name my colts!

I think I may be severely stressed out. My two new babies are two weeks old and I still haven’t given them names. Usually they have names with in a day if not hours of birth.  Even Speck has nothing more than a barn name. So I am requesting help.  I will take barn names or registrable names and after some time (ie, when I’m not so stressed!) I’ll put up a poll for people to pick their favorites.

 

 

  Here is Itchy’s baby.  He’s such a flashy little colt, that I want a name with some pazazz for him! Dam is Jody’s Three and sire is Hickory Parr None.

 

 

  Speck is two months old now and I still have no idea what to name him. Dam is Vintage Fax (Bitchy), sire is Hickory Parr None (Chip).

 

 

 

 Maudie’s baby has been sold and he’ll be named by his owner, but I still need to call him something other than “Maudie’s baby” Suggestions? (Maudies Poo Jet and Hickory Parr None)

 

No names needed for April. She’s been named well by my friend K - Dry April Mist. (new pictures of her coming soon, I promise!)

Bring your imaginations, i’m not a stickler for meshing mom and dad’s name to get the foal, so just about anything goes (keep it clean, people ) Leave a comment or email me and let’s get these babies named!

til next time ~

new foal pictures

As promised here are pictures of the new babies as well as a couple new pictures of Speck. No new pictures of April until she is at least no longer on stall rest.  The injury to her leg is doing fine and healing well, and amazingly the time in the stall has helped straighten up her one leg. It may never be 100% straight, but danged if it isn’t 50% better than it was. Some extra care to keep her trimmed and you’d never know the differance. The first two are Itchy’s buckskin stud colt, the next one is Maudie’s stud colt and the last two are Speck - yes that’s him running away. Little bugger can move!

 til next time ~

To breed or not to breed …

This is a question many people are asking themselves this year. I know plenty of people who are still breeding everthing they have, and others who are selling out. I’m inbetween. Today I want to breed, tomorrow I don’t.  Hubby says if we’re not we should just sell the mares, cut Chip and make a nice riding gelding out of him and be done. Somedays I think this is a good idea. I have always said I would geld Chip before I sell him.  Other days I get heartsick at the thought of selling my mares - my girls.

This year I have decided - I think! - that i will not breed anything other than Sissy. (Though now I’m not even sure of that …) I’d like to see what the market will do and how the ban on slaughter is going to effect things more than they have. Here they are already speculating on how many domestic horses have been let loose with the range horses. BLM is not a happy camper.

So for now, my plan is not to breed for 2009 foals and possibly to downsize by selling two mares. The obvious choices would be Tara and Crystal as they are related to Chip and even with Tara’s oops, I am so against inbreeding/linebreeding (call it what you wish, in my mind it is the same thing) that I wouldn’t breed either of them to him. (again )

Next year will be hard for me, especially if I decide to wait until spring to rebred Sissy, to have no foals playing in the pasture. No excitement waiting for mares to foal out. No guessing what the foals might be.  But I just can’t justify it. If I cannot sell what I have now, why am I breeding for more?  However i can’t say downsizing will be easy either.  Not just for the market, but for my own attachment to my girls.  In a perfect world, I’d keep my mares and have my foals too.

til next time ~

disappointment

Returned from the vet this morning with bad news. Sissy is not bred.  Doc thinks she was and that she absorbed the foal.

He says her cycle is off and she isn’t “working” the way she should. She’s got eggs and folics inside that say she’s in flaming heat, but she won’t respond to a stud, and shows no sign that she is in heat.  So we are supposed to tease her for the next seven days straight. If she accepts a stud, bred her, if not at the end of the seven days she should be out, so he suggests giving her a shot of lute to bring her back in and then breed her.  One we breed her, he wants to see her 15 days from the last cover to check her and make sure she isn’t going to absorb again.  And I forget waht he told me we would have to put her on if she was bred, but if her system still wasn’t working right. (I did listen, I swear! But some of the drug names confuse me and if they are smething I don’t know, I have to hear it a half dozen times before it sticks with me.  I’ll double check with Doc and find out what it was.)

