Well it has been a while since the last post but it has been a busy time here at the farm. Tremer has been a huge blast to have at the farm, we have successfully competed him to his ICh in Endurance and he has a solid 4 points in Advanced competition! We are so grateful to Jacob for letting him stay with us! He is expecting a foal here with us in the spring out of our stunning Prancer. We also are actively competing our Via Verona boys Lamporo and Socchievo both in Dressage with our homebred girl Porotonal. Both boys have earned points! In English we had an incredible older mare Confederate Lady Captain in the Intermediate ring while our young Fjord colt FlashyNorway has been dabbling in the Beginner ring. Sadly we had to say goodbye to Cappy, as we called her, when we found her sleeping peacefully in her run with the first rays of sun touching her pretty stripe. In Intermediate Dressage we have Orelinde Galathil and Seeker of Moonlight with the lovely Linda bringing home points. Moonlight just likes to take the ride it seems. Our custom Racking girl is hitting the ring with our lovely boy Elessar, who brought home a point this month! We have several others in the wings learning some and getting a little fit before they hit the ring.
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or at least what was left of it. We are up to 28 horses on the farm again, with 7 mares bred for next year. We are leasing the incredibly handsome and talented Extremely Good Lace from Jacob at Jacobs Dynasty. We are already dreaming of the Azteca foals by him! Though we don't have any coming in the spring, lol, we are however enjoying competing him in Endurance. We are enjoying his presence so much that we constantly forget that he'll be going home in a few years.
Micah and I have started moving forward with our herd. We are keeping it small to start, there are 20 horses on the property right now. We already want to reduce that number, but picking who goes and who to keep is nearly impossible at this point. We have 11 mares on the farm, one of them is visiting. Out of those 10 mares 3 are Local Stock, one each are a Fjord, a Somali, and a Racking Horse, and 4 are Azteca's. In looking through our files we have decided that one of the LS mares will be going to a new home. Looking at the foals she has produced we don't feel she can produce a foal of the calibre we are looking to achieve. Kat will probably be leaving also, we both feel that we can do better at this time. Below is a gallery of the mares and fillies on the farm. Nora is the guest mare. We have the one show gelding and 8 stallions/colts. Our two local stock boys, Jack and Flash are shaping up nicely for us. We have one Quarter Horse boy that we were hoping to campaign in the show ring, sadly he arrived basically wild. We have two handsome homebred Fjord colts and three Azteca boys. We are overjoyed to have two Via Verona colts on the farm as well as a performance lined stallion. We want to hang on to these guys and strengthen our mare band before we sell any boys. We had decided that we would get one foal from each of the mares before we made up our minds on them. Spring is showing signs as I write this update. Suki is not due for a couple of months yet, but she is in keeping Spring company as they are good friends. In writing this we've picked two mares that will be hitting the sales pages which will bring us down to 17 horses. We are also quietly looking for another show horse to help bring in more funds.
We are several months into recovery from the hardest thing that I have ever done. The farm declared bankruptcy and now we are starting over. Gone is all the hard work we put in, but we will get there again. In fact we will be better than ever. We have some awesome starting stock and one show horse. We were the most sad to see our Wutanvi girls leave, but the doors are open for us to build and expand slowly. This is our show horse Seeker of Moonlight. He was our first purchase outside of imports. We knew that having show income would be vital to our recovery. We imported two Somalis and an Azteca. We were blessed to get a colt and filly for the Somalis and a filly for our Azteca! The Azteca filly isn't much to look at right now, but Spring is a pretty girl. Our Somalis are mild and wild as far as colors go. Our filly, Suki, is mild and our colt, Fritz, is wild colored. We had been sitting on some Local Stock credits, so we turned those in. Just our rotten luck all boys! But they are decent boys. Jack is probably the "worst" on initial appearances, however he has nice breeding. Media is the next boy, he too is well bred. The most impressive boy off the trailer was Flash. Not only is Flash good looking he is also well bred. It is a joy that we got three unrelated boys to build our herd with. With our starter stock being underage with the exception of Fritz, we needed a mare of breeding age. We did some hunting and found Frosty, a decently bred Max. Sabino local stock mare. Her two foals were nothing special, but they were an improvement of the mare. Well imagine my surprise when her foal jumped off the trailer too! Little Peaches is learning to be a big horse starting with her ground manners. We then found a lovely Azteca mare at auction, contrary to her registration she is a Grey Splash that is Bay Roan Splash. We also found one of Via Verona's spectacular colts and of course we had to have him! He is one of Sammie's stunning boys and we are thrilled to have him! Then we spotted a performance custom stallion that CC had for sale, so needless to say we picked up Burn too. Our newest edition cost a pretty penny, but we think she is worth it. Moon is our most expensive purchase but with Burn and Nado as well as Fritz she will be a valuable asset to the farm. We are excited about the future of our little operation. Frosty is in foal to Fritz and we are eagerly waiting for her to near her due date. She is due 2741, but we will be on foal watch starting 2739.
