We should have temps in the mid 40s today with highs near the upper 50s by next week! I’m so excited. It will hopefully help us get into the swing of things horse-wise. As we have a lot to do. So much so in fact, that Zach and I could each clone ourselves and still not get it all done!
Jill got me thinking about babies this week so last night, I looked at the gestation calendar. Sonora should have her baby around July 14 according to the calendar. Last year she had her first baby and was two weeks early so if she holds in that pattern we’ll have a new baby around the first of July. Shuttle will have the latest baby on the place- an early September baby. I have been going back and forth on whether or not she is bred so I may have my favorite Doctor check her while I am in Texas. She is kind of a smaller mare, so you’d think it would be easier to tell, but not so much. She’s never fat. As much as we try; Jill did manage to get her to gain some weight last summer when she was on *vet watch* with her. Shuttle’s late birth will make it easy to compete on her all summer, and I can then wean the baby off the end of December/first of January and have her ready to go back into competition mode in a matter of a couple weeks. I will probably do with her like I did with Sonora last year, and ride her some for general ranch work, while she’s nursing the baby.
I’m hoping for a filly out of both mares- though since I have a filly out of Sonora already it’s not as big a deal (and she is only a 9 year old mare so I should get lots more babies out of her). I hope that Sonora’s filly is gray, though. And Chachi (Poco Tivio Pep) seems to be able to throw lots of fun color patterns such as rabicano and the silver gene. So maybe I’ll get a black foal that will turn gray!
The rest of the ranch’s mares (there’s about 26 of them) should start foaling around the first of May and we should have them all foaled out by the first of August. I say foaled out- we’re very hands off here, and the mares have to do all the work themselves, in their big 1-2 section pastures.
I feel better having shared that with all of you. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to get going. It’s going to be beautiful outside, and I’m going to get to ride today hopefully and at least play with my horses.
Oh now I wish I could ride on a horse : ) Have a great Friday!
I can’t imagine how much fun it would be to be around all those babies!!!!
I have a question. I look in our local “Peddler” all the time, the sales paper of all thing, and it always has horses described as “coming”. What does that mean?
Coming refers to them coming of age if it’s the way I use it. A horse is coming 2 or coming 3 etc. If they’re not officially a 2 or 3 yo yet, it’s a fast way of saying, the colt is 18 months or what have you. Does that makes sense?