Short Stack Ranch

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Therese at Short Stack Ranch.

00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Therese at Shortstack Ranch. Good morning, Therese. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing very well. Thank you. Good. You're in California? I am. We are in Northern California, just a little bit north of Sacramento. Okay. Well, tell me about yourself in Shortstack Ranch.

00:26
So the short stack ranch, I retired from 25 years with the California Department of Corrections about two years ago, and it had always been my dream to have comfort care minis, you know? And I never really thought it would happen, but I've also been heavily involved since I was in college with Special Olympics.

00:50
And everything just kind of fell together. I was gifted two beautiful miniature horses by a wonderful woman, Sharon Mariam, who had had them both for 15 and 30 years, but she's been involved in the mini world for about 35 years. And I had asked her to mentor me and she is luckily was just trying to get out of the mini world because of age and other commitments and things like that.

01:18
So she mentored me, very special to me. So it just kind of grew. We ended up getting Kenny and Kevin, and then we got two goats that were supposedly pregnant, and they were supposed to be due any minute, and 58 days later, my one goat was not pregnant at all, and the other goat had four, which is...

01:46
incredibly unusual. You know, they only have two teats and really can only, you know, manage about two. Well, we ended up bottle feeding three of them, which is just like a newborn baby every three hours. Bottle feeding those guys. And then in that process, we got kind of every a whole bunch of stuff happened at once. Kevin suffered a pretty bad.

02:15
well, a very bad injury. He had fallen and he suffered a spinal cord injury to his neck. And we did not think that he would make it. He did not stand for almost 10 days. He was completely paralyzed from the neck down. And he was such a fighter. Limus Basin Medical Equine Facility was amazing because he was so little. He was under 200 pounds. We could

02:45
It took us about, he got out of the intensive care about 58 days later and was walking with a limp, but we worked on his physical therapy. And in the meantime, we ended up getting two donkeys from a kill pen that were very badly neglected, could barely walk, one had one eye. So that was Bailey and Baxter.

03:14
And then we had heard about a gentleman who had passed away and left five minis behind with nobody to take them. And over the course of the next two months, we ended up getting four of those. One had passed while it was still at the sanctuary. And so that was Sophia and Rose. And goodness gracious, I'm kind of spacing out. Chandler.

03:41
his, which we changed his name to Wyatt and Jesse. So we had those four. Yes. And so we now had this zoo basically. And we also have two great Danes that are very, very large, a silver lab that was rescued and a cat that came with the house that we rent. Very nice. That's the short back ranch

04:11
We sadly did end up losing Kevin. He just succumbed to his injuries. Just wasn't strong enough a couple months ago. And Wyatt, who was 32, also passed. But they both had wonderful end of life here with all of their buddies around. And we've had, you know, I have friends and family and just people that I know and my Special Olympic athletes come by and

04:41
Everybody loves on them. They're just incredible. We've taken some of them to memory care facilities. I'm learning how to do that. It's a process. Everything is every day is a learning process. A couple of them starred in a in a manger scene at one of the local churches and were part of a play. So it's been it's been crazy.

05:10
Not at all what I had thought would happen when I ventured into this. You know, we, we, it is a financial burden, that's for sure. But it is one that, you know, I look at my life and I'm like, Oh my gosh, this, it couldn't be any better. You know, it's just happy. I have, I have so many questions.

05:36
So is it, are you registered as a 501c3 nonprofit or how are you doing that? I am working on that. I'm not super good with that kind of stuff. I'm that likes hanging out with the horses and doesn't like paperwork, I'll admit it. But we are in the process of doing that.

05:59
It is, we kind of had to take a break. We had some pretty bad storms out here and it was about a month after we finished building everything, my poor husband built everything. We had a really bad storm of hurricane level winds and it took away all of our barns and all of our fencing. So we are literally in the process, if anybody's been following us on Facebook and Instagram of rebuilding. And it's, you know, everything happens for a reason. We've met so many wonderful people along the way.