So now we need to decide if we are going to do this, or wait until spring.  I suppose since I will be keeping the foal it won’t really matter if it is a late season baby … I just was hoping to have something early next year

til next time ~

Busy, busy, busy

Well, it has been a while since I have posted, but not for lack of trying. More for lack of time.  As some of you know we are trying to finish a house that we are remodeling and that has been time consuming as the renters are here ready to move in and we are still three days out from having it done.  Nothing like a little pressure to motivate

On the horse front: we had two more babies born, which makes four - we’re done!  That is we would be had we not had an opps.

Last August two of ours mare broke through the fence and went to visit Chip. One was most definitely in heat, the other showed no signs at all. Both are related to Chip. The one in heat - Crystal - is his aunt and the other - Tara, is his mama.  They couldn’t have been down with him more than an hour or two, so I thought maybe we were safe as we reseparated them.  Weeelll … not so much. Tara (yes, Tara, not Crystal) is preggers.  She will drop a colt here around the first of August.  Times like this reinforce my motto: Nothing can be easy.  It goes to show that even the most conscientious of breeders sometimes make a mistake.

But on to the good news Our sorrel mare Maudie (Maudies Poo Jet) had a pretty dun stud colt with just one white sock on June 14 (yes, another saturday baby!)  Three days later Itchy (Jodys Three), a buckskin had a flashy buckskin stud colt, with two back white socks and a huge blaze on his face. 

So far this year Chip is at 75% color, with two duns, a buckskin and a sorrel. I haven’t heard from any of the outisde horses that were bred last year to know what colors they got.  I think we kind of cursed ourselves though. We had one gal that was a first time breeder. She had a pretty bay quarter pony mare and all her daughter wanted was a palomino baby. So hubby and I agreed we wouldn’t be disappointed if Chip threw only one palo and she got it. I’m wondering if maybe she did - I hope so!

In other news, April, our sorrel filly, took a huge chunk of meat out of her back right leg right above the knee. Took it clear down and passed the muscle.  All we can figure out is that she ran into the wheeline. So since last Sunday she and Peanut have been stalled while we work on her and keep the wound clean. Only good thing about it, is that I am getting the little bugger halter broke. Man is she a smart little cookie! In less than five minutes she was giving to pressure and turning to me.  Too bad she’s got a bad back foot. Hopefully someone will be willing to overlook it and she’ll make that someone a nice trail horse.

Well, that’s long enough for today. Pictures soon, I promise. Not only of the new guys, but of April and Speck too. They sure are growing!

til next time ~

 

what’s it really cost?

Even if you take it down to the simplest of equations, ignoring the obvious of farrier, floating teeth, and barring any problems with the delivery,  it isn’t cheap to breed for your own foal. In some cases it is cheaper to buy a weanling than it is to breed. Let’s take Sissy for example:

Breeding fee: $900

5-way shots, WNV, deworming: $18, $18, $10 = $46.00

Vet check, cultures: $135.00

Mare care: $8/day at an average of 10 days = $80.00

Vet check, ultrasound: $35.00 x 2 (sometimes x 3 depending on the situation) = $70.00

Pneumabort-K: $11.00 (given 5, 7, 9 months) x 3 = $33.00

Total = $1264.00  And that’s going cheap. (note: I only dewormed once! :) and I haven’t added all the expenses after the foal hits the ground.)  This is in it’s simplest form. If you did no more than the basics and didn’t bother worrying over farrier bills ($40/trim every three months) or floating her teeth ($210 every other year. This happens to be her year) or if something were to go wrong at the birth (anywhere from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars!)

And what about what comes after the foal is born? More shots for mom, then for baby as he grows (see previous post, vaccinations). Vet check for the little darling once he hits the ground, not to mention the time - presumably yours - put into training this wild pony. (Contrary to popular belief, they aren’t born halter broke, people!)

So could I buy a friesian weanling for what I’m paying to make one? Probably not. Heck, friesian’sare expensive! Besides, I like being able to say, I bred and raised her. Nice feeling of accomplishment when all is said and done.

until next time ~

 

addicted

Until a few days ago, I had never ventured onto youtube.  Then I read in Horse & Rider Magazine (www.horseandrider.com) about watching horse video’s on youtube and now, not to say I’m hooked, but I do like to browse. I plan to show two of my horses this year, I hope! My yearling filly, Smudge, and my two-year-old gelding Emilio, and I have found the show video’s very insightful.  They would be even better if my connection wasn’t so crummy and I could watch more than 2 seconds at a time before it stalled out and restarted. Frustrating, but at least I get the gist of it.  So far I’ve been looking for longe line classes and in hand trail for yearlings. If I get real ambitious, maybe I’ll try looking up halter classes … then again, maybe not. That just seems so boring to me.  I want something with action, so-to-speak.

