The 2026 Round Up Sale was more than the culmination of two years of hard work in Lakeland College’s animal science technology (AST) program for Haylie Ost. It was more than a livestock sale that she and her classmates had worked for months to arrange, featuring the horses and cattle they had spent the past year preparing for sale to industry leaders from across Western Canada.

It was a bidding war she was determined to win for the horse she had started, Nics Dual Badger, aka AJ, the 2023 AQHA sorrel gelding she had been matched with at the beginning of the school year. The colt she first had trouble catching.

Ost grew up on a cattle ranch in southern Alberta, near Medicine Hat, riding since she was four years old. The operation has over 400-head of black Angus cattle and some red as well. They used horses for everything on the ranch, like rounding up cows and moving bulls.

She’d come to Lakeland with the dream of becoming a colt starter, but after her first year, she wasn’t sure college was the way she wanted to accomplish that goal.

Her instructor, Matt Rustemeier, encouraged her to return to finish the program.

“He told me not to give up on it,” she recalls. “He wanted me to be able to follow my dreams. He pushed me and made me work for it, and I am grateful for it.”

Off to a rocky start

In their second year, AST equine majors like Ost are divided into two teams for their year of taking the reins of the Student-Managed Farm – Powered by New Holland (SMF). They are divided into colt starters, matched up with a colt and tasked with starting them and preparing them for work on the ranch, and the breeding team, overseeing the college’s broodmare herd and planning for its future.

Ost was a designated colt starter, just as she had wanted, and that’s when she met AJ.

She was given options and chose him from among the herd, and then they were stuck together.

“Whatever you got, you got,” Ost says, adding, “It started off rocky, as he was not all that easy to catch, “But we worked through it. We figured it out together. And then I just literally fell in love with him.”

Ost spent the year working on AJ’s roping and cow-working skills. They spent hours riding together, five days a week at 6 a.m. for the first semester, and then a more varied schedule in the second. They worked with dummies and live cattle, developing his body control and other skills. She got him used to all manner of terrain and situations, taking him through various obstacles until he was sound and confident, like carrying flags and crossing bridges.

As part of her role with the equine SMF unit, Ost was a member of the public relations team. So, she also worked on marketing AJ, along with other colts and weanlings that would be up for sale at the Round Up Sale. She created social media videos sharing why AJ and others would be perfect ranch horses, along with interviews with her team, behind the scenes glimpses of the SMF equine team and promo of the Round Up Sale. She did it all knowing that she didn’t actually want to give him up.

A winning bid

Ost had started her own barrel horses before, working with finished ranch horses to prepare them for the rodeo, but had never started with a colt from the very beginning.

“Right away, once I started riding AJ and getting to know him, we definitely formed a strong connection,” Ost says

“He’s a little bit smaller than I’m used to and I love the size of him. I love the way he moves. He’s also got a huge stomp on him which we’re still trying to work on. I’ve never had a horse that’s a big stomper and that’s another reason why I really wanted to purchase him.”

The day of the sale, Ost was nervous on many levels. She’d never been involved in a sale on that scale before, and she and her classmates worked hard practicing for it, making sure they knew what to do to showcase their colts in front of the audience.

And then there was the fact that she’d decided she didn’t want to go home without AJ, and unfortunately, Ost had done her job marketing him a little too well.

“He performed so well and while I’m grateful for it, that’s probably why there were a lot of people interested in him,” Ost says. She’d told Rustemeier about her plan to purchase AJ, and he’d told her that she’d need to do it through the bidding process at the Round Up Sale and that other people there were going to want him as well.

“I was so stressed,” Ost says. She spent the auction on the phone with her father, who was putting bids through for her online, while she paced and held her head and worried that she wouldn’t win the bid.

 “I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to keep my first colt that I started.”

In the end, she won the auction with a $20,000 bid, the highest one for any of the colts on offer that day.

Next step: Rustlers Rodeo

At the end of the semester, as Ost packed up and readied to head back home to the ranch with AJ, she was already planning how they’d spend their summer, working on his breakaway and rodeo skills.

The goal? To have him ready to start breakaway with the Rustlers rodeo team in the fall, when Ost is back on campus, this time taking agribusiness.

“Matt says girls always end up falling in love with their horses,” Ost says, laughing. “And I guess that’s what ended up happening. You only get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be with your first colt. The first horse you start is always going to be the best.”