BIG NEWS For Horsemeister

 I was outside hooking up the stock trailer to the truck early this morning then went to the cabin field to get Rosalie and Dancer. Mike arrived to help load. Rosalie and Dancer were put in the front of the stock while Valerie and Sheena were put in the back. We were on our way to Hoerr Vet clinic by 7:20 am and it really does take 40 minutes to get there pulling a heavily loaded trailer and with all the road closures. I made it there a minute before the 8:00 am appointment. Emma helped by leading Dancer as I took Rosalie into the stocks. 

It didn't take long for Dr. Hoerr to pronounce her pregnant!

Rosalie was bred to Evan on April 16th, 2026 making her due March 27th, 2027. Dancer is related to both of our stallions so we needed to know where she is in her cycle. Today when teasing her, she let Evan sniff without screaming at him but no winking. 

The ultrasound showed she is just coming into season. We have a plan for her which I will explain later. Those 2 were taken back to the trailer and tied. Then we brought Sheena and Valerie up. Sheena was first.

Sheena was bred to our 3 year old stallion Oliver out at Middle Grove. He is pictured below. He has a full thick mane and tail but is still a little short. His sire is 16.3 and his dam 15.3 so we are assuming he is a slow grower. He was obviously tall enough to breed a 16 hand mare as Sheena sticks at 16 hands.

Below is the embryonic vesicle from Sheena and Oliver.

We are THRILLED to announce Oliver is going to be a father.  Sheena is expecting! Sheena is due April 15th, 2027.  Last mare in was Valerie.

Dr. Hoerr pronounced her pregnant in less than a minute. Valerie was giving him the evil eye as he was messing around in her private area.

I was pretty excited and couldn't wait to call Diane and Mike. THIS is big big news for Horsemeister. We now have 3 options when choosing a stallion. We got to the trailer and had company. This little lamb tried to follow us up to the horses.

Someone has too much time on their hands, now I've seen everything. Once all 4 mares were loaded I started the long trip to Middle Grove. The truck and trailer were taken into the field to unload.

I was dropping off Valerie, Sheena and Dancer. Mike and Diane will be going to Middle Grove this weekend and will work on getting Dancer covered by Oliver. Rosalie was coming back to Hanna City so I had to wait for the other 3 mares to leave before I could drive out. They were in no hurry as they were enjoying the thick lushes grass.

They finally started up the hill.

I was able to drive out and shut the gate before they even got to the top of the hill. The truck was almost out of gas by the time I got to Hanna City so stopped at Caseys and put in $136.08 to fill it. 

When I finally got home Rosalie was taken over to the cabin field with Sally and Jewel. Berlica was busy mowing the mare pasture.

The grass is growing great, mowing keeps the weeds down and distributes any manure that was deposited helping feed the field. It's a win win for us. Spark is working on a tough project.

He is not digging a swimming pool, nor a grave. He is trying to find piping that was laid a long time ago.  I ran over to Joan's to check on the 2 fawns. She was feeding them when I arrived.

They are both does but the one above is extremely small. She is drinking well so hopefully she will make it. The other is doing very well and looks huge when comparing them. Berlica, Taegan and Kensley came canoeing over from mom's house.

This evening Mark and I worked in the back garage again. We were able to go through a lot of things. We are going to sell the AI breeding equipment so I took pictures and posted them on Facebook market place. It hasn't been used since 2006 and whoever buys it will need to clean it up. 

Basilea For Sale

I've been cleaning and hauling things down from the upstairs the last few days and last night my calves were aching. I was thankful that was gone this morning for our walk. When checking mares this morning before the walk the waterer was again running over. I took it apart but couldn't get it to stop no matter how high the float was. 

Mike was sent a text. He came to fix it while we were on the walk and he had it fixed within 30 seconds. Thankfully he showed me how so maybe I won't have to bother him next time. After the walk came breakfast and after breakfast it was time to tease mares. Thalia was teased first and she was not at all interested in the stallions. Unfortunately Basilea, Thalia's dam who was covered the same time as Thalia WAS back in season. She didn't settled so we will try again. She was successfully covered by Valiant this morning. Below is Basilea at the breeding stand. 

She is a beautiful Friesian mare born March 8th, 2008 making her 18 years old this year. She is trained to ride but we haven't done much with her. Below are a couple pictures of her being ridden in 2024.

She has nice gaits and the lady we bought her from told us they had been trail riding her. We are interested in selling her so if you have been looking for a Friesian mare she can be yours for just $10,000.00 She is registered with the German registry. 

If she settles you would get a FREE Friesian Foal. You can learn more about her on our website by clicking HERE. We are not offering live foal guarantee on her as we are only charging for HER not her pregnant. Once she is confirmed in foal we will either keep her or price her differently so if interested at all you may not want to wait. Check out her 2023 filly Thalia in the picture below.

We are keeping Thalia so ready to let Basilea go to a new home where she can be loved. She really does love people. They were both left in the breeding shed paddock. I moved the water tank in last Thursday so today dragged a hose down to the house and filled it.

There is plenty of grass in that paddock but we also have a bale in for them in the shelter.

My next job was to bring Rosaleigh and her colt into the stall for their grain. The colt stood perfect today for haltering.

He checked out the hay but then went right over to the grain bucket and demanded his share.

He sticks his head under Rosaleigh, then lifts up. When she lifts her head his dives into the grain bucket. 

Star and her filly were brought in next. I had to corner her to get her halter on but once I did she stood quietly. She was tied, her legs handled and lifted. 

She is going to make someone a nice riding family horse. She doesn't have the huge gaits of the Friesian even though she is half Friesian. She is for sale, just check out the for sale page on our website by clicking HERE. Once the mares and foals were done with their grain, Rosaleigh and her colt were let out to graze. I took the short video below before going back to work.

