Nicole Schnell

Another week has flown by.  We have 2 foals now on the farm; the most recent is an Afleet Alex colt.  We also had a mare abort towards the end of last week.  This was really sad to see, but it was also a neat thing to get to experience.  Luckily when it happened the vet was already on his way out to do cultures on a few of our open mares so he was able to take care of her right then.  The mare hadn't yet expelled the fetus, so the doctor had to go in and pull the baby out!  The mare wasn't due until the end of April, but the baby was fairly large already.  After looking at the placenta and umbilical cord it appeared the cause of the abortion was twisting of the umbilical cord.  The cord was very large and swollen and almost looked like a cork screw.  This mare is doing fine, and she's being watched and cared for so she'll be ready to rebred this year.

I also got to see a few other neat things this past week.  Last Thursday I did the early night watch which was exciting, but also very nerve wracking.  Knowing there are million dollar mares under your supervision can make anyone a bit nervous.  But nothing out of the ordinary happened and we didn't have any mares foal that night.  On Friday, the vet came out to suture one of the mares who had already foaled.  Around here all thoroughbred mares get what's called a caslicks (or breeding stitch).  I had always learned the only mares that needed this were those with bad breeding conformation, but around here it's a common procedure.  All of our mares have one!  So what happens is when a mare gets close to showing signs of foaling or is past her due date, the vet will come out and open up her caslicks, this way she can deliver normally.  Then once she has foaled, they wait about a week and the mare gets the stitch put back in.  The most common answer to the reasoning behind this that I've gotten has been that mares that are outside and running around tend to suck wind up their reproductive tracts.  So they think that by doing this, it's better for the pregnancy because you're reducing the incidence of anything contaminating the tract.  I also got to see a pretty neat shoeing done on one of our mares who has navicular disease in both of her front feet.  Around here the veterinarians who specialize in lameness and podiatry are also trained as farriers.  So I got to watch him put some really fancy looking shoes on this mare and learned a little about navicular disease and what may have caused it in her case.  This week I?ve also gotten to go out in the mornings and afternoons with the managers to check the fields.  We have a lot of horses on the farm and not all of them get brought in every night.  So first thing each morning the managers have to go around and check each individual horse in the fields that have stayed out all night.  Some of these mares get special medications, regumate, or have to be treated for various things such as eye infections or foot abscesses.  

Our class last night was about maximizing broodmare efficiency.  A veterinarian from Hagyard's came in and talked to us about cycling mares and how to manage problems that may occur with a pregnancy.  This was a really interesting lecture I thought.  He covered everything from getting mares in foal to dystocia, twinning, and mare reproductive loss syndrome.  He also had a lot of really neat pictures for us to see.  Next week we get to go to our first Thoroughbred Farm Manager's Club meeting.  These meetings are the first Tuesday each month and we get to attend them over the next few months while we are here.  At the meetings they'll discuss current issues on area farms and in the industry and will have a guest speaker come talk about a topic of interest.  I believe next week's lecture is about neonatology.  Plus there's dinner served at the meetings, so I guess you can't go wrong with that!  

I've got a few new pictures posted.  Not many, but I'll be adding more soon!  These are just a few of the 2 foals!  Enjoy!

Nicole's Pictures

I've just finished up my first full week working at Trackside, and I've had such an awesome time so far!  It seems like everyday something new happens or I'm getting to see something different.  Earlier last week the farrier came to trim all the broodmare's feet, and towards the end of last week the vet came out to do vaccines for all the horses.  We started teasing a few of the open mares at the farm yesterday so they'll be ready to go to the breeding shed once breeding season has started.  We've also been working on conformation reports for all the yearlings on the farm.  This has been neat to learn about.  I've gotten to learn what people look for in horses when they are at a sale, and how to stand the horse and lead him as if he was being shown at a sale.  Monday and yesterday the vet was back out to do x-rays and scope 6 of our yearlings who might be taken to a sale in February.  Getting to see the scoping was really cool.  It's a process where the doctor sticks an instrument down the horse's nose and he is able to see the inside of the horse's throat.  This procedure, as well as, the nearly 32 x-rays are commonly done on horses who are being taken to a sale. 

Our first foal was born Saturday night!  She is adorable and full of energy!  I wasn't able to go out to the barn for the foaling because the weather here was really bad over the weekend, but I get to see her everyday.  We have several other mares who are showing signs of being close to foaling anytime.  We have a total of 83 mares on the farm who are expected to foal this spring, so I'm sure I'll get the chance to see more than one foaling here soon. 

