This is My Little SilverBenz of RiverPointe Farm.  He was foaled as “My Little Silver Bend” by Michael Vine out of Vines Mary, and he is sired by Vines Galaxy.  The prior owner affectionately dubbed him “Junior,” and we call him “Benz.”

Benz is a silver dapple mini stallion.

Very early on when we only had Mason, Princess, and Princess’s foal, Sugar, we told ourselves, “We’re only going to get one more, so we need to be very selective about what we want to have as our final Gypsy Vanner mare.”  I told Jen, “You choose the color/pattern for what we want as that last mare.”  After a lot of thought, we knew we had to have a solid silver dapple horse someday.

We have and have had multiple horses with silver, but it took us years to have the right situation present itself with the right horse before we acquired a solid silver dapple horse.

2023 was a roller coaster ride for us in many ways.  We had our most foals ever in one breeding year.  We had our first year with kidding dairy goats while maintaining the poultry operation.  We made major investments in run-in shelters and a very nice, large barn with some double-sized stalls for birthing.  We had the need to add one more paddock.  We were still growing slowly with the acquisition of horses (some people would laugh when I say slowly, but that’s how I see it).  We needed to get our act together with horse sales.  While we were acquiring new horses and needing to add one pasture, the structural integrity of one of our existing pastures was stressed to the point that we needed to completely tear it down and rebuild it.  On top of all that and normal family life that comes with having 9 children, we started a large patio and pool project.  Rest is for when you are dead.

On top of that, it was a difficult year for selling foals.  I blame economic uncertainty and post-COVID, corporate return-to-work policies as the leading two factors with that.

We’ve learned a lot of lessons about fencing for horses, and we learned a lot more lessons about fencing for Gypsy Vanner Horses (they destroy things by rubbing their big butts on it).  There are only several options that work longer-term.  Flexible rail, six inch rounds every four feet, woven wire (necessary for foals to prevent escape and to prevent getting body parts hung up on the fence) or wooden crossbeams, and/or, so much electric that they can’t just push their manes into it and go straight through it.  Heavy iron 6-ft mustang panels also work (which we had quite a bit of left over from our mustangs), but that stuff is too expensive for multi-acre paddocks and its weight makes it hard to move around on a regular basis (back-breaking, actually).  Also, since we have stallions, minimum of 5-ft height.

Almost every single contractor that we had give us quotes didn’t listen to us and tried to make things “cheaper” or “easier for them to do.”  We weren’t having it with either of those options.  We finally found one contractor that would work in between his other jobs for his main line of business to sink 6-inch rounds every four feet, “measure and size” 4-inch rounds for crossbeams, chainsaw notches into the crossbeams, fasten the crossbeams to the uprights with heavy-duty lag bolts on the inside of the fence (because, if it’s on the outside, the horses will plow through it and knock the beams off the uprights), do three rails of wood, and do it five feet high.  On top of that, one or two strands of electricity to keep them up off the fence (haven’t decided yet if more than one strand is necessary).

We needed this done at the beginning of breeding season, which, for us was May 7th  in 2023.

So, why am I rambling on about all of this?  Here are the reasons why.

We found ourselves with one of our colts coming into his manhood at the same time that we acquired Benz and we had two other adult stallions already.  We found ourselves without the infrastructure to securely and safely support four stallions.  As time rolled on, we had to make tough decisions when the infrastructure we needed wasn’t coming to completion like it needed to.  We had to make the difficult decision to draw down to just two stallions for the health and welfare of those boys.

Also, during the summer is when we found that our first and only intended retainment, Flo, was a mini due to being double hands-down genetically.  That solidified our choice with Benz being one of our two stallions.  The other criterion was that we decided to pursue horse heights of 14.1hh and shorter.  We sold our two tallest mares.  That meant that we didn’t need a shorter full-sized stallion to support pulling down the resultant foal heights (a decision made over the winter and one that I still don’t like), which is the primary reason that Mason is our second chosen stallion (amongst other reasons).

Benz has been our dream horse from the early days of our farm, but in a cute, little package with a super-friendly disposition.  Whenever we approach him, he has an almost cheeky looking grin on his face begging for attention.  He’s also already trained to pull a cart.  He is something super-special, and our mini side project will be full of his foals in the future if all goes according to plan.  We have tested several of our mares that have come back positive with hands-down genes, and they will be moved to his paddock.

Benz being silver is the reason that all our previously mentioned silver mares and fillies cannot be bred with him.  The potential for MCOA (eye development disease) with homozygous silver horses is something that we absolutely do not want to risk.

And, we’re barely containing ourselves keeping this summer’s upcoming activities with Benz sort of under wraps, but we’ll have a lot more to say about that soon.  We can’t wait to share this boy’s future endeavors with the world!