Plus i’ve been looking up video’s of friesian sport horses, and the more I see then more I’m impressed I am.  Please oh please let her be bred!

~ until next time

appointments

Today was a day of appointments, or at least scheduling them.  Hubby called the vet to get Sissy in for her next preg check. I called the farrier to get her feet trimmed up again. And I called the other vet to see about getting her teeth floated as well as Chip’s. - the old toothless wonder needs some dental work to compensate for those missing front teeth he acquired from his stupid attack as a coming two-year-old.

Today was just your basic uneventful day. Thank goodness!

~ til next time

what to do, what to do

Once again I am contemplating what to do with my yet unborn, as-of-yet-unknown-if-she’s-even-bred-sporthorse.  Part of me says go for it. Do the dressage. I get dressage. I don’t really hate it, it is just very disciplined and well, I’m not a very disciplined type of person ;p I got to thinking, just what can a Friesian do? I’ve seen them do dressage, driving, jumping etc. But none of those things interest me.  Would it be so bad to use her just as a trail horse? No, not really, I just want to do more.

The other day my friend J and I went sightseeing to look at some horses, because we both need another horse like we do a hole in the head, not that that has ever stopped us.  One place we went to the couple do reining cow horse.  I’ve always loved to watch a horse worka cow.  Cutting shows are fun. I’ve never really had the inclination to try and cut with a horse. Not to say I have fear of cattle - I don’t. I’m the one who tackles the calves for tagging and on the bigger calves I can’t catch, I play dodge the mama cow while hubby ropes the baby.  So fear isn’t really an issue; however, I can’t really say what the issue is as to why I “fear” doing cutting.  Inexperience? Could be. Possibly. Probably.

But could I overcome the “fear”? Could I turn a sporthosre into a cutter or reiner? Even if it is just at local shows, why not? I’ve got nothing to lose, and it could be fun. Hubby keeps telling me not to worry about it.  It’s 11 months until the foal hits the ground, and at least three years (probably closer to four since Friesian’s don’t mature until around age 7) before we ride her, so I’ve got time.  Right?

~ until next time

a unique request

As if fuel wasn’t enough, now we have to contend with rising feed prices.  Normally I can go into the store and get when I need for the month for the senior horses for around $50. Yesterday not only were they out of the grain I normally feed, but the replacement stuff was $17.49 a bag.  It cost me about $80 in feed, and that’ll last a month for the old guys.  Makes me glad now that I don’t supplement my own horses unless really needed.  I’m scared to think what the oats are going to cost me when I have to refill.  I bought enough to get me through the winter, and so far it has, but I’ll need to get more before summer comes and I’m not looking forward to that bill. 

ok, rant over, on to the good stuff.

About a week or so ago, probably closer to two, a friend of ours caught up with us one morning just to shoot the you know what. He’s working for a feed company that makes supplements for dairies. So as he and hubby are talking about what dairies are owned by whom in the area, I look over at him and pipe off - Do you have anything for horses?

He says: Sure, we sell Nutrena, what do you need?

Thinking about the older horses, I say: Something that isn’t loaded down with molasses.

He says: You tell me what you want, we’ll mix it up and get it to you.

That stopped me in my tracks.  Make me own feed? I never considered the possibility. To be able to know exactly what my horses are getting - well, that’s every horseperson’s dream.  So now I’m sitting here contemplating what would be best to go into senior horse feed.  I have no idea what the cost will be - probably a pretty penny or two but it just might be worth it. Maybe I’ll experiment with the mares first, as the horses who I was originally thinking about are heading home for the summer and won’t be back until October.

So here is my question for you: If you could make up the perfect feed for your horse, what would it be? (come on, people, comment! I know you’re out there, my daily count says so! lol)

until next time ~ more musings about friesians