Ladies in Waiting

Gaited horses:  Lacey Blue, MFT mare on left, & Pushover's Heart of Gold, TWH mare on right, are next in line to visit Silver, the stallion. 

New foal on the way...

This is Tennessee Walking Horse mare, Jose's Lucky Lady.  As you can see, she is very pregnant.  This is quite the surprise as due to the collapse of the horse market, I didn't intend to breed any of the mares last year.  Obviously, some stallion had other ideas!  
Fortunately, I noticed her increasing girth and brought her to the barn to keep her off the fescue pasture.   It appears that she will definitely have milk  (one of the problems with fescue is lack of milk  &/or decreased production of colostrum), but I am concerned about her size. Another problem with fescue foals is their large size (resulting in difficult births) and thickened placentas which the foals are unable to break through and thus suffocate upon birth.   Retained placentas can also cause the mare to founder or lead to an infection resulting in difficult rebreeding.  I certainly wish I had known about her pregnancy earlier and could have taken her away from the fescue sooner.  

Spring foals

Chinchilla, a Caspian, and her foal. One of the best parts of Spring is observing all the new life entering the world. While a protective mother, Chinchilla is willing to share her foal with 'her people.'

Cull cows

I hauled 3 'cull' cows to the sale barn today. What an expensive lesson. One cow was a "Freemartin", which means that she is sterile.  Apparently when a cow has twins of each sex, then the bull twin will be fertile, but the female twin will be sterile. WHO KNEW? How does one go about acquiring such knowledge, other than by making mistakes? I bought this cow as a breeding heifer & have now put two and 1/2 years of feed, vaccines, etc. (expenses) into her only to find out that she is a freemartin & thus sterile.  Therefore, I had to sell her as a slaughter cow as opposed to a breeding cow - slaughter price being much lower. What a bummer!

More bonding

Hi-Ho, Silver!

April plays Parelli's Friendly Game with Silver, registered TWH, SSHBEA, NSHA, & Racking horse stallion.  Originally Silver was afraid of the whip (actually a stick with a string attached). But by flipping the string over his back, April has taught Silver to trust her and that even though the string is in motion and touching him all over his body, it is not going to hurt him. The fact that Silver is walking on a slack or lose lead rope shows that he is not trying to get away from April.  April praises Silver to let him know that he is doing the right thing.  Even though Silver is a stallion, he has a wonderful, gentle disposition.  His easy-going temperament and his trust in April allow him to actually enjoy being with her and participating in the 'games'.

This is Seve's Pushover, a coming two year old Tennessee Walking Horse.  He apparently tried to jump the fence to get in the adjoining pasture with a Tennessee Walking Horse mare, Jamaica Mistake, and her pasture mate, an American Saddlebred mare, Missouri Showtime. Fortunately, SP is tall enough that all four feet touched the ground so that his weight was mostly off the gate.   And he remained calm enough for us to pour Wesson oil over the gate & underneath him so that we could open the gate and slide him off.  All's well that ends well.