THEN came the real work. I started cleaning out the shelves in the back garage to make room for when we move. We had 2 broken microwaves up on those shelves. A 12 string guitar, lots and lots of old pictures and picture albums and lots of things that need to be pitched. I quit working about 2 hours. 

I brought down to the house 2 tubs of china. I have some of Mark's mom's good Lenox china. Below are the 2 huge platters and 2 serving bowls.

The oval platter is 17 and a half inches long and 13 inches wide. The plate below is really a platter, 13 inches across.

The serving bowl is almost 9 inches long about 2.5 inches deep and 7 inches wide.

There are 11 plates with this set, just 4 salad plates, 6 dessert plates and 4 dessert bowls. 

I think we will sell this as I have my own good china. Everything had to be washed and dried and that took a while. We quit at 2:00 pm to load up the 2 wheelchairs from mom's and take those to Timber Ridge. Once home I took the golf cart over to Joan's house. Dan had to rescue a tiny tiny fawn. It was probably born yesterday. This one was a twin and too small to keep up with her mom and sibling. They took off and never came back. By the time Dan brought her she was very dehydrated.

The poor little fawn was very thirsty and drank the formula well. The other fawn looks huge compared to this tiny one.  The picture below shows the two fawns together. You can also see the deep scratch marks on the older fawn's face where she was attacked. Her face is still swollen. 

To get ready for family night at the fellowship hall I really needed a shower and told Mark I would go first. Getting out I slipped, hit my chin hard enough to draw blood. As I'm on baby aspirin the bleeding wouldn't stop so Mark went to family night while I stayed home and watched. Once the bleeding stopped it really isn't much of a cut, more of a small scrape. Ryan Funk had an interesting talk. I'm not sure if it will be on AC Central but if it is I will post it here.  

Twinning?

 I only did one round of walk today as I wanted to get to the Berean office a little early. Skip was the only volunteer already there and working but soon we had plenty of helpers to get everything done. 

Skip and Ray were twinning today. The rest of us didn't get the memo about pink shirts and blue pants.

Marvin worked on recording returns while Kathy read letters.

Once the studies were processed, Vonnie had them folding new studies while Skip worked on Bibles. 

Shirl, kept busy stuffing the next set of lessons for all that came in today.

Shirley ran the postage machine, filled the advanced studies AND brought the dessert today. She made a fantastic angel food cake layered with chocolate and heath bar crumbles. It really was delicious. We were done with the work early so stayed visiting for a bit while enjoying coffee and cake. I had to take studies to Meisters for Amanda to give to her mom to grade. I used the self drive in the Tesla believing it would know if Kickapoo Creek road was open. It did not and I had to take over the navigation using Middle road to get down to Kickapoo Creek road and finally to Meisters. From there I just went to the Bartonville post office to drop off the Bibles and studies going out today. David's family was at the lake when I got home. Israel and Elisabet wanted to go over to see the fawn Rachel rescued last night. She and David saw something moving in the water by the dam. They took a canoe over to check it out and found this fawn laying in the water. It had obviously been attacked by some animal as it's face had some lacerations and her ear was punctured in a few places. The side of her eye and face are swollen. Rachel and David were able to get her out of the water and dry her off. They picked up some formula (I think from TSC)  Joan's daughter is a wildlife rehab so that is why she is at Joan's house. 

Joan also has some ducks. Israel was interested in feeding them.

Although when they pecked at the feed in his hand he jerked and that scared them. Mike took Israel and Crew to Hannah's parlor for lunch then to basketball camp. Elisabet stayed here and found some  goose feathers.

Sarah arrived with her 3 girls so Elisabet had someone to play with so David and Stephanie left for a lunch date. Sarah work with Izzy today. That didn't go as well as yesterday. Today the tarp was brought out and Izzy took one look at that and shut down. She would not respond, just kept running but not asking to come in. I don't know what ever happened to her to cause that reaction. Sarah ended on a good note. Izzy was hosed down then we left to go check out the fawn. 

So far the fawn won't suck out of a bottle. The swelling on her face must hurt. Joan was able to get her to lick the formula out of her hands. Joan and Berlica were able to get her to latch on to the bottle and take a few sucks while we were there but only got a few ounces. We went back to mom's beach to cool off. Anna dropped off her 3 girls to swim about that time.

My next job was to take pictures of the 2 wheelchairs for Timber Ridge at Lifepoints. The first one is a transport wheelchair we got for mom when she was on palliative care. We used that for a while to take mom to church. 

As mom got stronger we were able to use the wheel chair we borrowed from Ilene Haefli. Meanwhile we had purchased another wheel chair but it was too big to fit under the kitchen table. We didn't realize that wheelchairs cannot be returned. We took it out of the box and tried it, realized it wouldn't fit, put it back in the box then found out we were stuck with it. That has stayed in mom's garage for over 4 years. Hopefully Timber ridge can use it also.

Mom wore out the wheelchair borrowed from Ilene last winter while in Gulf Shores so Ruth bought another one and had it shipped down there. We will give that nearly new wheel chair back to the Haefli family.

Berlica and Braelyn decided to go on a trail ride with Rosalie and Jewel. These are the best mares EVER. 

This was the first time Rosalie led with Berlica riding.

Mark had the lawn mower parked out by the drive, Rosalie wanted to check it out before going past it on the way to the trails but on the way back it was much less scary.

 I left as we had someone coming to check out the barn. They actually had already booked it through airbnb but wanted to make sure it really was as advertised. The couple exclaimed once they saw it, "IT is EXACTLY as listed."