Remuda: "Group of working horses bred for the ranch specifically to work and pen cattle." To recognize the contributions made by working ranch horses to the heritage of the American Quarter Horse breed, the American Quarter Horse Association annually presents the Best Remuda Award. Beginning in 1992, with the Haythorn Ranch of Nebraska, the Association has honored fifteen outstanding ranches for their efforts in raising American Quarter Horses, an essential "tool of their trade."
Best Remudas features photography and descriptive text about each of the ranches and their horses. The current titleholder is 2006 honoree Tule Ranch, which raises horses and cattle in the Texas Panhandles Palo Duro Canyon. Preceding it was the famous Babbitt Ranches, which operates more than a half million acres near Grand Canyon in Arizona. In 2004, the largest ranch in Canada, the Douglas Lake Cattle Company in British Columbia, was honored, and the remuda highlighted in 2003 was found in the Mojave Desert of California: Lacey Cattle Company. Their excellent "using horses" stay in good shape on only 5 inches of rainfall per year.
In 2002, W. H. Green Cattle Company brought the award to the rolling plains of Texas.
Readers will hear from varied ranching operations, learning their histories and the details of their breeding and training programs. American Quarter Horses of the Van Norman Ranchs remuda in Nevada, as well as those from New Mexicos CS Cattle Company and Bogle Ranches are featured. Other Texas ranches include the Pitchfork, the R.A. Brown, the Waggoner and the Four Sixes, and those in Oklahoma vary from the Stuart Ranch to the Barby Ranch. Ranches that have won the Best Remuda Award are among the most prestigious in the country.
