Pleasure (part three): horses - for love not money
Spent a couple of days in Newmarket last week, selling one of my babies. Perhaps I should explain...We breed thoroughbred horses. I'd say racehorses, except most of them haven't quite lived up to that name, unfortunately, but we live in hope. We've no children so our horses are our family, even though they may one day be sold. So that's a big advantage over kids then. We've 6 at the moment.
It started 12 years ago when we bought our first mare, Runabay, in foal. It was a simple plan - sell the foal, breed the mare back to the stallion of our choice, keep the foal to race, sell the mare. Runabay is now 25 and still very much with us, in her retirement. She loves carrots and apples, and to rub her head all over your coat.
The foal was called Jacko (or Jack if he's feeling grown up) and he is now 11, and still with us. We did try to sell, but no-one wanted to buy, so he became our first racehorse and raced as Runadrum. We had a lot of fun even though he never won or placed.
Our other mare is Flo's Choice (Flo to us) and she is in foal again this year. She has a colt foal to wean, Otis, and it was her yearling who went to Newmarket sales last week. Nutmeg had been a premature foal and quite weak, but had grown into a sweet little filly (auctioneer's description). That just about summed up her value, and she was bought by a Hungarian for 1500guineas. Oh well, one less to feed. Hopefully we will be able to follow her progress even though it seems she will race abroad.
We still have a 5year old of Flo's, called Fizz, who didn't sell as a yearling. We raced her ourselves as Sheliak. She injured her leg at 2 and needed a year off, coming back at 4 to give us our most exciting day racing when she actually led for while before finishing 5th. She then injured her leg again, and having had another year off has now been retired. We may breed from her next year, but probably not to a thoroughbred stallion.
Our other yearling, Mimi, is a troubled little soul. Her mother, Plainsong, died last year when she was about a month old, so she needed several months of hand rearing, and companionship from a miniature shetland pony called Poppy. She's a beautiful filly, but (not surprisingly) has been traumatised by losing mum so young and now frets when she is stabled. Things are improving a little and all we can do is give her time to grow up. If she ever races, you may see a small white pony running alongside her.
So Runabay, Jacko, Flo, Fizz, Mimi and Otis are our 6 children. There have been others (20 in total actually) but I'll save their stories for another day.
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Other news - My ipod arrived today. :-)
Must be like a tardis. Otherwise I can't see how my CDs are going to fit in it.
I'll call back when I've figured it out.
posted by AvonGirl @ 12:16 am
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