From the time of her birth, Goldie was hardly ever touched by a human. Sure, her owners fed her and her dam, along with her two older half sisters, but no handling was ever done. She was allowed to live like she was a wild Mustang, instead of a Thoroughbred with a possible racing future. In the late spring of her yearling year, Goldie's life changed, when she met me.
I was working on a ranch in Texas, where Goldie's sire stood at stud. Goldie's owners wanted her dam to be bred back to Goldie's sire, so we took the horse trailer to go pick up Goldie's dam. The owners also decided that we should take Goldie and her older half sisters, too. They were in desperate need of farrier care and some handling.
It took over an hour to get the 4 of them loaded onto the trailer. The older sisters had some handling, but not a lot. Just enough that a halter was able to be put on them and they would lead a little bit, but not great. We loaded the older sisters first, then Goldie's dam, and Goldie had to be herded onto the trailer.
Despite what her name may be, she was not gold in color, actually almost a dark bay, with only a hint of red to her coat. I don't think she even had any white markings, maybe a tiny star, but I don't remember, for sure.
Once back at the ranch, it was my job to start teaching Goldie about humans and start her early training. Since I had some experience with Mustangs, I decided to treat her similar to how I had been successful with them.
Goldie was put in the barn, if you can call it that, as it was more of a 3 sided building with 4 foot high panels on the front. You could open them up and give the horses a small run area. Her area was usually kept open and it measured about 16 x 32 feet, at most.
I would stand by her feed bucket as she ate, so she would get used to my scent and me being present while she ate. At first, I did this from the other side of the metal panel, and when she had accepted me being there, I would then stand beside the bucket, but on the same side of the panel as she was on, so I was now in her space. I wanted her to get used to me being there, my smell, my voice, my movements, etc.
Once she became more relaxed about that, I started to hold the bucket and have her come to me to eat. She could only eat if she came to me and stuck her head into the bucket I was holding. This took a few days, but soon she caught on and started to accept this, so then I moved to the next step, which was trying to touch her.
At first, every time my hand moved towards her, no matter how slowly, she would jump away and run to the back of the pen. But, she'd soon come back, hunger for the grain winning over her fear of me.
A few more days passed and I was soon petting her gently on the head. So, i then hung the bucket back up on the panel and stood next to it, again, as she ate, this time I had both hands free to try and touch her. First just her head, then her neck, then her shoulder, each day a little further.
Everyday we made slow progress in where I could touch her and pet her gently. When I'd try to go a bit further, she'd still wheel and run to the back of the pen. I never feared her kicking me, even though I am pretty sure she was kicking out in my direction, as she ran away, but something told me that she was not mean, and would not intentionally hurt me.
We were making great progress and I added a halter to the top of the feed bucket, for her to stick her nose through, in order to eat. This did spook her quite a bit and the next thing I knew the ranch owner was running out of the house and yelling at me that I was doing this all wrong and I was going to get hurt. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands and show me, what she considered, the "right way" to deal with a wild horse was.
I had spent weeks building up a relationship with Goldie and my heart sank as this woman returned with a lunge whip. She entered the pen with Goldie and all I could do was stand by and hope and pray she would not undo all my hard work to gain Goldie's trust.
A common practice, which I was aware of before this woman decided to show me, is to use a whip as an extension of your arm, but since I am legally blind, this actually is more dangerous for me, then the way I was doing it. I do not like using whips, unless I have to.
This woman reached out and started touching Goldie with the end of the whip and GOldie completely flipped out. She was racing around the small pen trying to find a way to escape, but there was no way out. Goldie was scared out of her mind as this woman insisted on continueing to touch Goldie. This went on for what seemed like hours, but was maybe 45 minutes. Goldie never accepting the lunge whip touching her. I was almost in tears knowing how scared Goldie must have been. She had only known my kind hands and now a whip was being flung at her, she was hit with it, several times, it wasn't just used as an extension of a calm hand.
We left Goldie to settle down and I had to listen to this woman tell me that I had to do the same thing the next day. That my way was taking too long and she thought I was going to get hurt.
But in my way, Goldie never raced around the pen frantically looking for a way out. For me, with my vision, that is way more dangerous than me standing calmly at one end of the pen, just trying to calmly touch her as she ate, and if she needed a break from me, she could just go to the back of the pen and I would let her have her moment and then she would always return to me.
The next day I tried to stand by the bucket, like I had done all those days, even weeks, before, but Goldie would not have any part of me. I started to cry, I couldn't help it. I told her how sorry I was, but that the lady was my boss and I had no say.