06:29
We did have a friend of mine set up a GoFundMe for Kevin's expenses, because they were upwards of 20,000. Yeah. But, you know, God provides. We certainly feel that God provides. And it's just, you know, we're working on that. I'm trying to find the right way to go about it, you know? But there's been, right now, it's just get themselves and get their homes back.

06:56
to where they're back in stalls and all of that. And then that's gonna be my next adventure of getting that squared down. Cause it's all, this has happened literally, it's almost a year on May 26th is when I took Kenny and Kevin. And so we're not even in 365 days into this. So it's a lot has happened in that short period of time.

07:22
Yeah, I'm guessing that the name Shortstack Ranch is because all of your rescues are minis. Yes, my dog came up with that and did a logo for me. So we got that done. And yeah, so and it's funny because our Great Danes are actually larger than our horses and our donkeys. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Great Danes are moose dogs. They're humongous.

07:51
Danes, so they're even bigger. We have one that's close to 200 pounds. Wow. I can't even imagine. Our dog weighs 35 pounds. So they're, they're like seven times bigger than she is. That would be crazy. When we got the great Danes, we had a little Boston and they were all so close. I mean, it's every, all of our animals just.

08:19
just cuddle and are just wonderful together to see their interaction from all sizes. The Danes love the horses. Anytime they're out, that's where they're heading. And it's funny because they're runners. They like to run, so we don't let them out off leash. We have a pretty large, almost an acre fenced in for just the dogs. And they do happen to sneak away. We just go out to the barn and there they are. They want to be with their buddies.

08:49
Yeah, yeah, they think they can play with them, but I don't know how that would go because they play rough. Yeah. Yeah. So how big is a mini horse on average? On the average, so there's some standards from the AMH, which is the American Miniature Horse Registry, AMHR. And it's 27 inches, there's different, different ones. My smallest one was 27 inches. That was Wyatt. He was barely 150 pounds.

09:19
Up to 38 inches, I have one that would be Jesse that's on the tallest side. And then the rest are all within the 30 inch, 31 inch range. So they're short guys. They're short guys. They are. Okay. I got hooked on watching Katie Van Slyke on Facebook and her mini horse just had a baby like three days ago.

09:49
That's kind of how I started. I started following her and with Poppy and Petunia. Yes, yes. And it's like my guilty pleasure. I get up in the morning early and it's still dark out and the house is quiet. And I have my coffee and I flip on the local news and I'll pull up Katie and see what she's posted overnight. It's terrible. I feel like a stalker.

10:18
West Coast, it's later. So I get like in the middle of the night, I'll wake up and I look and I see has she posted, you know, and it's like, it's happened. And by the time I get up and I do the same thing, when I'm getting ready, I have my coffee and I just put the horses out. But I, that's the first place I go is who was born? What's up? But yes, her little guy with Karen, it is incredible how tiny they really are. And it's, it's

10:46
very hard to tell until you actually see them, you know, standing up. And Katie's a tall, she's a tall girl. So yeah. Yeah. I think that that that new baby squirt is about the same size as my dog. That's what I'm guessing. He's taller, but I'm assuming he's probably 35 pounds. Yeah. I mean, he barely, he comes up to her knees and the other.

11:15
up to her waist. So yeah. Yeah. Wyatt, if you look at the pictures at the short stack ranch, Wyatt, when we brought him home, he was, he's below my waist. I mean, his, literally his, his back is to my thigh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me want one, but then I think he probably, they probably eat a lot and feed is expensive. So I'm probably not ever going to have a mini horse. I just

11:45
they don't. They are very manageable. They don't eat a lot. No, they don't. They, you know, they eat one to two percent of their body weight in hay and then they get some supplements in grain. But, you know, Kenny is my chunky dunk. He's, I call him my king. He looks at food and he gets fat.

