Nicole Schnell

It has been a busy past couple of weeks!  Breeding & foaling season is definitely in full swing!  There are babies running around everywhere, and we've been busy checking mares in the mornings, grooming them, and sending them to the breeding sheds.  I've been on two more shed runs, once back to Stonewall and then one trip to Ashford.  Last Thursday night we had 5 mares foal!  That was really exciting!  We were getting a little behind as far as due dates, but one busy night caught us right back up.  Most of the new foals have been fine, we had one get a little sick early this past week, but she's doing fine now.  One of our older foals, who was born with a slightly crooked front leg had surgery recently.  She had a transphyseal screw put in her knee to help the joint grow straight as she gets bigger.  What happens is, the screws are put in on the side you want the joint to grow away from, and this encourages the bones to grow straight and align properly as the bone matures.  She is still on restricted turn out, but she?s been doing great post-surgery, and is still just as full of energy as she was before.  I feel so bad for her because she gets turned out in a little pen and everyday she starts bucking and cutting up, you can tell she just wants to go run around and play like all the other babies.

We've been doing a lot of really cool vet work in the mornings.  We've been ultra sounding our mares that have been sent to the shed and most of our barren mares are in foal.  On some of the older embryos you can actually see the heart beat on the screen!  That's really cool.  Our vet is pretty awesome; he's been letting me do a lot in the mornings when he comes out.  I've gotten to draw blood and give some of the injections.  He also let me cut open a few of the mare's caslicks!  That was really awesome!  Just today we had a different doctor come out and look at one of our older foals who's had a swollen hock.  X-rays of the joint hadn't shown anything abnormal, so this doctor actually ended up ultra sounding her lungs, and suspects she might have rhodacoccus.  One of the side effects associated with rhodacoccus can be swollen joints that don't really cause lameness, but swell up really bad in response to the disease.  To help further diagnose, today the vet performed a trachea flush where he put fluid into her lungs and then drew it back out so a culture could be done to see if any bacteria was present.  Then, he had to put the foal under anesthesia, and he flushed out the swollen hock joint.  This will get tested as well to help diagnose the exact problem.  But those were both really cool procedures to get to help with and watch. 

Our manager gave me a copy of the teasing chart they use for 4 of the mares on the farm, so I get to keep up with that throughout the rest of the time I'm here.  It has been cool to get to see how they mark everything down and how to decide when a mare needs to be palped, and how to get them to cycle if they're not, or even just looking at how each mare's cycle can be very different.  One of the topic choices for our next paper is actually about how to manage a teasing chart, so being able to do it on my own farm has been really helpful in class work assignments as well. 

This past Tuesday's class was back at Rood and Riddle.  We all had to bring in a placenta from our farms to dissect.  I think we ended up with about 8 different placentas so we laid them all out and talked about differences in each one, which ones looked normal, which ones didn't.  We also learned all about the different parts and the functions of the placenta.  This was one of my favorite classes we've had.  It was really interesting to learn about what you should be concerned with when looking at a placenta after a foaling and what may look weird, but is completely normal.  Class this coming up week is out at the Thoroughbred Training Center.

Last Wednesday on my day off I went out to KESMARC to shadow for the day.  That was really exciting.  Not only did I get to see all the different therapy methods in action and learn a lot about rehabilitation, but I also got to meet a local celebrity.  Jean Cruguet, Seattle Slew's jockey actually stopped by that afternoon and I got to meet him!  It was cool to get to meet him and talk to him for a little bit.  He actually still exercises horses some mornings out at the race track!  I've added a picture I took with him on the picture page.  He's a short little guy, but I guess they all are.  Anyway - at KESMARC I got to see them do all the morning treatments they have to do before the horses get to work out.  I watched them run the hyperbaric oxygen chamber on a dummy foal that came in that day.  I got to observe an equine physical therapist do laser treatment on one of the horses.  And I also got to go around with an internal medicine specialist who came in for the day to scope several of the horses for respiratory problems.  It was fun to observe the scopes; he passed the scope around and let everyone helping look and then he'd explain what was going on with each of the horses and what he suspected it might be.

I think that about catches you up.  Of course in-between all the excitement there has been a lot of the normal everyday chores;  dipping navels and giving enemas to foals, grooming mares, pulling manes, cleaning stalls, moving horses around to make room for all the new babies, and so on.  But the weather is getting so nice here!  It has been in the 70?s for over a week now, which has been really nice!  Not so great in the afternoons when the horses would rather stay out in the sun than come in when they?re supposed to, but it is definitely nicer than 20?s and snowing.  I?ve added a few new pictures, not too many though.  Racing starts at Keeneland next week!  Anyone keeping up with the Derby prospects?  It?s just over a month away; Derby is starting to become big talk around here, which is really exciting!  I?ll keep you guys posted, and I?ll post again hopefully sooner next time! 

