Email: katdale@charter.net

Howdy! We would like to welcome you to McKuster Ranch, LLC (dba. McKuster Ranch). Natural horsemanship is practiced here. If your horse brought you here, we hope you will consider pasturing your horse(s) at our ranch, on the beautiful upper Walla Walla River. Our feeling is; horses should live a life untethered in open pastures being part of a herd. Here we handle horses mild mannerly, train most of them to come when called for feeding, or saddle-up to ride, or hitch-up to cart. Here we keep a congenial herd of horses, that anyone can walk into and associate with.

The photograph above will show you the results of our irrigated pasture management system. McKuster Ranch pastures are always green, which makes our 16 acres of pastures very different from most other horse pastures in our area from mid-June through October. Our pastures are double fenced. The interior pasture fencing being a bottom strand of electric poly-rope, four-strand electric 12-gauge smooth wire with 1½-inch electric Hot Tape and Equi Braid rope for top strand visibility at 4½-foot above the ground. The exterior/ boundary fence is six to eight strands smooth wire - electrified. Horses at McKuster Ranch do not drink river irrigation or ice water from their troughs. We refresh our 40-60 gallon water troughs every other day if not more often with our home well water. During winter, water troughs are maintained at 40º to 45º, not iced over.

The photographs below will give you an idea of how McKuster Ranch's horse pastures and cattle range are divided as...

a river runs through it.

McKuster Ranch is divided by the mainstem of Oregon's upper Walla Walla River. On the south side of the river we have 18 acres of which 16 acres are in green horse pastures, and 2 acres of managed riverside wildlife habitat. The north side of the river we have 55+ acres of cattle range behind our 500' river bluff.

Most weekends we try to ride around our ranch neighborhood in northeast Oregon... spring, summer, fall and winter. Will you join us?

McKuster Ranch hitching rails offer a starting point for more than 50 miles of back country trails and unpaved - rarely traveled harvest roads to enjoy on horseback. Most of our neighborhood trail rides are 2-4 hours long.

One ride that we enjoy from our front gate, heads straight up Lincton Mountain Road which offers lunch and relaxation at The Tollgate Chalet. This ride is most of a day in the saddle, climbing Lincton Mtn. and then riding through the mountain timber at a cool 4000'-5000' elevation.
What a treat, riding into the nearby mountains from McKuster Ranch using one horsepower.

We regularly trailer our horses up to the So. Fork Walla Walla River BLM trail head in summer and fall, which is 8 miles from the ranch. This is a beautiful ride in the cool Walla Walla River Canyon fording the river over two dozen times in our 6 to 8+ mile back country river trek.

McKuster Ranch offers our pasture boarders the opportunity to work and play with their equestrians in our sanded 58 foot round-pen and riverside 100'x 220' riding arena. Summer daylight riding time with full light is from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. ~ sunrise is 5:45 ~ sunset is 8:30. Plenty of time to enjoy your horse, doing equine training or trail riding from McKuster Ranch hitching rails.

The current McKuster Ranch herd includes ten equines of Kittee and Dale's and we pasture board up to ten guest horses during the months of mid-April through October. We do keep some boarder on a year round basis, limited by our current barn facility. Due to the ever increasing price of hay and pasture fertilizer our 2010-2011 pasture boarding rates will be One Hundred dollars ($100 US) per month May through September and One Hundred Seventy-Five dollars ($175 US) per month October through April.

With the advent of two of our boarder from Scottsdale, AZ returning home for the winter, we will have boarding space available soon. You might wish to email us at katdale@charter.net while you are sitting there if you think you would be interested in boarding your horse(s) with us this year. We operate on a first come/ first serve basis to eligible horses and close our gates to intake, with twenty horses grazing our pastures.

You will find that our website has quite a few pictures, so it may load slowly depending on your server. The equine videos on our website: some are YouTube™ based and others are best viewed using MS Media Player v.11, we hope you enjoy.

We care for horses and cater to equestrians who want the best in managed intensive grazing (MIG) pastures and concerned daily care
for their equine in a natural outdoor setting. We will provide a place for equestrians to enjoy their horse, in enclosed training facilities
(arena/round pen) and riding outside our ranch gates through the scenic wide-open-spaces of our northeast corner of Oregon.

2007 we began our equine breeding program. We began with breeding SF SHAIELA (reg. AHA) daughter of AHA World Champion SIMEON SHAI, with EagleFromTheLight (reg. AHA) of South Fork Horse Ranch. We now have standing as our ranch stallion AHA Purebred - ADRENALINE RUSH get of Tiffany Ranch's and Scottsdale AHA Champion FIRE AN ICE. With our combination of breeding stallion(s), including AHA Purebred - EAGLEFROMTHELIGHT(standing at South Fork Horse Ranch); and McKuster Ranch mares we hope to offer very soon some beautiful, good minded, kind hearted, sound, endurance and western pleasure riding horses to our Pacific Northwest equestrian community and the rest of the world. Please follow the links below for more details.

For Sale see Summer's web page for details



McKuster Ranch, LLC - located at the base of the Blue Mountains on the pristine upper Walla Walla River of Oregon - USA.

photo - 2009

We're glad you dropped by our website, and would like for you to know that at McKuster Ranch we love horses! The next time you come to visit bring your horse and tack, we can go for a ride through our ranch's wide open horse friendly neighborhood.

Please follow the entrance link below if you are interested in learning more about McKuster Ranch, LLC and our boarding/riding/breeding facility.

~ McKuster Ranch, LLC ~

Notice: McKuster Ranch, LLC is an equine facility.
The Oregon Equine Inherent Risk Law ~ORS 30.687-30.697~ applies to our facility.

A TIP to share: Before you considering boarding your horse anywhere, please follow this valuable link to Considering the Horse,
by Mark Rashid. This book maybe found in your local library, it was in ours.

A TIP to share: Over the past three years we have boarded three Appaloosa horses at McKuster Ranch, LLC. Each of these horses, and only these three horses have been unable to stay out of our electric pasture fencing. Talking with our veterinarians and Internet research we have learned that Appaloosas inherently have bad eyesight. For this reason we no longer board Appaloosa horses. We feel that for the well being/ safety of an Appaloosa they should be kept in a wooden plank or rail panel fence enclosure. We find that Appaloosa horses are beautiful animals but we are Considering the Horse.

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