Nicole Schnell

Hey ya'll!  Sorry it has been awhile.  Not too many new pictures added, I'll start working on that for you though.  It's been really busy up here lately; we?ve started work now at 6:30 in the mornings to make sure we?ve got time to get everything done during the day.  It certainly makes for an early morning, but there?s always lots of stuff going on!  Lots of foals on the ground, and we've been moving horses around from barn to barn to make room for everybody.  I got to go through the yearlings with our farm manager and check over their Jockey Club registration papers.  It was interesting to learn how they classify different markings and describe them in writing.  Our vet comes out everyday, and the number of mares we have to check keeps growing.  He?s been palping a lot of our mares so we can make sure they?re timed right for a trip to the shed, and we?ve been ultra sounding some that we?ve already sent and have confirmed quite a few more in foal!  We've also been sending a lot of mares to the breeding shed, so there?s been a lot of grooming and pulling manes going on.  I actually got to go to Stonewall Farm today with two of our mares who were being bred to two different stallions who stand there. 

We had class this past Tuesday out at our farm.  That was pretty exciting.  We looked at a few different foals and talked about conformation and what to look for when they are that young that looks good vs. what could possibly pose a problem in the future.  Last Tuesday night was the monthly Thoroughbred Farm Manager's club meeting.  They had two speakers who talked about pasture management and weed control on farms.  This week's class, coming up, is about racing partnerships and syndications.  Oh, and for anyone who's interested in racing, the horse, Ketchikan, who came in 2nd in the Louisiana Derby last Saturday is a Trackside horse, or at least his dam is a Trackside horse, she's one of the broodmare's on our farm.  We just might have a Derby horse!!!  So that was really exciting!  I actually went up to Keeneland to watch the race and ended up winning like 2 bucks betting on him!  Keeneland?s racing season starts up at the beginning of April.  I?m pretty excited about that, the race track is right up the road from where I live, so it will be fun to get to go watch some of the races in the afternoons.

Aside from all the excitement on the farm we?ve had quite a bit of class work due here lately.  We turned in our 3^rd research paper last Tuesday, and this coming up week we have to have decided on our group presentation topic and turn in a brief synopsis.  A few weeks before the end of the program we all have to give a presentation, in a group of 3, about a controversial topic in the thoroughbred industry.  So it hasn?t been all play, we?ve been busy doing school stuff too!  I?ll work on getting more pictures up for you guys soon.  Sorry again it has been a while!  I?ll be in touch again soon!