Nicole Schnell

Hello again.  I've added new pictures!  I got to go on a breeding shed run this morning with on of our mares to Overbrook Farm.  The trip was pretty exciting, but I did a lot of looking and watching.  Once you get to the shed, the stallion workers pretty much take over.  We unloaded the mare and handed her over, and they took it from there.  You first have to present all her paper work, and she has to have a form from a vet saying she has been cultured and the results have come back negative.  After that she's put into a stall next door to their teaser stallion that has a window in between.  They allow her to be teased then bring her out and clean her up and take her into the shed.  Once she's in the shed they put booties on her hind feet as a precautionary measure for the stallion, put a twitch on her and lift one of her front legs to help keep her still until the stallion is able to mount.  And from there, they allow him to breed her.  I was pretty lucky this morning, Ashford Stud had a mare being bred before ours and she was being bred to Storm Cat, so I got to watch that breeding as well.  Storm Cat stands for $500,000 - he's a pretty big name horse around here.

Other than that it has pretty much been work as usual.  I've been cleaning a lot of baby butts this week, we have had a couple foals with diarrhea.  We've also been grooming mares that are going to be sent to the breeding shed in the next week and keeping them clean.  It snowed again over the weekend and has been really cold!  But the forecast for the rest of this week is close to 50, which will probably feel like a heat wave!  Last Tuesday night's class was about equine nutrition.  We had a professor from the University of Kentucky come in and talk about feeding horses for maximum efficiency dependent upon whether you were breeding them or using them as a performance horse.  We were given a bunch of feed analysis sheets and had to try to determine what types of hay each one was after we learned a little about the various types of forages used on area farms.  That was pretty cool.  This week's class is at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital.  We're going to be talking about stallion reproductive anatomy and semen evaluation.  I'm also going to Rood and Riddle on my day off this week to hang out in the neonatal unit!  My farm manager was able to set it up so that I could go and shadow, so that should be fun, I'm really excited!

Hope you guys enjoy all the new pictures!  I'll be in touch again soon!  Pictures