Aside from the constant excitement this week there has been a lot of hard work.  With over a hundred horses on the farm there are lots of stalls to clean, and many mouths to feed each day.  I work at Trackside 6 days a week from 7am to 4pm with an hour break for lunch.  The days are long and the weather has been really cold, but I've been enjoying every minute of it!  Tuesday nights the KEMI class meets for a lecture each week.  This week we had a guest lecturer come talk about disease control on farms.  It was interesting to learn what our own farms were doing right, and what we could be doing better. 

If you guys have any questions about the internship or anything else please leave a comment on the blog and I'll be happy to answer your questions!

Hey guys!  Well this week was very exciting!  We toured a ton of different places around Lexington.  We visited various farms, vet clinics, training facilities, race tracks, the Kentucky Horse Park, and the Blood Horse magazine office.  It's only been a week and I feel like I've already learned so much!  I've got a lot of pictures from the different places we visited this week, so feel free to take a look at all of them.  Nicole's Pictures .  Also, if you have any questions about anything you see or I talk about, feel free to post a comment on the blog.  I'll try to answer your question to the best of my ability, or find out the answer from someone else if I can.  I posted a couple of videos as well.  One from the Keeneland horse sale, just take note of how fast the auctioneer talks, it's amazing.  What's also amazing is how much these horses are worth around here!  There's also a short clip from a race we saw Friday night at Turfway park.  We only watched claiming races, so no big name horses were there, but it was very exciting.  We got to go out and stand right up against the rail at the finish line!

I'm going to include a list of links from some of the different places we went this week.  Be sure to check them out if you want to! 

Hagyard Equine Medical Institute - Exclusively equine private practice veterinary hospital in Lexington, KY.

Keeneland Race Course - Race track right outside Lexington on the highway that leads to Versailles where I live.

Kentucky Equine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Center - Rehabilitation center for horses who have been injured and need proper treatment before heading back to the race track.

Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital - Another exclusively equine veterinary clinic.

Kentucky Horse Park - State funded park which show cases Kentucky's signature symbol, the horse.  The horse park houses offices for several equine organizations, museums for various breeds, and activities for visitors who are interested in anything and everything about horses.

Churchill Downs Race Track - Where they run the derby!

The Blood Horse Magazine - really popular publication around here which goes out weekly to keep owners, breeders, and anybody else up to date on what is going on in the world of horses.  Breeding season the magazine is filled with sire ads from owners trying to intice mare owners to breed to their stallion.

The Thoroughbred Training Center - Just as the name implies, a place for people to work their horses out, and get them in condition for racing!

Turfway Park - Another race course.  Where went went to watch the claiming races Friday night, it's about an hour outside of Lexington up north towards Ohio.

Hey guys!  I haven't had much success trying to upload a couple of the pictures I've taken onto the blog page, so I thought I'd start a webshots page.  The blog program keeps telling me that one picture is too big to load, so this way I can load as many pictures as I want and there will be more for you guys to see.  All you'll have to do to open up my webshots page is click the link right here:  Nicole's Pictures And you can use this to view all of my pictures. 

Orientation week starts tomorrow morning bright and early, we're visiting an Equine Hospital and also going to the horse sale at Keeneland in the afternoon, so that should be exciting!  Kentucky is gorgeous!!!  My farm is in Versailles which is only about 10 minutes outside of Lexington.  It's so cool you can be in the big city one minute and turn around and be looking at country side the next.  I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to share after this week so keep a look out! 

Hey guys - I'm really excited about being able to share my experiences this semester with you all.  I hope to keep you as up to date on my activities as possible as the semester progresses.  Just a little about me, I'm a senior in animal science at State and have always had an interest in horses.  I decided to participate in the KEMI internship because I thought it would be a great chance to get hands on experience and visit somewhere new. 

If any of you are interested in getting more information about the KEMI internship I've provided the link to their homepage.  You can find out just about anything you want to know about this opportunity on this webpage.  KEMI homepage  The internship is a 22 week long working internship for which you can recieve credit for the ANS external learning experience course.  Internships are offered in both the spring and the fall each year.  Fall deals more with breaking and training of young horses, while the spring internship is a breeding and foaling internship.  Interns are placed on farms located around the Lexington, KY area for the duration of the internship, and housing is provided by the farm or in off the farm apartments.  I have been placed on Trackside Farm this semester.  I'll be sure to load lots of pictures once i arrive in Kentucky.  The internship this spring starts January 8th and will run until the first week in June.  I look forward to keeping you guys posted as the semester progresses!!