was so excited about it and let us do that,” Wade Sankey said. “So, we buried him again right there.”

ProRodeo Sports News 1/12/2018

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