The race is afoot. (er, a hoof...)

Ok folks, sorry about the long delay between posts. We are ramping up for race season, our first two races are this weekend. I'll be sure to post more either this weekend or next week!

The big thaw, and what's next.

So we're out of the sub zero temps and starting to thaw... a lot. It's nothing but mud and ... er... manure. Now is the time when you really have to be diligent with your horses in pasture. Thrush will creep up quickly in these wet conditions, especially if you have a few consecutive days where the ground has standing water or is wet.

The best way to stay on top of thrush is a weekly check of all of your horses. If you have horses that are prone to thrush, use a treatment or inhibitor every week, that will keep things from getting outta hand.

It's a girl, again!

We had our second filly of the season on Wed. morning. The birth went well, with no complications. The filly was up and nursing in good time, and has been doing great in turn out the last couple days.

I'll be updating the slide show to the right with new pics of both weenlings!

Stay tuned!

Keeping the dust down in your arena.

One more facilities thing that I did want to touch on is keeping dust down in your indoor riding arenas during this time of year. Even though most of our horses are out for training, we still use the arena to turn out the mares and their new foals so that they can get exercise.

This means it's extremely important to keep the dust down in the arena. The new foals can't handle the dust and it may damage their developing lungs.

The problem is that in this weather our sprinkler systems won't work, and we've even busted a couple hydrants from the severe cold. What we've resorted to doing is keeping a hose in the house so that it stays thawed, then dragging it out every day and using it to hand water the soft pack. It's a pain in the rear, but it's the best way to get even watering during cold conditions. If you try to use lawn sprinklers on the end of a hose, it causes pooling and packing, which will result in you having to spend extra time tilling your arena in the spring.

Technology is helping manage today's farms.

There are a lot of things that I have recently been introduced to that are very interesting. Being in any agricultural industry you tend to be on the back side of newer technologies, but our industries are quickly catching on to how much tech can improve our efficiency and productivity.

Here are a couple things that we use here, or that I have found and implemented that are helping in the operations of the farm.

Foal Alert.

If you do any kind of large stock breeding, you should know about this one. It's a transmitter that is sewn into the vulva with three simple sutures. Once the water breaks and the mare begins to foal, it sends a signal to the transmitter that dials a list of pre-set phone numbers. It actually calls our house, pagers, and cell phones the moment the mare begins to foal.

Maintenance Software

This is a free software program that allows you to keep and track all of your employees, equipment, and facilities. It generates work orders, preventative maint. schedules, and more. It is simple to use, and works well. Once you have all of the information in the system, it can be a huge asset. I am working on networking all of our buildings so that work orders can be put in at multiple locations and received in the shop, which will print out on a daily basis.

Both of these things have saved a ton of time in their respective areas of service.

We'll talk more in my next post of the foaling process, as we have our second foal of the season due any day.

Bedding choices in the new foal's stall.

As we are getting ready for our second mare to give birth, I am looking at some of the finer details of the process that I want to discuss. Today I'd like to take a look at the bedding choices that you have in the stalls that the newborns will be in.

Since most of us use fine sawdust or a combination of sawdust and shavings, that is probably already in the foaling stall that you will use. The thing to keep in mind is that newborn foals will spend a lot of time sleeping and down near the bedding, and fine sawdust can cause some serious problems with their lungs. Since racehorses are rely heavily on their lungs, it's very important that they are given the chance to develop properly in the early days. Covering your sawdust with straw will greatly cut down on the amount of dust in the air. The sawdust makes a great absorbent on the bottom, as well as insulation from the ground on concrete or padded stalls. Remember tho, if you have heated floors, be sure to closely regulate the temps so that you don't run into problems from the extra bedding that you add.

Next we'll look at indoor arenas and keeping the dust down in the winter, which can be especially tricky in the winter, since you usually can't use your overhead watering system.

Stay tuned!

About the birth

Now that I've gotten some rest, and am getting over this cold that's going around, I want to share a little more about the whole process that we went through here over the last week or so. Like I said, this was my first foaling, but old hat for the owners as well as the mare, so it was a really good experience.

The big thing that I learned is that the (almost) tell tale sign that the foal is coming tonight is the waxing. This sign is the "Big Red Flag" that let us know that it was gonna happen, and soon. We went through a couple false labor type days, several times that the mare went down on her side, her bags would fill, then recede some, then fill, and so on. Needless to say, we got worked up WAY too early, mainly because she went longer than expected before foaling.

Our next mare comes due in a couple weeks, and I am sure this one will be a lot less hectic. The thing to keep in mind is that even though waxing is the sign to watch for, some mares will skip this step all together. If you don't know your mare's history, it's important to watch all of the other signs too to be on guard for the big day.

We'll talk more about that in a while, I'm going to go back to some facilities issues here over the next few blogs.

Stay tuned!