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Wayne Drydale moves out of the way as the mares run out of the gate at his farm in Bolckow, Mo. Mr. Drydale was moving the horses to the summer pasture.

The horseman taps his head. Wayne Drydale telegraphs no self-mockery with the gesture, just an explanation for his half-century in the business of equine breeding.

Time passed, more than 18,000 days, with the animals needing regular attention. They like to eat daily, he jokes.

Sometimes, the horses broke his bones. Sometimes, they hurt his wallet.

Mr. Drydale rode from a young age, a farmboy before tractors became commonplace in Andrew County. He mounted up to go to school in Bolckow, Mo.

He grew up with horses ... liked to ride, liked to work with them. The affinity came naturally. The horseman came to know the value of a good disposition in the stable. The four-legged creatures probably had the same recognition.

Now Mr. Drydale taps his head, just to clarify his reason for so long a time in the barnyard.

“I don’t have to be short a couple of bricks up here to stay with it 50 years,” he says, “but it helps.”

The American Quarter Horse Association holds a different view of his upstairs brick shortage. In the fall, it brought Mr. Drydale to Amarillo, Texas, to honor him for his half-century of raising horses. The president of the national group gave him a trophy roughly the weight of a cinder block.

“It would make a paperweight, I guess,” he says.

Don’t read much into the name quarter horse. It’s full size. The association says anyone who has been to a rodeo, gone to a working ranch or seen a western movie knows the breed.

Mr. Drydale calls them muscular animals with good minds, explosive speed and strong legs for quick stops. Most are gentle, versatile and easily trained. They make superb racers over short courses, and rodeo riders value them for calf-roping and bulldogging skills. Herdsmen know quarter horses for their “cow sense.”

Born in 1922, Mr. Drydale got a piece of land right out of high school. World War II took him away from Northwest Missouri, but he bought some horses on his return.

One was a palomino mare. A friend, Alfred Dodds, loaned him a stallion. Three foals resulted from the animals’ union, all hitting the bloodline jackpot. Though only one survived a lightning strike, that horse, named Doby’s Ginger, began a lineage for every brood mare in the Drydale stable.

It would be years before the horseman could afford his first stallion. The quarter horse association registered it as number 0685215, but the name still graces a sign in front of the Drydale farm: Foxy Clabber.

In its 33 years, Foxy Clabber sired 244 foals. Those from the Drydale farm, palominos like Wimpy’s Gold Fox and Foxy’s Golddust, became regular entrants in the quarter horse world championships in Oklahoma City.

Far from their Bolckow origins, the Foxy Clabber offspring thrived for horse owners in places like Vernon, Texas, and Marietta, Okla. One, called Foxy Go-Getter, brought the top price at a noted quarter horse sale in Clovis, N.M.

Greg Clement, an auctioneer at the St. Joseph Stockyards, called Foxy Bars of Gold, sired by the Drydale stallion, one of the best horses he ever rode. He wrote a poem about the horse. (“He became a cowboy’s workin’ dream,” goes one line.)

“There’s no better fellow than Wayne,” Mr. Clement says. “He always bred the right kind of quarter horses, the kind that would go to work for you in the pasture or the rodeo arena, either one.”

In earlier times, Mr. Drydale and his wife, Mary, would go for pleasure rides. Age and chores have caught up. The horses and cattle don’t tolerate missed meals.

“It seems like I put in more time now than I did a few years ago, just trying to keep everything going,” the horseman says. “Or else I’m getting slower.”

He understands his full life with quarter horses can’t go on forever. He celebrate another landmark in 2012.

“I don’t expect I’ll be able to handle these stallions at 90,” the Andrew County man says. “Probably, I’ll have to cut down a little bit.”

A little bit ... maybe. Mr. Drydale knows good stock has staying power.

Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.