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!     

A lot more baby pictures added!  I got a chance to walk around during lunch one afternoon and get some good shots of the foals out playing in the field.  They love being outside, and they are so much fun to watch trying to play together and get into trouble.  Over the weekend we had one foal escape outside the paddock fence, and we had to catch him and lead him back in before the mare got too freaked out.  My manager and I were out checking fields and noticed something a little out of the ordinary when we saw a big black fence between a mare and foal.  We think the baby must have fallen asleep next to the fence, and in some spots, the fences are actually high enough that the smaller foals can roll over to get up and end up rolling out of the paddocks!  He cooperated pretty well though and let us catch him and take him back to his mom. 

I was called out to a foaling last week one night, and by the time I got to the barn we had two mares both in the process of delivering!  So that was pretty exciting to get to see.  I've added pictures of those new babies also.  One of the mares is on restricted turn out right now, her foal was born with really weak tendons in the back legs so they can't go out in a paddock yet until the foal gets a little stronger and can stand better.  We have to bandage the foal?s legs because her fetlocks hang really close to the ground, and this way she doesn't get any cuts or scratch the ground with her skin.  One of our mares who foaled Monday night is known to give her foals jaundice, so we've had to muzzle the baby and bottle feed him.  This mare is known for causing neonatal isoerythrolysis in her foals (aka jaundice) and what happens is her body makes antibodies against the baby once she becomes pregnant.  The mare's colostrum is full of her antibodies, and the foal is supposed to drink this within the first few hours of birth, but with a jaundice foal, if the baby drinks the colostrum it will cause the red blood cells to break down and the foal can essentially die within 48 hours if not treated.  So, since we know this mare has been known to do this, as soon as any of her foals are born they are monitored and bottle fed colostrum that we have stored at the farm.  They aren?t allowed to nurse her.  We also have to milk out the mare for the first few days to make sure all her colostrum is gone before the baby is allowed to nurse from her.

I also got to go on another breeding shed run Monday.  This time I went to Hill 'n' Dale Farm, but this breeding wasn't too successful.  We teased our mare that morning before we sent her to the shed, but when we got to the farm and she was teased there she didn't break down so the stallion manager wanted her to be jumped before the actual breeding.  When they "jump" a mare it means to get her ready and then let the teaser stallion mount her to make sure she will stand for him.  It's just a precaution for the stallion so if the mare isn't in heat and decided to act bad the million dollar stallion isn't the one getting hurt.  (Poor teaser guys huh?!)  So they tried to jump our mare, and the first time she swished her tail and ran out from under him, so they tried again.  The second time she gave him a good kick in the gut, and when they tried it once more, she bucked up and kicked him with both hind feet!  So needless to say, we didn't get to breed our mare that morning.  We took her back to the farm and had the vet palp her.  She still had a follicle, so she should have been showing heat, but the vet said the structure of her cervix wasn't consistent.  Still being early in the breeding season a lot of mares are still transitioning and it's harder to catch them always on the first time, or make sure that everything is working together.  The natural mating requires a lot of timing between the mare and stallion owners, sometimes it still amazes me that they can time everything just right and are so successful.  We've also started ultra sounding a couple of the mares that were sent to the breeding shed in the previous weeks.  We've got 2 that I know of, confirmed in foal so far, but there are a lot more still to go. 

Last week class was at the Jockey Club office.  We learned all about how to register thoroughbreds and the naming process and rules and restrictions and that sort of thing.  It was pretty interesting to learn about, and I actually got to go through with one of our managers just the other day at our farm and look over the paper work for some of our yearlings that were recently registered and are going to sale in the fall.  Last night was another Thoroughbred Farm Manager's Club meeting.  This week's topic of discussion was pastures and how to get the best quality pasture for horses on the area farms.  I never realized there was so much involved in growing grass! But there is, trust me!  And these guys knew all about it!  It was pretty interesting though.  They talked some about the endophyte infected fescue and how to manage it, and when it's ok and not ok to let mares graze on pastures with this fescue.  So that was neat to learn about.  Next week's class is out at my farm!  I'm pretty excited about that!  We're going to be talking about conformation in foals and limb deformaties that are commonly seen.  

I've loaded most of the new pictures I have.  Keep checking the webshots page, sometimes I get a chance to add photos and don't get the time to write a blog, but I try to at least up date one or the other every few days so I don't leave you guys hanging too long.  Enjoy the pics! I'll post again soon.