12:08
And the rest, the rest get kind of normal. They're, they're a little bit harder keepers, which means that they don't put on weight as fast. Kimmy gets a quarter cup of grain and a, and a quarter pound of hay morning and night. Wow. Okay. Nothing. Now the others get, um, about a quarter of a flake, but a flake, if you just, you want to, they need, they need a partner. Um, and, uh,

12:36
Yeah, it is. And the vet bills and the farrier bills are much lower because they're tiny. They do have some other specific needs, you know, as far as how they work and what they can eat and how you manage them. But they're there. You could easily do to. Yeah. Fine. And you can decide.

13:00
My husband would not be happy with me if I was like, I think we should get too many horses and we should get them as babies. He would be like, you are out of your mind. No. No, but that's how it starts. Maybe start with some baby goats. The miniature goats are pretty cute too.

13:23
Yeah, I don't know. I am so on the fence about any more critters. We have the dog, we have three barn cats, and we have like 18 or 19 chickens. And we have a 3.1 acre property. You have plenty of them. With house and big pole barn and the whole bit. And I'm not letting you off the hook. Yeah, I don't know. We...

13:48
We have a lot going on right now. So I think I'm going to wait until this winter to float any more new ideas to him, cause he's going to be like, no, no, no, no, no. And now my husband has literally almost every day for a year. I've been a farm boy. Yup. But it is, it is very, um, very fulfilling and heartwarming, but you know, but it is a commitment. Um, you know, you, you can't.

14:17
go anywhere past five o'clock, you can't go anywhere early in the morning. You know, I mean, you have to have some kind of a backup system. You know, we don't vacation. I mean, we have, you know, 14 animals. Where are we going to go that somebody's going to come and watch 14 animals? Yeah. If you have a high school near you, maybe a high school student who's interested in animal husbandry and ag might want to come.

14:43
We've actually talked about that. We have a couple people who say that, you know, we have a great friend that does it, but we like people to spend the night at the house. And then then that puts you into the 18 and over age. And it's funny because everybody has a dog or everybody, you know, think, well, you can't bring your dogs, but we do have options and we have we have gone away. It's just one of those things to where I will admit, I just want to get back home. I miss them so much. They are definitely I am still obsessed.

15:14
with them. I go out and I just sit out there with a glass of wine in my chair and I sit in the pasture and they snuggle and nuzzle and kiss and my donkeys literally sit on my lap. Yeah, their donkeys are like the most Velcro dogs you've ever seen. They're amazing. But yeah, it's certainly been a wonderful thing that I never thought I would do.

15:42
until I started watching Katie, because she is literally my inspiration. I was retiring and I started having a little bit more time because working for corrections, you don't have your phone with you a lot, things like that. And it was like, oh, well, and I started following her and I'm like, oh my gosh, I want this. And I was going to get the mini cows, but to find them in a rescue situation, because that was something that was very important

16:11
to rescue is fault. And then it's going to sound kind of funny, but I don't really like cow manure. No problem with horse and goat. It's just easy. I don't mind picking it up. I don't mind dealing with it. But cow patties are not my favorite thing. And so we ended up going with more horses and no cow.

16:41
Well, maybe the perfect mini cow who needs to be saved will find you. That could be, you know, I find that if you open the doors, things happen. And what's happened here with this whole crazy thing. Yeah. Well, I think it's wonderful that you're doing this. I don't know that I have.

17:07
the energy or the patience to do anything like that. So I'm glad there's people in the world like you who do. Well, thank you. Yeah, it is.

17:17
We I'm 60 and so it's kind of funny literally in my will I have set up for them because I don't want them to be in the situation to how I got them. You know, so the other thing about rescuing older like my youngest is 15 is their life expectancy is about 30 to 35. So it's a huge commitment. It's much bigger than getting a dog, you know, and the minis, they live longer than normal horses.

17:45
I should say not normal, but standard size horses. Yeah. And it is a big commitment. And that was one of the things that was very important to my husband and I is to ensure that they have a place to go and they are financially able to be taken care of as well as our family, if anything happens to us, because we don't want them just left on property like we found many of our.

