Sweetwater Miniature horse Farm

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YHFF Miniature Horses

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A few horses in my herd are Sweetwater horses or else they're parents are. Can anyone tell me where this farm is? I can't seem to find a website either. All I've figured out is that it's owned by a guy named Charles Penland and is the worlds biggest mini farm?? I'd like to find out more about their parentage .

Thanks,

Courtney
 
Yes, Charles Penland owned Sweetwater miniature horses. He is not active in the operation currently and I am not sure if his sons are still operating it or not. To my knowledge they do not have a website.
 
[SIZE=14pt]He is in jail and his wife MAry is disbursing what is left of the herd. She sends them to sales in lots of 30-40 at least that is what I heard from someone who knows the man that goes and gets them.[/SIZE]

Lyn
 
I was recently at a Mini auction in New Holland,PA and there were 20+ mares sold from Sweetwater and man who brought them said he could get papers, but didn't have them at the time. There was no info on the mares&they looked at the teeth to determine age.So sad.They were really nice looking mares and Penland had some very good bloodlines at 1 time.They were selling in the $300-$ 400 range and the Amish were snatching them up.Look for lots of unregistered nice looking foals at the sale in 2006.It sure hurts the market.Maybe some of the buyers will harship those mares, but those good lines are lost forever.
 
that is real sad. I know he bought some wonderful bloodlines that cost big $'s. Unfortunately it doesn't sound like we will ever see some of those horses again as the horse it really is/was. It seemed like his program was going bad 4 or 5 years ago when he was having those production sales. To bad our industry has lost some of these horses.
 
I thought he had passed away...
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Edit: Nope, I sure was mistaken!
 
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Does anyone know how to get ahold of anyone at the farm? I would be interested in possibly trying to purchase some mares!!
 
lyn_j said:
[SIZE=14pt]He is in jail and his wife MAry is disbursing what is left of the herd. She sends them to sales in lots of 30-40 at least that is what I heard from someone who knows the man that goes and gets them.[/SIZE]Lyn

473544[/snapback]

decided to check into this and wooo doggy

local paper

naughty naughty
 
boy, I'm sure glad our Sweetwater's EKS Queen is safe with us, along with her filly Sassy! (We bought Queen from a nice place, though!)

sass-queen19.jpg


For a short, fat, unclipped broodmare, the girl can MOVE!
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(and her head is beautiful, not as big as it looks in this photo!)
 
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How very sad...especially for his family...cannot imagine having a husband or Father like that.
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My favorite mare, is a Sweetwater horse. She is a 12 year old daughter of NFC Egyptian Kings Mistique, a son of "The" Egyptian King; so I have always assumed their horses to be of good stock. She also carries a large amout of Dell Tera blood as well.
 
Yes it is rather sad for the family but he only reaped what he sowed. I understand by past advertisement and endorsement (that of course has since been removed) from the website of "he/she that shall not be named" that in the ad it said they were the largest breeders of miniature horses in the industry and I believe it also said they shipped world wide. I have a sweetwater mare here at the moment, she is not mine, I am boarding her till this coming Sunday for a friend. I have her papers in my hand and only her sire and dam are on the papers the rest is totally unknown. What an absolute shame to breed horses in such numbers and to not have have all the family history available or have all horses registered. I guess they got overwhelmed with the sheer number they were breeding.
 
Charles Penland spent a lot of money in the early 1990s buying up "brand name stock", and touted himself as "one stop shopping" (quote from his print ads)- he had hundreds of miniatures. I never personally went to the farm but some of the stories I heard from people who had....
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Didn't the Humane Society seize at least some of the stock at some point?

I know the legal issues for him started in the mid 1990s, when allegations were made of false papers, horses sold on application not being registerable and horses sold as foals of so-and-so bloodtyping/DNAing as something else entirely. Someone (an angry customer or lawyer, I assume) took out a full page add in the Marketsheet around 1996 asking people who had had registeration problems with Sweetwater horses to please come forward.

Random factoid: there's a Long John Silvers in Austin, TX owned by a Charles Penland out of SC. I've eaten there. Good hushpuppies.
 
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Random factoid: there's a Long John Silvers in Austin, TX owned by a Charles Penland out of SC. I've eaten there. Good hushpuppies.
haha
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I'll have to go there sometime!! This is really sad to hear as my grandma and I have been planning to go there next summer for a couple of years now. We were both really really excited (mostly she was!) and had hoped to buy a couple of nice broodmares or young fillies. I would buy some of the foals but hardshipping is so much of a hassle and is quite costly otherwise I'd definitely do it!

decided to check into this and wooo doggy
local paper

naughty naughty
WOW!! That is naughty
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I hope those horses go to a good home.
 
The LJS is in a somewhat seedy section of Austin... shares a parking lot with a club named Viva Sexy Chica 2000and the UT off campus bookstore. I would recommend other Austin attractions. But it DOES have good hushpuppies.
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In the early 90's, Charles (Chuck) Penland bought up as much of the quality, popular bloodlines he could. All the Egyptian Kings, all the Gold Melody Boys, etc. He had the BEST of those bloodlines, however, his practices as a breeder were inexcusable. He had several farms with hundreds of acres and would let several stallions run with bands of mares in the same fenced pasture. There were many good horses that came from Sweetwater, but I would take their pedigrees with a grain of salt.
 
I myself have never owned a Sweetwater horse. Have seen pics of nice ones, but I had already heard the stories about the way the farm was run, no knowledge of who was who's sire, etc... and all the other things listed above. No thanks- I'll pass. Obviously the guy just isnt too swift all the way around.....
 
[SIZE=14pt]The last I bought from there was a black mare and her colt and she was bred back. When I sent in the papers on the colt the amha said the father was impossible because he had been exported to Saudi Arabia before that foal was concieved so Chuck came back and said" who do you want his father to be?" I old him just get something because the colt was getting gelded so the lie stopped there.He was gelded and petted out.[/SIZE]

That was 10 years ago. The first sale the horses were looking ok....95.96

As far as DNA the registry never checks even when you ask unless the do a parent qualification.I know of a person who has questioned amha regarding questionable parentage of an animal and they have not responded to her.

Lyn
 
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here is a Sweetwater Stallion for sale on Equine.com very pretty sorrell.....

ad says something about not breeding anymore.....

jenn
 
I have a son of a Sweetwater horse, and his sire is parentage qualified to the sire and dam. I guess I got Lucky! The sire is Sweetwater's Little Mohawk, who was a top ten halter and driving horse.

Not too long ago someone had a website with the photo of another Sweetwater horse on it that I had taken. I contacted them, and politely asked them to remove it, and they came back stating that every photo on the website was of their horses and that they had taken it. I then politely informed them that I had the original, I had the full photo (they had used only the head shot) and that I could identify the background in the photo. The photo was removed.

This was something that came up on the Forum, but I can't remember when. I do know it wasn't very long ago. Oh I KNOW !! It was something to do with that group of guide animal people. Wasn't Penland involved with that also?
 

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