We had a good day here. Dr. Hoerr was suppose to arrive this morning but had a couple customers call, one was an emergency colic and another was horse down. This gave me time to work with the foals. Indy's filly and Soul's filly were given haltering and tying lessons today. Sangria and her filly spent the night outside last night but today got too hot for the 1 day old little girl so they were brought back in the stall for the afternoon.
I took a quick trip to Big R in Pekin for some grain and beet pulp. The last of the beet pulp was used this morning. Eliza and Sheena both get an extra feeding each day and the beet pulp is added to their grain. These 2 mares will lose weight nursing and we don't want to see that. When I got back from Pekin Karin was here power washing the barn walls. She has a week of vaulting clinics scheduled starting Monday. Phil arrived with a load of concrete. Mark wanted it dumped by the pond, he is going to be filling in a pretty steep ravine with this.
This was a pretty big load and Emily used the skid steer to help unload the trailer.
Dr. Hoerr arrived around 2:45 pm and it didn't take long for him to declare Mara pregnant. Mara belongs to a lady named Raechel from Maryland. She is the black mare in the picture below.
The next mare up for an ultrasound was Soul and she was also declared pregnant. This mare is very fertile, she conceived on her foal heat with just 1 cover. This is unusual, most of the time we don't even try to breed the mares on their foal heat.
The next mare done was Indy, she is not ready to breed yet. When Indy is nursing she doesn't cycle every 18-20 days it is more like 30 days. We will have to start teasing her. Jenis was the last mare sonagrammed. She was showing to Evan yesterday and sure enough she has a nice sized follicle but had some free floating fluid in her left uterine horn. We haven't had a foal from Jenis since Raven died. We decided we should try this year.
Dr Hoerr gave her a shot to make sure she ovulates in 48 hours and a shot to help her expel the fluid then we took her right over and had Evan cover her. Dr. Hoerr is coming back Sunday afternoon to ultrasound her again to see if she actually did ovulate. I was willing to drive her to his clinic but he said he needed to be on this side of the river to AI a mare for a customer on Sunday.Karin was working horses while we were in the barn sonagramming the mares. She worked with Roxanne first and was pleased. Roxanne is responding well to her method. Rosaleigh was the next mare and she was just finishing up with her hosing her down by the time we finished up in the barn.
We are really thrilled with how the 2 new mares are looking. They have filled out and put on a lot of muscle since going to Middle Grove last winter. The last mare Karin worked with was Galena. She caught on much faster of what was expected. Today Karin started them with the surcingle and bridle. She uses 1 rein hooked first to the right side of the bit then the left side. Once the mare is accepting of that little bit of pressure the rein is changed to the other side of the horse so the horse learns how to escape the pressure by bending. We love this method. We end up with well behaved horses that trust their handler.
Emily wanted to take Roxanne to the PRC show tonight just for her to be exposed to lots of horses, lots of trailers and people and lots of commotion. She will be expected to stand quietly at the trailer. Hope that actually happens. I think she was going to enter her in a halter class. She took Jenis along for some of the riding classes. Hope she gets a lot of pictures, both mares look wonderful.
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