Tag: foals

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The foals of 2024

  The fillies of 2024 have been weaned and are now under their new ownership. I am lucky that Unikha is staying with me for a bit to grow up here and Uphoria is up to great and fun things with her new owner and new friends. This was the year of the tall fillies. Surprisingly both fillies got tall really quick this year and I have to say it was not the only surprise ! Breeding keeps you both humble and amazed. The theme of the 2024 breeding season was sticking to the relatively well known. Zigami was bred for the second time to Dauphin and Kreation...

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The foals of 2023

  This year’s crop: a colt and a filly; both dark with a very small star and that is pretty much where all comparisons end. Thorium (Finest/Wolkentanz II/Ferro) the colt was born first to the maiden mare Divine who despite a difficult birth (as in the colt was big and she was a maiden and she retained the placenta and needed some amount of intervention) revealed herself to be a terrific doting mother. From day one he looked like an Asian supermodel: Sexy as all hell, thin, bony and a bit androgynous at first :. We could tell right away that he was a tall, leggy, long-lined colt....

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The foals of 2022

3 beautiful foals this year. 3 lovely souls, cherished and expected and dearly loved right from the start. 4 good mares that took care of them the best they could and allowed them to be born safely and grow up well. I think they fit in well with my constant goals of : well bred, well handled and well raised. Superstition (Morricone/Kreation (Rubinero/Donnerhall): the black shinny pearl   Like her brothers before her, she was born very a very sensitive but sensible soul. Thin skin, impressionable, not overly fond of humans and generally finding their touch a bit much at first. Less sensitive by far than Pavarotti (v....

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Raising Foals
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Halter training for the new foal-Part1

How do I halter train the new foal?   Foals start out well: feral. They are leggy bundles of instinct that know nothing of the cushy captivity they are born into. The instincts that have served them well for millions of years of evolution will be constantly clashing with the world they will live in and the demand that will be put on them for most of their lives. For that reason, it is important that we ease them into our world as sensibly and as compassionately as we can. Just like young children and dogs, the first period of their lives is the most formatives. Brain plasticity...

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Raising Foals
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Halter training for the new foal-part 3

Part 3-Introduction to the halter You might have noticed that until now no halter has been involved. Why is that? The main reason is you are only human: the moment you have a handle on something you will want to use it. Why is that a bad thing? Our tendency when handling any horses is to grab the halter and tell the horse where to go. It might sound redundant or pedantic but babies are not born halter broke. They are not even born with an understanding of giving to pressure. Fun fact: it’s actually the opposite: you cannot push (or pull) a foal’s first reaction,  because its...

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Raising Foals
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Top 10 questions to ask a breeder.

So you’ve found an ad that catches your eye, something about that young horse makes your heart leap and you think to yourself: “This is an interesting prospect!” You probably have your own set of questions that are right away popping up in your head. I wanted to share with you what questions I, as a breeder, wished I was asked more often and as a bonus, I will tell you why I think those answers matter. (This is not just for sport horses, in fact, I purposefully tried to remove any specific breed bias here.) For those in a hurry: here are the top 10 questions and...

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Raising Foals
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From foal to maturity.

As foal mature they change of course, but how much? How can you tell what the foal you are looking at might look like at maturity? How do you train your eye to see into the future? One way is to look at a lot of foals as they mature and train your eye to see what changes and what stays the same. Here is some examples to practice on. Those are some of the foals we raised and we were able to get conformation pictures of later in life. The old adage 3 days, 3 months and 3yrs might be a fun one to remember but frankly,...

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