 There's an art to fitting a sail horse. So I've come to two of the best in our business, Justin Cunningham from Weatherford, Texas and Melanie Smith from White's Bottle. Welcome. Justin, I'll start with you. How many horses would you fit every year? I think the numbers last year were like 175. And they're all yearlings? Yes, sir. A couple of broodmires. Right. And Mel, how many do you guys fit here at Solo, silly? Well, we'll sell close to 1,000 a year, but we will probably fit from start to finish maybe a hundred a year. A lot of them come to us ready. We'll sell them fit and ready. When would you advise owners to send a horse? I would like, you would like them preferably. You can do a ton in 45 days, but to really do a great job, I think you need 60 to, I mean, 120 as a really long time, I feel, but 90 days would be ideal. A horse turns up, Mel, to your place, and let's say the sale is in 50 days. What's the first week of their schedule, I guess? We would, let's just say you get one that is a little long-haired out of the pasture, okay? We want to sell in 50 days. We would start with the day they get here. I say power pack, but when we tube them with EPM medicine, it actually has warmer in it. So a lot of times if that looks like it's gonna go ahead and make them start turning loose with their hair and all that, that's all we'll do. And then if we feel like that we need additional worvings, then we will run that full power pack through. But we will do that, and we will transition them from grass hay to alfalfa over a couple of days usually. They usually take that pretty good. It's the grain that you can get in a bind on, that if you just throw it to them, sometimes they'll tie up or they just call, you know, whatever it may be. So we will get them on that alfalfa first and start adding that grain and bathe them in hot water is a good way to start getting their coats laid down. When you put that, the blanket and slinky on them, that starts encouraging that hair to come off, you know, when they have that. So we put them, we have a pretty strict protocol. What hand do you normally start to look at putting slinkies or shapes and nice things on? So the winter months are different to me, you know, or when it comes in the summer and it's going into cool, it's not as, it's frigid to me, you know, you have to be real careful. So I try around 60, I start putting the slinkies on, but then it just depends on how tight your barn is, like my barn isn't as tight as this barn. So then you put your slinkies on a little different and then once they're really on. What about the slinky, if it's a full body and can you just rub the mine out? The biggest thing is making sure you have one that's big enough. If you put, and slinkies, I feel like if you're not used to sizing them, you want to order a medium for your quarter horse and it's going to be too small, probably. We would almost always use largest and extra-largest too and also making sure that if you're a horse, to me, like when they're just standing there, if that neck part is tight on their main just standing there, that slinky's too small. Like it should be a little loose so that way when they put their head down, it is maybe tight-ish, you know, but if they're just standing there like this and it's clean to the top of their main, it's going to rub some of their main out. It's too small. Yeah. So. What is the secret to a nice producing a very thick and healthy mane and tail? I think contrary to popular belief, people thinking, the less you brush them or maintain them or take care of them, or, you know, you just leave them alone, which I don't, like I feel like you're going to pull less out. If you- When I say your tail is up, we braid it, have a little deal, we'll re-loop it through itself and wrap it. So it's pretty clean when we take it out of that, but we still will do it once a week. So we pull all that out, shampoo and condition it with warm water, let it completely dry. Like it has to be completely dry. Know not what at all. And then we'll go through and braid their mane. And when you do their mane, you have to make sure that it's not too tight at the top or they're going to rip it out. It's a little like that, slinky. Like if they're just standing there like- And Justin, you and your father, Bob, have a very good reputation of thoroughbred business. So you would have learned a lot of this from pin-hooking and also just prepping horses for thoroughbred business? Yeah, cause I helped him. We helped vet year-lands to go to the sales in Keeneland and stuff. So a different discipline, but the same common denominators for fitting a horse, do you think, a thoroughbred? Yeah, but just- To me, I guess it would just be about the amount of feet, like your concentrated feed per, like those horses need more in general cause they just burn it up so fast to me. But it's just your exercise, what you decide on your exercise program. Well, and I think the round pen's a little like how he says that they walk the thoroughbred so that they have probably confidence in their steps that they know kind of about, that sounds funny, but walking in a straight line when people want to view them, no different than the round pen, like when we would go to Justin's to look at year-lings, we want to see them in the round pen. We don't want to see them on the walker. We don't get a whole lot out of seeing them in a stall. We want to see them in the round pen. So it's a process for those cults to learn to travel in the round pen. And there's a lot of horses, in my opinion, at the sales that don't probably bring what they should have because people that don't understand how to work a yearling in the round pen have been working them. So A, they don't know about taking their leads both ways. They don't travel good around there. They're a little scared going in there because they- So let's get on to the very debatable topic of nutrition and diet because I'm sure this is everyone who's got an own personal opinion. What do you like to do for your yearlings? Well, we do our alfalfa, which I honestly think the alfalfa is probably the single most important thing. Like, we can grain all we want. And there's a lot of different grain that I think is equally as strong between brands. I think that there's a lot of good products. But the bottom line is if you have bad alfalfa, your horses aren't gonna look good. So in my opinion, it starts with the alfalfa getting good, leafy, horse quality alfalfa. And that's hard to find right now and it's double hard to afford because it's high, you know? So if you cheat on the alfalfa, it's, I mean, I don't know what Justin thinks of this, but I think if you cheat on the alfalfa, your grain isn't gonna make that big difference. If you have a good alfalfa, that's when your grain is gonna come in and make the extra difference. It's gonna give you that up. You know, we would, I would say count on our alfalfa more than our grain, but Justin does a lot more like chemist work with his grain and his supplements and all that than we do. We rely more on my house at our alfalfa. So just different ways of doing it. So Justin, just let us know about your chemistry. Say what formula. So the alfalfa like start, I mean, that's number one and then they need it. I try to keep something in front of them all day long unless they're just.