The Girls
In April we welcomed Alfama's gorgeous, strapping colt Gualter into the world; a helping hand was needed as she struggled a little to pass his shoulders but otherwise it was a textbook delivery and we were utterly relieved to have got our first foal safely on the ground. The thrill of being the first human hand to touch him and welcome him into the world is something I shan't ever forget.
On the ground is one thing of course but then there are the additional complications of standing up, and taking the all-important colostrum. All of this is really rather scary when it's your first year of breeding and you don't have the benefit of experience to guide you. It took Gualter quite a while to marshal those ridiculously long legs into a level of control required for standing, with a relief all round that was matched only when he finally latched on and started to suckle. This new, perfect little horse that came into the world only because we chose to put our mare to his sire, Assirio d'Atela. It's quite a thought.
I can also say with some authority that the CCTV which we painstakingly installed in early spring was an absolute godsend.
Mum and baby stayed in for a couple of days and then went out in the field. Oh the anxiety of each new step!
As May waned, it was Xacra's turn for prepare for the arrival of her firstborn, and we geared up to go through it all again. Having realised that our stables weren't really big enough to use for foaling, we took the partition out of the field shelter, bedded it thickly with straw and covered the gates with gale break to foal proof it as much as possible. She was a few days off her due date and was showing **no signs whatsoever** of impending foaling, and so it was that she managed to take us all by surprise.
Last checked at 3:15am and all well, Sid went off to bed and I was up about 6am, blundering straight over to the CCTV monitor to check on Xacra. I'm not sure how long I stood there, staring stupidly at the monitor, trying to register that there were now two horses in the shelter where previously there had only been one, but once it sank in I ran to wake Sid and hurtled down the stairs as though Beelzebub and all his little wizards were hot on my heels. And there he was, a tiny, tiny little golden foal with a perfect diamond right in the middle of his forehead.
All was not plain sailing, however, as within days of giving birth Xacra developed a case of mastitis (at the Bank Holiday, natch) and lost her milk, setting into motion a series of emergency measures to acquire both antibiotics for her and milk replacement formula for him. By the marvels of modern technology in general and Facebook in particular, we got in touch in our hour of need with a lovely lady called Jess, also a breeder, who was in the process of hand-raising her young colt who had tragically lost his mother a couple of weeks before. We made a late night dash to her yard near Canterbury that night where she furnished us with the all important milk replacement, prebiotics and a wealth of advice on how to go about feeding the baby.
We learned that bottle feeding a young foal is a stressful and difficult business. Both mum and baby are anxious, but you have to get some milk down him. Eventually we got him suckling by holding the bottle near mum's teats, and fortunately within a couple of days Xacra's milk came back in and we could resume some semblance of normality. Only a couple of days of getting up through the night to bottle feed him every couple of hours was enough for us - Jess did this for months!
The Boys
Meanwhile, Tigre, who had sustained an injury earlier in the year, went to the vets for a work up to establish the cause. Nerve blocks and ultrasound revealed that he had hyperextended his fetlock (probably on uneven hard ground during the winter) and was to be on box rest for 4-6 weeks. Argh. I hate to see horses kept in and we have spent considerable time and money facilitating their living conditions such that they can come and go pretty much as they please, so this was a low blow.
The first day or so weren't too bad but then he took to repeated caprioles to express his irritation, and kicked the stable to bits. So we put in a gate to give him a stable-sized area just outside his stable, and that was ok for a bit until he started caprioling again. We tried a stable mirror, but that was met with a tumescent fifth leg and a lot of squealing and thrashing, none of which is conducive to rest and recuperation. Argh. So we did the only thing we could reasonably do, and built a pen for him outside. It's not many adult stallions who can be so easily contained with a strip of electric rope, especially when surrounded by mares, but luckily he was one of them, and that kept him sane being out during the day and in at night. Eventually he came sound enough to go off to stud to be trained to the dummy and have his boy juices frozen down. Because of this we haven't done nearly as much as I wanted to this year, but very positively we have come a long way the work we are doing together, where previously I was relying far too much on others.
Quinito also went off to stud, took to the dummy with consummate ease and charmed the pants off everyone at stud. Both boys covered themselves in glory for being such good stallions, trainable and easy to handle. Aside from developing a mild footiness during the height of summer, Q has been rock solid throughout the year and we have been training regularly with our local TTT trainer, Mandy Lawrence. Next year I really must organise myself to take them out competing. My main problem is the time and energy involved, when so much of mine is spent on my job and the long daily commute into London.
There was the incident where Q galloped headlong into a 12' steel gate at night and gave himself an almighty nosebleed; not having dealt with anything like this before I was horrified by the amount of blood he produced and how quickly the yard turned into a bloodbath. Luckily no further damage done. All because of the clandestine arrival on a nearby property of one shetland pony stallion that night.
We took both mares to our local vets for AI in the summer but unfortunately neither were scanned in foal. Being new at this, we didn't learn until it was too late that it might have been wise to have them swabbed for any low lying uterine infections before we started and it proved an expensive and fruitless exercise trying to get them in foal. I'm not convinced that the stress of transporting them to the vets for the AI was helpful either, so we have decided on a different approach for next season, to install our own dummy and train as AI technicians.
The Yard
We've done a lot of work on the yard this year, firstly installing all weather rubber areas for everyone outside their stables/shelters. Last winter was awful, with horse being confined to barracks due to the snow, and having to hack a path through the ice from the yard to the picadeiro in order to be able to get them out a bit to stretch their legs. We've not had the worst of that type of weather yet this year but when we do, at least we will have a safe area for everyone to keep moving. This has already proven to be a godsend, not least when Gualter came in recently with a very fat fetlock and had to be rested with light exercise only for 10 days.
We installed drainage in the boys' winter paddocks - being on clay, you have to do what you can to manage this or watch them turn into churned up mud pits every winter. So far this winter they have held up really well, providing good firm grazing, with only mild poaching around the gates. We've also reseeded, rolled and harrowed again, so the paddocks are starting to recover from a long period of neglect before we moved in.
We've also purchased another 5 acres of land, which was a huge relief - apart from for the wallet, obviously. It has needed a lot doing to it including drainage, water and fencing, but all is now done and it's ready to go.
So in summary, apart from the odd incident here and there it has been a positive and productive year. The younglings are proving good to handle with feet, leading, farrier, vet etc - aside from one incident where Golfinho insisted on throwing himself over repeatedly when asked to stand for the farrier - and all is well.
Lots to do and plan for in 2012!
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