50-Year Breeder: Don Akehurst

Horses have always been a part of Don Akehurst’s life.

“I can’t remember when I didn’t like or have them around,” he says.

His grandfather had horses, and he and his family have always had them.

His first American Quarter Horse was the 1959 mare Nona, a Chicaro Bill-bred mare he bought in 1961. He registered his first foal four years later, a colt out of her named Nona’s Dandy, and since then has registered more than 200 foals.

In 1969, he and his wife, Barbara, better known as “Buttons,” bought a ranch near Ellensburg, Washington, on the east side of the state’s mountain range, and there they raised longhorns at their Longhorn Cattle Co.

Don roped and Buttons barrel raced for fun on the weekends, and they ranched full time. They bred horses to use in both pursuits, attaching the “LCC” prefix to the beginning of most of the horses’ names. They also raised son Greg and daughter Kathy on horseback. Don and Greg are talented ropers – both are Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association gold card members.

At its peak, the family had 450 longhorns on their ranch, and they worked tirelessly to promote it. They had some production contracts, but also did cattle drives, parades, rodeos, publicity events and movie work. The horses were used to work the cattle, to be ridden, photographed and to pull both a stagecoach and a chuckwagon. The family even sold a six-hitch team of horses trained to pull a stagecoach that was used in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Don gentled oxen teams to pull wagons, and steers that could be petted and photographed at publicity events.

“We promoted our beef,” Don says. “The horses were always a big part of it.”

Their business has adapted – they now operate a vertically integrated program producing certified grass-fed, custom-cut beef from a Longhorn-Angus cross, resulting in a premium quality product that they sell directly to local restaurants.

The Akehursts have had horses right along side the entire time to manage their cattle, and to produce good rodeo and riding horses.

“They have good legs, good feet, good bone,” Don says, adding that due to the environmental conditions, they’ve kept horses barefoot, resulting in tough, hard feet that don’t need to be shod. “They have to work for a living, and if a horse couldn’t make a living for us, he’d be gone. They’re all reliable working horses.”

The family looks to breed a balanced, yet refined horse with bone and a good-sized foot.

Some of the most influential sires in their program include Drifter Bar Bob, a Three Bars (TB)-bred stallion; the Jackie Bee-bred Strawberry Slurpee; and the Poco Bueno-bred Rawdle Fact Man.

Their current stallions include Poco Bueno-bred Jaz GC Indio, Driftwood-bred LMP Payday Ike and the Royal King-bred LCC Royal Storm King.

The horses from Longhorn Cattle Co. are pasture-bred and -raised, allowing them to develop key equine social skills in the herd that will serve them well when they begin working with humans. Due to demand, most of their foals are sold directly off the mares via private treaty.

“They have to have conformation and a good mind, that’s the main thing,” Don says of the horses he is breeding. “You can tell when you halter break them.”

The Akehurst family starts and proves their mares before adding them to the broodmare band, and then evaluates their foals as well.

Don manages the day-to-day activities of the ranch, while Greg and his wife, Kristin, manage the promotion and sales of the cattle and horses, with outreach efforts like a successful local ranch horse show series held on the ranch in recent years. It draws dozens of contestants, and hanging around the arena, as there have been for 50 years, are good LCC horses.

“It’s way beyond my wildest dreams,” Don says of earning the 50-year breeder award. “I never even thought about it until we started getting close and Greg started talking about it. But it’s quite an honor.”