18:13
Yeah, that kind of defeats the purpose of all the work that you've done. So I can understand why you want to make sure that they're taken care of. Yeah. So, yep. Okay. So what's the plan for short stack ranch long term? Long term is to get everything rebuilt. We are getting close. We just literally yesterday finished fencing the perimeter.

18:39
and got the grass mowed because you can't put them just straight out on the grass. It's too rich. So there today, they are going to go out for their first time for a couple hours on the grass and have some, you know, back to instead of the temporary pasture that I had for them, which was more of a pen, get that room to move, get everything rebuilt, and then start, you know, I've been working with them and Sharon comes out, she'll be out here later today. And we

19:09
are working with some of these rescues to see what their mannerisms are even more.

19:21
I only take two that I'm more comfortable with, but get the others a little bit more accustomed to different environments and possibly have them do different things such as driving, you know, which is pulling a cart and just getting it more set up to where people can come and visit and get their hearts warmed by just having them love on them.

19:50
and visit, not just necessarily the people you talked about before. That's what we would like. We don't want to make a business out of it. We're very, very blessed. We rent our property. Our landlord, when we were looking, his ad said, small dogs considered.

20:20
photo and just said, if this is a deal breaker, just let us know and we won't bother you anymore. And they said, well, come on out. And then a year later, like I said, they agreed to this. So we do want to keep things manageable, you know, as far as not just have this be, you know, like just a ton of people all the time. But people that need it, it's a very small town. Lincoln is a very small town, so I don't see it being anything crazy. But

20:49
We've had a couple Girl Scout troops come by. That's been wonderful. We've had a home school group from here in Lincoln. They've come by. So it's more of that trust factor and I've got to get the liability insurance and all of those things are business side of it. Yeah, that's really important. Yeah. So that's why we've mostly stuck with people that we know so far. But that's...

21:18
The hope for the future is to expand that, to have it to where, you know, by appointment, people can come by and spend some time with these wonderful animals. That's awesome. So are there other mini animals that you're considering getting? No, I'm good right now. That was the agreement with the lovely landlord that, you know, we are, we're at our max. And financially.

21:47
It's perfect. It's a manageable. This is very manageable versus getting a lot more. And I'd really more like to just work on having this group be the best that they can be. There's a long ways to go with one of them. We literally couldn't even, like he wouldn't even let you touch him. And now he snuggles up to me. Jesse is quite, he was very, very skittish. We would have to sedate him to do his farrier work.

22:15
And he's just, he's just come so far in just a couple months. And so I'm really looking forward to just expanding what these guys can do and, and fully exploring that. Yeah, it's amazing what love and feeding an animal will do to turn them around. Um, we have, I've sort of mentioned the cat before, but we have a black barn cat. He's a male and we got him from, yep. We got him from the Humane Society.

22:46
Yes. And he, they told us flat out when we adopted him that he was a feral stray cat and that people at the Humane Society were afraid to touch him, get near him because he would scratch and hiss. And they said that he will never be friendly when you take him home, put some water and some food in something. And we made him like a box, a wood box that was big enough for him to have a food bowl and a water bowl.

23:16
And they said, put him in the box, let's keep him in the box, wherever his house is going to be, wherever he's going to live for like two days, and then let him go. And if he stays, great. And if he doesn't, you're out of luck. Because he was just not, not friendly at all. And our son bonded with him. And now Satan will come up to me and ask for pets and rub against my ankles. And we just tried to let him.

23:45
make the moves and we made sure that he had food every morning. We don't feed him at night because we want him to hunt. We want him to hunt the mice in the barn. Yeah, we have Oreo. We give him a little bit, but he came with the house and yeah, we just give him a little bit of food and he brings me a present every day. Yeah, so they told us we would never be able to pet this cat.

