Valiant

Today was a day for paper work. The 2003 truck's license sticker needed to be sent in but before that can be done I had to find out who we have it insured with. That took a trip up to the barn to find the proof of insurance and thankfully it was in the glove box. The next bunch of paper work was the release forms for the Illinois Horse Fair. Everyone coming down from here that will be handling a horse AND those performing in the Horsemeister play must sign the form. Karin was able to get most of them but I needed to drive in to Bridlewood to give Amy Koch a couple for her daughter Sarah and Sarah's daughter Olivia who will both be helping us with the play.

From Bridlewood I started driving to Big R to pick up the shots the horses need and passed Mark just leaving Meisters.  Big R only had 5 of the 5-way so I had to also buy the higher priced Prestige brand which also has the West Nile vaccine added. The great thing about going today was if I bought a Big R bucket for just $1.00 everything was 15% off. That saved Horsemeister a ton of money. Those shots are expensive. 

At 3:45 pm I was sitting in Phil and Anna's drive way waiting for Braelyn's bus and as soon as that came and Braelyn was in the car we drove over to Dennis and Gertie's house to pick up Taegan and Kensley. On the way back to Phil and Anna's I passed Mark again as he was heading home.  

It was such a beautiful day with a high of 52 degrees and sunshine. The horses were all laying down soaking up the sun but that means every horse will need grooming before Dr. Hoerr arrives tomorrow morning to draw blood for the Coggins test. 

I have been posting so many pictures of Evan lately that Valiant was being neglected. As wonderful as Evan is, Valiant is our go to stallion. He is tall, majestic, sweet and throws all of that in each of his foals. He is always ready to do his job. We have been brought mares that were not able to get in foal by other stallions and Valiant always seems to get that job done. He has amazing conformation, a beautiful jet black shiny coat, his neck is long and set on perfectly and he has great movement. Valiant is the complete package! 

But he is also related to a lot of our mares. 

We wanted a colt out of Jenis by Raven to keep but her first 2 foals by him were both fillies. When Valiant was born we were rejoicing big time. Check out his movement at just 21 days old.

Below he was taken to his very first show August 30th, 2009, the Northern IL Horse Fest. He is 7 weeks old. He was the hit of this show. The organizer of the show asked if they could borrow Valiant to show colt handling. He had a ball galloping around showing off for the folks watching.

Valiant has sired lots of foals, I use to keep count of the foals born by our stallions but gave up when we passed the 300.
We actually bought Evan right after weaning Valiant. We knew we were keeping some Raven daughters so needed a stallion not related to Valiant plus we wanted Valiant to have a companion growing up. Evan and Valiant were the best of friends for 3 years.

We took both boys to the IL Horse Fair, Steven had them trained to line drive that year.  

They were 20 months old in this video taken March 2011

In the picture below they are ready to perform at the 2012 Illinois Horse fair. 

And in the picture below they are getting ready to perform in the 2013 IL Horse Fair. 

2013 was the last year the boys were friends. In 2014 the hormones kicked in and these two stallions who had been best friends became mortal enemies.

Their behavior which use to be in play became violent. 

 We had to separate them into different paddocks and soon realized we could not even use the same breeding stand for them. Valiant has his own breeding stand and Evan has his. Valiant got to go to the 2015 Illinois Horse Fair where Emily showed him and Mitchel enjoyed riding him.

Next year if the state of Illinois ever gets the coliseum repaired we will consider bringing Valiant to the 2019 Illinois Horse Fair.