46 – I’ve got a Baby Horse!

by Jenny · September 5, 2022

I had my first baby horse, and she was gorgeous! Hands were clearly made for rubbing foals in all those places they couldn’t reach themselves! And it wasn’t long before she was calling out to me over the fence asking for more.

Within three days Dancer would stand at the fence and call out for scratches

Lace was being a great mum, but that didn’t stop her being a complete tart and refusing to be caught when people came to admire her baby!

Now I still had one more chance to get Lace in foal to Castlebar Gulfstream, and one chance only. So this time I decided to take Lace to Equibreed as Lee was reputedly the best at AI with frozen semen.

This meant taking Lace and Dancer to Equibreed near Te Awamutu when Dancer was only nine days old, another good reason to use Equibreed rather than Matamata again, it was much closer.

When they’re that young the baby pretty much just goes where mum goes so loading wasn’t too hard, although Lace had her own opinion about the necessity of staying on when her baby wasn’t quite with her and there was not partition or back bar! We had the cover up over the back of the float (in NZ we call a horse trailer a float… not sure why) so Dancer wouldn’t think it was an escape option, and Kerry travelled in the float too keeping an eye on them – very hot in early January! No dramas and we arrived safely.

At Equibreed for pregnancy test – Baby Horse number two on the way!

Although everything was in order Lee decided not to try inseminating Lace that time but to wait for the next cycle, we only had one go at it after all. So home for three weeks and then back to Equibreed, Dancer was becoming quite the traveller. I now had the partition in the float as Lace wouldn’t cooperating with staying on while Dancer was persuaded to go on as well. As she got older she was becoming more independent and therefore in less of a hurry to simply follow her Mum into the float!

Back again on March 11 for the last time to pregnancy test, did I have another baby horse on the way? Yes!!! First heart rate taken – 150ish, normal at this stage Lee said. Served on January 15, foal due January 6 plus or minus 2 weeks. So again it was time to wait, but this time I had a baby horse to play with and Lace had fully recovered after her injury.

After nearly a year and a half I could ride my pony again. And no disrespect to Tigger but I had missed her! Because of the long time off I took it slowly and decided to start with we’d try bareback. Although I hadn’t actually ridden her properly bareback before – hopped on in the yard and walked around once and she hadn’t cared – if she got up tight after a break it would likely be from feeling girthy and having stirrups with cages at her elbows, so I thought avoiding that and being able to jump off quickly wouldn’t hurt! But she was absolutely fine. Ok, so I could only ride around the paddocks with Dancer in tow, but it was great, I couldn’t stop grinning. And then watching Dancer was fun too, when I say “in tow” I really mean galloping around us in circles, whizzing from one paddock to the next. “Really Mum, you keep saying you’ve won all these races… but you’re not very fast!” Every time I rode Lace even if for only ten to 15 minutes, I would have a very hot, sweaty, happy foal to deal with! She soon learnt to love a towel rub down.