Welcome to The Irish Rose, home
of Parnell's Irish Cobs. We hope that you and your family have
enjoyed a wonderful Holiday season – we had a quite Christmas at the
Irish Rose Farm and even got a bit of snow just in time for a White
Christmas! The Gypsy Horses have put on their wonderful thick
winter coats and many of them are working on great mustaches. They
don’t seem to mind the temperature extremes we have been
experiencing the past few days – from single digit overnight lows to
daytime highs in the low 50’s! It does make it a bit of a challenge
to keep them working over the winter, but we use every “warm” day
that we get to exercise them.
It’s been a
wonderful year for Parnell’s in 2011 - we sent several horses to
their new “forever homes”, including Parnell’s Laoise, as mentioned
in the News Flash above. Now is the time to start planning for the
2012 show and performance season. Parnell’s still has several fine
young horses, as well as selected bloodstock, available at very
attractive prices. And we will have new foals from Cahir and Roisin
in the Spring, and from Lisdoonvarna in the Fall of 2012. Be sure
and check out the “Horses for Sale” page for the latest information
on our available horses. Thinking about breeding your mare this
year? Our blue stallion, Parnell’s Leannan, will be standing to a
limited number of approved Gypsy mares in 2012 – be sure and visit
his page for more information (and look at Caoinlean and Si Gaoithe,
his first foals from 2010!) If you are in the Fort Collins area and
would like to visit with our
herd,
or see Leannan in person, please contact us to arrange your visit!
We are often
asked how we got involved with Gypsy Horses - we became fascinated
with these small, colorful, draft-type horses and their link to our
Irish ancestry a few years ago, and decided to start a horse
breeding operation here in Northern Colorado. These horses,
commonly referred to as
Gypsy horses, Gypsy Vanners, Gypsy Cobs or
Tinker horses, are renowned for their extremely docile
nature, endurance, weight-pulling ability and extraordinary looks.
As you will see from the pictures, a trademark of these horses is
the extreme thickness of mane and tail, as well as the extravagant
"feathering" on the legs.
At
Parnell's, our goal is to breed, train and show the finest
traditional
Irish Cobs. We are meeting this goal by carefully matching our
broodmares with hand-picked
stallions in terms of conformation and color. We also believe that it is equally
important to maintain their well-deserved reputation for being
hard-working horses with gentle dispositions. We breed for
performance, whether in harness or under saddle, and we focus on the
qualities that promote the ability to perform in multiple
disciplines. We currently have eight horses available for purchase,
including five mares (three in foal!), a gelding and our fine
stallion - please see the
Horses for Sale page for more information and pictures.
We are pleased that we have been able to preserve another part of
the Irish culture in the form of
traditional driving vehicles. We
are privileged to own two Irish
Gypsy vardos or living
wagons, an
English Gypsy flat cart and an
authentic
Irish jaunting cart - please make
sure you check the
Driving Vehicles page for more
information and photos of these lovely vehicles!
Thank you
for visiting our website - we hope you will enjoy the pictures of
our fine horses and our traditional Gypsy driving vehicles. Please
contact us for more information regarding our available
Horses for Sale. Our farm,
The Irish Rose, is only an hour
North of Denver, CO and we would love to show you our horses and
wagons in person!
Parnell's
Irish Cobs, LLC
Charlie and Jan Cox