With the two most recent seasons bringing us record number of stunning, stellar foals it is putting a strain on the farm. We are making cuts in the number of foals expected next year, there are two mares bred and only one is for us. Hayden has graciously sent us straws of her gorgeous stallion prospect to breed Gloria for her and one or several of our own girls. Gloria is bred for next year as is Layne just so Gloria's foal is not lonely.
We have placed several great horses for sale and will entertain inquiries on many others. Feel free to ask, the worst I will say is no! There has been so much going on here that even with the time to work 20 sessions a day with the foals and youngsters it isn't enough. So starting this month, 2696, I now can work the current training list (13 horses!) 20 minutes a day. Before I had to pick and choose, now I will be okay until foaling season. *gulps* Hopefully by then the horses I am working with are ready to move on to being exercised or can be worked by Jessi. I will be adding this years foals to their breed pages later on but I am very pleased with them overall! My colt by Gloria is my fastest learner.
We picked up two horses for training, cute appy colts, and Jon has returned home. Jon is competing lightly while we figure out what he likes best for a discipline. We are expecting 12 foals next year! Very excited for those crosses. I plan on selling a couple of this years if they are as great as I think they will be. It will be tough to choose who goes and who stays. Speaking of tough choices, our sales page has 6 horses on it! Was it ever hard to decide who got put there! I promise pictures will be coming of these adorable babies who are After one of the largest foaling seasons here on the farm in years, we have 9 foals on the ground! Five of those have struck us as keepers within days of being born. There is one that we are just not pleased with at all. There are other new additions to the farm as well! All of those introductions PLUS the bred pairs for next years foals and some farewells to a few mares that are retiring. We'll start with Tot. She has the attention span of a gnat. She's far from pretty in her mouse grey, and with a temperament lower than we ideally want in our Fjord's. Despite all of that, she is a sweet and willing learner. This puts her on our Keeper list, for now. She shares a spot with our next foal. Going in order from my list on the forums we come to "T". T has a better attention span, and a better temperament. She is sharing the Keeper spot with Tot currently. Simply because both are Grey and neither are Dun do they make the potential cut list. Sugar is well, sweet as sugar. She is a good filly to end Spice's breeding career. While Spice has only had three foals all three have been of good quality. Now I can cross my fingers from now that I'll get the yellow dun I've always wanted! Seriously though, Sugar is smart and willing, calm yet spirited and moving right along in her training. This is Princess, she is Aasta's last foal. She is very much a princess, gets upset when things don't go her way but is fine if she is approached correctly. She is coming along with her training. She made the keeper list because of her pangare and rabicano which I love on my Fjords. She is a gorgeous final foal for Aasta. Meet Jane, she is as wilful as she is stunning and she is just hot enough to be a lot of fun in whatever discipline we decide to point her at. Can't plan too far ahead though, that has gotten us in trouble in the past! Right now this striking filly is learning the ropes of ground manners and is dealing with the halter and really not impressed with the idea of walking on a rope. Clara is my surprise of the bunch. She shows a poor temperament, but her personality is far sweeter. She is very tolerant of training and is learning fairly quickly. She's on the temp list for the simple reason that she might be good breeding stock. We'll see how she shapes up. Sean is a handsome boy, a little hot a little flighty. But learns at a steady pace. I expect my boys that will remain studs to reach a certain standard, but will give a little leeway to rare breeds. He will remain unnamed until I work with him a bit more. This colt is not a keeper. He is mean, aggressive and in 10 minutes nearly exhaust himself. After only a few days working with him I knew it wasn't meant to be. He will be looking for a new home when the time comes. Mel is the opposite of the grey colt. He is mellow and willing to learn. He reacts not over reacts. He is likely my keeper from all three colts born. A huge breeding season for us this year! Here is the final line up of expecting mares for next years foals. I think Micah is out of his mind, finally, he suggested we breed this many!
