Odenville home to four-legged world champions
Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Mike Callahan
Contributed Photos
As horse farms go, Wester Farms in Odenville doesn’t look out of the ordinary.
A 21-stall barn houses the horses and their tack. Several horse trailers are parked nearby. Huge round hay bales and several square bales are stacked in a slightly smaller barn next door, along with bales of pine shavings to line the stall floors.
The usual farm equipment is scattered about, such as tractors, horse trailers, a backhoe, a telehandler with 40-foot telescoping lift, a skid steer with a fork and a walk-behind loader that is used to clean stalls.
It’s not a glamorous place, but it is home to two very glamorous horses who have set records in the racking horse industry. When High Sword won the World Grand Champion title in October, Cadillac by Jazz won the Reserve World Champion title at the same show in Decatur. Roy Wester owns both horses, marking the first time in the history of the racking horse industry that horses owned by the same person took the two top spots at the championship show.
High Sword, ridden by trainer Jamie Lawrence of Vinemont, was World Grand Champion in 2014 and 2015, too, making him the only horse in racking horse history to win that title three times. Roy rode Cadillac by Jazz in the championship competition.
Both horses competed in qualifying classes to get to the championship level. “These two horses won separate qualifying classes prior to competing for the World Grand Championship that crowned the world’s best racking horse at the 48th annual Racking Horse World Celebration in Decatur,” he says.
Racking horses are derived from the Tennessee Walking Horse, and most are registered as both walking and racking. About 80,000 racking horses are in the industry’s national registry, Racking Horse Breeders’ Association of America (RHBAA), which began in 1971 and is located in Decatur.
During show season, which is April through November, Wester works with the horses four or five days a week. He participates in about 20 shows per season. During the rest of the year, colts and unfinished horses are made ready for the next season. He raises about 20 of his own colts and buys 10-20 more starts that he trains and re-sells.
“It’s a lot of tough work for trainers and all involved, a lot of late nights, and you don’t get many days off,” he says of the racking horse business. “But I just love it.”
At 70 years old, Wester still mounts a horse from the ground, as opposed to using a mounting block, because he has been doing it all his life. He confesses, however, that he lowers the stirrups to mount, then raises them to their proper length.
His two sons show along with him, and his wife, Joan, goes to shows and cheers them on, helps with advertising and is the wardrobe mistress. “She dresses me,” Wester says. But she does not ride any more. Wester has a couple of employees that help train and show, and some of the horses are trained by Jamie Lawrence.
As many as 24-30 horses occupy the farm at foaling time, which occurs in the fall and in the spring. Only 30 percent of his foals are born in the fall, because it’s too expensive to winter them. Wester’s horses go through 200 round bales and 2,500 square bales per year, along with 80 pounds of pellets and corn per week, as it is.
“That does not include 100 round bales for the cows and 22 horses we keep in Cherokee County,” says Wester, who owns his and his wife’s family farms there.
Retired from Arlington Construction Co. in Birmingham, for which he built 50,000 apartment units, until last year, Wester showed as an amateur because he does not train horses he does not own. “An amateur can show in any class, but a professional, who trains horses for other people, can only show in the open classes,” he explains. “I get a lot of people every month who call wanting me to train their show horses, but I don’t do that.”
He has won amateur Grand Champion on Cadillac by Jazz three times and the men’s amateur four times. “Jazz has won more blues (first-place ribbons) in his career than any horse I have ever shown,” Wester says. “He was also a world champion Tennessee Walking Horse in Shelbyville prior to starting his career as a racking horse in 2014. He has been showing since he was four, and he will be 14 next spring.”
Another one of Wester’s horses, 16-year-old Tears, was the 2016 World Grand Champion racking horse. “I rode him myself, and I won three amateur world championships on him and three amateur world grand championships,” he says. “I have shown Cadillac myself since 2015 and now train him here. Both Tears and Cadillac have been winning all their lives.”
Wester got the horse bug from his father, who raised Tennessee Walkers with S.W. Beech Stables in Tennessee. “We didn’t show, we just got them ready, and they (the stables) sold them for show work,” he says. “I deal mainly with racking horses on pads with no action device, which is a requirement for the RHBAA World Grand Championship.”
Some of his stallions, including the two latest champions, go to Campbell Stables in Cullman during breeding seasons (fall and spring). “They do our shipping and breeding,” Wester says. “We don’t live-cover any mares at the breeding barn. It’s all through artificial insemination, except for the stallions who stay at my barn (Spinzone, Tears and Gen’s Rocky Road).”
Another winner is now enjoying life as a pet for his granddaughter and a companion for mares and their foals. The 15-year-old sorrel gelding is José On Call, and Roy won the 2012 men’s show pleasure championship on him. That horse’s show career ended when Wester’s 9-year-old granddaughter claimed José as her own. She’s 16 now, and José is still her horse.
“She just pets him and rides him, she doesn’t show him,” Wester says. “I made a lot of money on that deal, didn’t I?”
