World champion palomino has IFAS ties

Raising and showing horses is a hobby for Jo Ann Davis, an administrative services coordinator with the food and resource economics department. She and her husband Dan have gotten pretty good at it, too.

 In July, their palomino Totally Golden Kid was named world champion 2-year-old gelding at the Palomino Horse Breeders of America World Championship Horse Show in Tulsa, Okla. He was also named third in amateur gelding competition and sixth in all age, all sex color competition.

 It was the second time the horse, also known as Buddy, took honors at the annual competition—last year he was a top 10 finisher in three events.

 “This is like the Westminster Kennel Club show for palomino horses,” Davis said. “The most important thing was just the recognition of your peers.”

 The Davises have spent nine years raising and training palominos and quarter horses on their 50-acre farm near Williston, doing all the work themselves. In competition, Jo Ann grooms the animals and Dan is the showman, leading the horses before the judges. At this year’s world championship, family friend Don McDuffee showed Totally Golden Kid in the open gelding competition.

 The Davises focus on preparing horses for a career in competition, then selling them to other horse enthusiasts who’ll follow through. Not long after this year’s Tulsa show, Totally Golden Kid found a new home with a buyer.

 “He’s just barely starting his career, he’s on his way to being a superhorse,” Jo Ann Davis said.

 The next big star from the Davis’ farm may be a yearling filly, who’ll be making her second appearance at the All American Quarter Horse Congress in Columbus, Ohio in October.

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