Speaking of show ring. Holy Ribbons Batman! We've got the first Grand Champ in our stables in a long time, as well as three others competing in Expert, more in Advanced and Novice. Our Beginner string looks bleak because everyone is moving up nicely. In fact our 2 youngest Novice competitors are not even 4 years old yet! We are very happy we made changes to our showing program!
We just wrapped up our best foaling season for retention rates here at the farm. We welcomed 7 foals to the world and we will be keeping 5! Needless to say we are very pleased with Badr initially as a sire, the real test will be in a couple years when they start hitting the show ring.
Speaking of show ring. Holy Ribbons Batman! We've got the first Grand Champ in our stables in a long time, as well as three others competing in Expert, more in Advanced and Novice. Our Beginner string looks bleak because everyone is moving up nicely. In fact our 2 youngest Novice competitors are not even 4 years old yet! We are very happy we made changes to our showing program!
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Well after several frustrating years of not gaining any titles for the Somali's we went ahead and changed some disciplines. We moved a couple to Dressage, one to Harness, one to Rodeo, and one to English and the new foals will go into their best discipline instead of TDE. We'll keep switching horses out of TDE as we go along, most of our horses are best suited for Dressage. It is only a couple of months into this change and we already have two new titles! Two of our horses earned their BCh in the new discipline within 2 months! I know I made the right decision now.
We have done a lot of cutting and tightening of our herd. We just welcomed the last of the foals for a couple of months, we have 2 more due in 3 months time. These foals are all by Starman (Starry Highway x Lemon High). The first round was 4 foals, three are keepers. We are excitedly looking forward to the last two! We re-bred the 4 mares on their foal heat to Star Pilot (Starman's half brother), we hope for similar retention rates.
To post an update. We've said goodbye to a few horses who have moved on to forever homes, we've said hello to many new prospects only some of which have stayed. We are doing test breedings on our young stallions, a few mares each to see which are the strongest bred. We have had some nice results from this experiment, now to see how those we kept show. Speaking of shows, points are hard to come by these days. Either the competition is getting tougher or the ponies aren't developing as nicely as they seem to be. We just finished up breeding 10 mares between 4 stallions, the last 3 mares that need to be bred will be bred to the 4th stallion next week. We'll have 3 foals per stallion and 4 for the last one.
and what a disappointing bunch they are. Only two meet my standards for keeping. First of them is a colt. He's registered name will be Under Carbon and Jonah has dubbed him "Carb" the hired hands love it. Jonah just learned what a carburettor was so when he was offered the chance to give a daily moniker to one of the foals he -- with a huge smile -- said Carb! It happens to fit with his show name so it sticks. The second keeper is also a colt, the fillies from this stallion were incredibly disappointing. This colt will be named Test Wind -- when I get the papers back it will be official -- he's not truly impressive but he seems to be good solid stock. Our newest custom boy is maturing beautifully, no trait but we have enough mares with traits to make up for that. We have some really nice foals coming into their yearling year they are all already finished with ground training. We are eagerly waiting to move them up to saddle training. Back to this season's foals, I am considering gelding Taz because these 10 foals were so poor in quality. I will continue to mull this over in my head.
It has been a while since we've had a pony move up a bracket here on the farm. This month Smarty earned his last point in Beginner! We've loved this heavily line-bred on The Highwayman colt from the day he was born. He'll be joining his half-sister Gloria in Novice next month. It will be interesting to see how the siblings place, she hasn't had any competition in a while. It will also be interesting to see who is next to move up from beginner.
We ordered a new stud colt from the importer and the shipper arrived last night! Meet Arizona Rivers our Dark Sorrel Rabicano, we just got back his DNA and GD tests and we maintain our guaranteed Clear Somali herd! His potential leaves room for improvement but he's got good lines behind him. We are very pleased!
On the homebred front we have our highest potential foal in the form of a filly, New Pavement, adds up to a stunning 66%! She's been finished with Foal training for 2 months now waiting to be old enough to be backed. This most recent crop of foals are by Reno, and we are not overly pleased with them. Only three are keepers by our standards, but there will be the nicer of the rest listed for sale. We are considering auctioning them for a change of tactic, with over 100 horses listed in the sales but less than 50 in auction it is worth a shot. We've got lots of horses in the Beginner ranks of TDE competition. Our Novice and higher ranked horses are getting older, so we are eager to have more step up.
This month (378) we say goodbye to two of our broodmares. They have reached the end of their fertile time with us. Surelya Gem, has given us 13 foals, of which only one has really set the show ring alight. Though her 3 year old, 2 year old, yearling, and suckling offspring have the potential to succeed.
Kiera, has given us 14 foals over the years. I have retained quite a few of them. Two of those have succeeded in the show ring and one of those has gone on to join her dam in the breeding shed. Several of her produce are in training waiting to hit the three day event courses. We will miss these two girls in our breeding barn, but know that they will be well loved in As always, unnamed horses are for sale, unless otherwise stated. This seasons sales foals say that they will be for sale when they are weaned. Custom foals are now available, you choose the sire and dam. Priced at 30,000ERD. Foals are guaranteed to be clear
Sires available: * Country Roads * Silver Roads * Silver Silver * The Highwayman * Wayfaring Stranger * Weepin' Willow * RockyTrails (Note! Has Frame Overo, choose mares accordingly) * DownontheDelta Junior Stallions for future planning: * Midnight Trouble * The Willow Weeps for me * Bayou Boy Your choice of mare! |