24:14
to give him a wide berth and just let him be a barn cat. And he is the loveliest kitty. He's really nice.

24:24
So love goes a long way. Yeah, and that's the rules that I follow. If they don't wanna do something unless it's going to harm them, it'd be a danger. I don't force anything. When we in the storm, we were trying to move them and it was literally 10 o'clock at night and it was horrible rain and wind. And we were trying to get them out of where they were to a secure area.

24:50
And one of them didn't want to go. And it was the only time I've had to, you know, like, come on, you're going to, you're going to do this. And I, I twitched him a little bit with the rope on his bottom to get him moving because he was just, he was afraid, but I didn't have time to coax him through it. And we just don't believe in that. And I will, with Jesse, he's my skittish one that he would not come to you at all. And.

25:15
And now it's, I just ask him, you know, I'm like, I hold the rope and I hold his halter and, and he'll, if he turns his back to me, I just go do something else and wait until he looks at me. And then it's some easiest pie and he gives me permission. And, you know, luckily we have the time and the pain, the time and the patients, and there's no rush to do that. You know, unlike when, you know, if there's an emergency or you, or you have to have a horse or any animal do anything,

25:45
That's our philosophy is listen to them, look at them and reward good behavior and just take everything slow and stop. Be prepared to just stop. I mean, he's half clipped right now because he was great about letting us clip most of his body and then it was like, okay, I'm done. I've never had this done before. I think I've been really good, but I'm done now. And we're like, all right, and we just stopped. And so he's running around looking kind of awkward, but...

26:15
you know, we're going to work on it again today and take it nice and slow. And it's, but it's so cool when they connect with you and go, I trust you. It's not like he has to be, um, informal where to be on the ranch. So he's good. Exactly. So, you know, it's like, you don't want to get groomed today. Well, we won't force it. Uh-huh. Exactly. Yeah. I try to post at least once a day.

26:44
so that people can see, you know, we just, we just, the last couple months or a couple weeks opened up the short stack ranch Facebook page instead of having it on my own personal page where I have about 1200 friends, but trying to get, you know, it's hard to work with sometimes with Facebook. I'm still, I'm not super tech savvy. So I'm like, well, how do I make this? So what you see me,

27:11
video tapering, I fall, I, you know, every, it's pretty funny. I've sat on a, I was sitting on a salt block one time and they, you know, they were being so cuddly that I fell over and you know, and you can just see the phone flying through the air and you know, but people get a kick out of it. They just, you know, there's, there's no editing. Those are the best videos. Yeah. Yeah. But so it's, I try to let everybody know at least once a day we...

27:40
We took a little bit of a break when we were doing the rebuilding because there's not a whole lot when I'm just taking them from their stalls to this outdoor pen. It's just not super exciting. All day long, instead of playing with them, which is what I usually do, we were working and rebuilding. There wasn't a lot of content, so I went back and did some of the history of the short stack ranch and how it started to get new people on the same page, up to speed.

28:09
Yeah, so, you know, follow along anybody who wants to know what's going on in the crazy place out here in in northern California.

28:22
rewarding. I can't even express how blessed we are. Yeah, I have one more question. The mini horses and the mini donkeys, do they actually hang out in the same space and do they get along? Yes, they do. I mean, it just depends on the attitudes. I have a true mare and you know mares can be mares. It's kind of that bad word. I had the...

28:49
I have the two females, one is very, very docile and my oldest, she's 30, that's Sophia. She rules the roost. If she comes, she'll turn around and she's got teeth bared, but then she's the snuggle. So she manages the herd, which is pretty funny. But we did take our time and introduced through fencing and then just short periods of time with observation, all of that. But they all...

29:17
The only time that there's an issue is for attention or for treats, you know, and we're working on it. Yeah. So we're... Just like kids. Yes. They are, and they're all toddlers. No matter what their age, they're all toddlers. Yeah. Okay. Well, Therese, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and Hodge. You're welcome. Bye.