Hidden Gems: Meet Carley Cope of Broken Arrow Diamond P Ranch

Today we’d like to introduce you to Carley Cope.

Hi Carley , thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
We are Carley Cope and Adrian Perez. Even from the start, when we had first met, our dream was to found our own ranch – here we are, our dreams becoming a reality. Here’s a little bit about us!

Both of us grew up as elite athletes instilling strong work ethics and a strong sense of integrity from a young age, this carried us to both play college athletics – ironically in the same athletic conference.

Adrian studied engineering as he played football, at South Dakota School of Mines and upon graduation took over and grew his father’s painting company into a very well known company, JR’S Painting LLC. Adrian has a passion for animals, growing up with horses and dogs. Lucky for us Adrian can fix just about anything, helping keep our ranch in excellent shape.

Carley studied psychology and went on to pursue a master’s in counseling. She also was passionate about horses throughout her childhood and ended up working as a wrangler at a local horse rescue and outfitter near the end of her college career. She also worked as an Equine Psychotherapist and is certified in EAGALA (the practice of horse and animal behavior). Carley also used to volunteer her time training problem horses and providing lessons to people who wanted to learn to work better with their horse companions. Like Adrian, she also loves dogs – in total they have 4 dogs residing at the ranch!

About a month ago, we got the news that the current boarding facility we had our horse at, was shutting down in less than a month. We had no clue what we were going to do, as we had recently moved into the middle of the city and there were no boarding facilities close to us. One day Adrian brought up the idea of just bringing our horse to our property and within days we were full-fledged into building not just a space for our horse, but an entire boarding facility in the center of Central Phoenix. We are definitely a niche ranch, for folks who find themselves in the same predicament we did – living in the middle of a city with nowhere within 35 minutes to keep their equine-family members. I guess one could call us Urban Cowboys!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been far from a smooth road for us. The time crunch was a huge hit to our construction process. We essentially had less than 2 and a half weeks to turn an over, grown, shrub ridden property into a brand-new performance level ranch and boarding center. For most, it sounds like not a problem, but a lot more goes into it than meets the eye. We needed to rip out all of the old shrubs and remove 2 feet of dirt to get a clean slate; we had to find and install horse panels, shades, feeders, and waterers, find a livestock vet that serviced our area, as well as a hay distributor, and finally to find a way to market our unique services in an a very unlikely area. To top things all off we ended up having to pick up our horse 5 days earlier than anticipated and added an additional horse to the picture on top of everything else!

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Broken Arrow Diamond P Ranch?
We are an urban performance horse ranch and horse boarding facility. We are a niche boarding facility that allows residents of central Phoenix to have their equine-family members less than 20 minutes away (definitely a luxury) most boarding centers being 35-45 minutes away from the city. The C0-Owner Carley will eventually provide riding lessons to all ages and even horse training and colt starting. Carley is also a Licensed Counselor and certified equine assisted psychotherapist, the longest term goal being to extend an equine counseling practice to the ranch.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Luckily our ranch life was not largely impacted by COVID-19. The biggest difference we have noticed that has not yet gone “back to normal” per say, is the price of grain and hay. Hay prices were around $14 a bale of hay prior to the crisis and now we are up to $22 per bale of hay. To put it into context one horse goes through about 10 bales of hay a month. It has impacted not only us and our ranch, but the entire western community across Arizona and the rest of our country.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094578714046
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brokenarrowdiamondp/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094578714046

Image Credits
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