Azteca: *Fastest Girl in Town due 2691 *Talamella due 2692 *JellyBeaner due 2692 *Glorious Moment In Time due 2692 *Sucha New Beginning due 2693 Fjord: *Skattekiste due 2691 *Agnetha due 2691 Racking Horse: *Magik Embers due 2692 Somali Pony: *Memories of Wolf due 2691 *Glowbug due 2692 If you think you see some names you don't know, you'd be right. We picked up a few horses from some awesome Azteca breeders and are thrilled to have them in our herd! I am working on getting individual pages up for all the horses on the farm. I must be nuts, but I want this. To reduce my hours with my job. That's right, I'll be able to work with the horses 3 hours and 2o minutes each day! If the horses continue to improve and support the ranch expenses I'll be able to be full time at the farm!
That's right! Laiko is settled into his new permanent stall and run here at the farm! Thank you so much Hayden! We adore this boy and are thrilled to have him call our home his!
Fabio is progressing well with his renewed English training. He is settling into pleasure at first with hopes that he'll take to trail or fences. River, Jente and Lance (poor boy has been pretty much ignored for a few years) are all with me working on being a show horse. I have 5 horses to work with which means I get to spend 20 minutes a day with each of them! I love being able to take my time with them at this stage. Thanks to Hayden and Laiko MDA WON the CCA challenge for the over 12 year old horse division! To say we are ecstatic would be an under statement. Everyone on the farm, staff and visitors alike, has been beaming since we got the news. Sadly preparations are starting to be made for dear Laiko to make the trip home to Prairie Rose. He has a travel "kit" all packed to ensure he'll be properly spoiled the whole trip home. We may have a surprise to announce in a week or two, but that is all I can say on the matter.In other news; Fabio is starting his show career full time this month. The weanlings are with Jessi finalizing their ground manners. Breeding season, Oh boy here are the planned breedings. I'll add the links to the mares as they are confirmed. The stallions I'll link to as many are deceased or outside studs. Of course you can find the mares if you visit the farm, I'm still working on their pages here.
Fjord: BCh Henrik Oslo x Magik Embers & Skattekiste Hott Cayenne Pepper x Veslemoy & Aasta Veronika Due GM2677 Azteca: Assassin's Fortune x Sucha New Beginning & Fastest Girl in Town Racking: Be Amazed x Follow the Light & Slightofeye Somali: Pete Hogwallop x Glowbug Due GM2677 King and Grove x Memories of Wolf Due GM2677 That is the plan anyway. Hopefully the mares will cooperate with us. Micah is looking forward to the Azteca foals already and the Somali crosses. They are his picks and we jointly selected the studs for Gina, Feye, Aasta, and Spice. I've been wanting to cross Henrik with TT again for a while now and Ember has been sitting idle. Her first foal was really nice for a first generation LS x FS horse, Henrik should do good with her. Oh! How could I forget?! We have two wonderful Wutanvi fillies; an Azteca and a Fjord. Meet Moon and Lona, full siblings and very different. Lona is a little more high spirited than Moon who is high spirited but calm and thinks through what you want. More on them later though as they are with Jessi working on solidifying their ground work. |