# Sweetwater Miniature horse Farm



## YHFF Miniature Horses (Sep 25, 2005)

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


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## Tony (Sep 25, 2005)

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.


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## lyn_j (Sep 25, 2005)

[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


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## bevann (Sep 25, 2005)

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.


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## k9mini2 (Sep 25, 2005)

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.


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## Hosscrazy (Sep 26, 2005)

I thought he had passed away...






Edit: Nope, I sure was mistaken!


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## beaminewbie (Sep 26, 2005)

Does anyone know how to get ahold of anyone at the farm? I would be interested in possibly trying to purchase some mares!!


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## runamuk (Sep 26, 2005)

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


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## Dontworrybeappy (Sep 26, 2005)

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!)






For a short, fat, unclipped broodmare, the girl can MOVE!





(and her head is beautiful, not as big as it looks in this photo!)


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## Sue_C. (Sep 26, 2005)

How very sad...especially for his family...cannot imagine having a husband or Father like that.











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.


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## Danielle_E. (Sep 26, 2005)

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.


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## Littleum (Sep 26, 2005)

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....



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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## ohmt (Sep 26, 2005)

> 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



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



I hope those horses go to a good home.


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## Littleum (Sep 26, 2005)

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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## Becky (Sep 26, 2005)

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.


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## HGFarm (Sep 26, 2005)

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.....


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## Sue_C. (Sep 26, 2005)

> but I would take their pedigrees with a grain of salt.


But isn't that what the DNA tests are for?


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## lyn_j (Sep 26, 2005)

[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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## Whitewave (Sep 26, 2005)

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

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

jenn


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## ruffian (Sep 26, 2005)

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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## Aubrey715 (Sep 26, 2005)

We have been to couple of his sales in the past. It is just hard to look at the horses. Some missing eyes, some skinny as can be. The first sale a few spot app. stallion that looked about dead sold for $14. All the horse needed was his teeth floated. The guy had some super nice horses that he would sell off the farm to private buyers. The guy had some super nice bloodlines but the horses were hard to look at. We have never bought any of his horses. At the first sale we went to he talked extremely bad about Wade and Jon of Lucky Four Farms. No cameras are allowed at the sale for the simple reason of the horses were in such bad condition. I know as a fact that he was making up some of the horses sires. It was obvious that horses didn't come from some of the sires that were down on the papers. Everybody there that knew of this farm were aware that he would make up the sires. How could the man keep up with all the horses he had. I am not saying that he did it on all of them because you have to DNA them but he sold mostly yearlings and horses that haven't produced anything yet so you wouldn't know if the bloodlines were right or not. We were very afraid of carrying a illness home to all of our horses. Well thought I would let you know what the sales are like.


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## YHFF Miniature Horses (Sep 26, 2005)

Wow, I had no idea


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## Danielle_E. (Sep 26, 2005)

> 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?








"He/She that will not be named" had advertisement on their site as Sweetwater being one of the place to purchase miniature horses from. As I mentioned in my post that page has been removed, wonder why


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## wishful (Sep 26, 2005)

> But isn't that what the DNA tests are for?


Wait til you discover the stallion on the papers is not the sire but an unregistered sire that has sired foals and been dna'd under another stallions name!!!



You would not believe how crooked a crook can actually be! As long as it matches the picture no one ever rechecks a dna!

Unfortunately, you will come across a farm like this from time to time. There is a huge farm very much like this in my local area. I complained to all the offical people only to have my complaints fall on deaf ears.

The industry has grown so that for the protection of the little horses we all love we should have a representitive in each state to visit farms from time to time to evaluate the conditions(multiple stalllions in with mares, pull a hair from the herd sire personally..ect..) to protect the horses and the historical lineage it took years to perfect.


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## Fred (Sep 26, 2005)

I purchased 3 colts from Sweetwater three years ago. I bought colts because I

planned on gelding them anyway. With that many horses I didn't trust the fact

that "accidents" would happen on the papers. With geldiings it doesn't matter.

These colts had never been handled they were dragged through the sale ring and

were not in the greatest of condition. They had never been wormed and didn't

know what grain or people were. I had a 19 hour ride home with them. We did

everything possible not to stress them. We love them dearly and they have done

extremelly well for us. Auctions are not for everyone, I have been going to them

since I was 10 years old and my livlihood is with horses. We were lucky! Linda B


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## bob r (Sep 27, 2005)

"As far as DNA the registry never checks even when you ask unless the do a parent qualification" LYNN THAT STATMENT IS QUITE TRUE. --------------

He had several farms with hundreds of acres and would let several stallions run with bands of mares in the same fenced pasture. -- THE SAME CAN BE SAID ABOUT MR. BOND but he did have more integrity i believe.


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## Lisa-Ruff N Tuff Minis (Sep 27, 2005)

runamuk said:


> 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
> ...


Hmmm very interesting reading and well i will just leave it at that


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## Lisa-Ruff N Tuff Minis (Sep 27, 2005)

by the way folks this is another perfect example DNA and PQ are only as honest as the person pulling the hairs. It is very easy to take a set of papers, DNA a horse you want to be with those papers and go from there to PQ foals and on and on.. while DNA is a start PQ doesnt mean as much as everyone thinks it does when dealing with those without alot of ethics and then when dealing with someone with ethics the odds are good with or without DNA and PQ you are getting what you paid for anyway


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## HGFarm (Sep 27, 2005)

Haha, after reading the article, and seeing some of his other 'business affiliations' perhaps someone might wonder about the place in TX - 'Viva Sexy Chica'!! Maybe he owns it too?? LOL


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