I quit that job about a week later, never regaining Goldie's confidence. I had other reasons, not just the Goldie experience for leaving this job, but it was part of it. I think the main theme of the difficulty is the lady's insistance that her way was the only right way and that any variation of that was wrong and dangerous. I tried to explain that I had to do things differently, sometimes, due to my eyesight, but like many others, she just didn't understand or want to understand, she was stubborn in her thinking and not willing to believe that there could be more than one right way to do something.
Experiences like what I went through with Goldie leave me wondering why do people insist on their way always being the right way and the quick way being better than a slow way? I will never understand people like this. I need to do things a bit differently, because of my vision, this doesn't make it wrong, it just is what works for me and I still get great results. I have never been seriously hurt by a horse, but if I do get hurt, it happens to sighted people all the time, it won't be due to my vision or my techniques.
I had been very successful with the Mustangs I had worked with, see my post on "The Mustangs of Hawkeye Hill", for more details, and I know that if Goldie and I had been left alone, just a little bit longer, I would have had that halter on her, had her leading, had her loading on a trailer, accepting tack, and eventually a rider.
Someone else was brought in to work with Goldie, after I left, and I don't know all the details, but she was eventually broke to ride, but I don't think she ever made it to the track. A shame, as she was a nice filly, just was never given the chance from the start.
Showing posts with label Thoroughbreds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thoroughbreds. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Artificial Insemenation (A.I.) and Thoroughbreds
A few days ago my husband posted to his Blog about A.I. and Thoroughbreds, which seems to have sparked quite the debate on another site (Pedigree Query). You can see his blog post at: http://perfectpeacefarm.blogspot.com/2011/09/rich-people-apparently-get-turned-off.html
He did a good job explaining the situation, but I thought I might go ahead and chime in on this one.
We breed Thoroughbreds for racing and sport, but we also have bred Anglo-Arabians and Half Welsh Ponies. We have bred mares via live cover and A.I. so we are talking from experience in knowing the costs of both, the in's and out's of both, and so on.
The Jockey Club refuses to allow A.I., one of their arguements is that it would narrow down the gene pool of the Thoroughbred and there woulod not be as much diversity in the breed, but I strongly disagree, because we are already narrowing the gene pool and I think by allowing A.I. it just might spread it back out, again.
If you look at the number of stallions that the big Kentucky farms stood at stud just 10 to 20 years ago, and compare it to now, you'd see that most of the big farms are standing about half the number that they once had.
When I went to Kentucky in 1990, I went to Claiborne, Spendthrif, and Gainesway, all 3 had just about all their stallion barns full, very few empty stalls. I lived in Kentucky in 1997 and visited Lane's End, which also had it's barn full of stallions. I then visited Kentucky in 2006 and again in 2010, visiting some of the same places I'd visited in the past, along with a few I hadn't been to before, and what I saw was a lot of empty stallions in those stallion barns.
These farms weren't really breeding any less mares than before, but what they had done was increased the number of mares each stallions bred, so standing fewer.
Kentucky seems to get rid of stallions a lot quicker than they used to, if it doesn't get good sales prices of it's first few crops and if it's first two crops to race don't set the track on fire, they quickly send it to a regional market or even sell it to go overseas.
I have seen on quite a few occasions, that they get rid of a stallion way too quickly and the year after it leaves Kentucky, it gets a hot horse. Sometimes the stallion is welcomed back to Kentucky, but most of the time they have moved on to the next hot retired stallion prospect.
Now, I realize that the number of mares bred has dropped the last two years, but this is due more to the economy. I will be perfectly honest here, if A.I. was allowed, I would have a lot more foals than I currently do.
To breed my mares to anything decent, I have to send them out of state, because of the lack of quality stallions standing here in Virginia, these days. I could go on about that subject, but I'll save that for another time. We have bred Thoroughbred mares in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, when there was something worth breeding to here.
Shipping has cost us anywhere from $300 to $700, one way, depending on where the mare was going. Kentucky is usually the most expensive place for us to ship to, but I have looked into shipping to Florida and that would have actually cost me more. Then, once the mare is at the boarding farm, which is usually not where the stallion stands at stud, it costs $25 to $30 a day for a mare without a foal and $30 to $35 a day for a mare with a foal at her side. The shortest time I have kept a mare at a boarding farm was about 45 days, because she cooperated, came into heat as soon as she got to the farm and got in foal (pregnant) on that first heat cycle. You have to wait 14 days, minimum, to see if a mare is pregnant, and a heartbeat can be detected between 28 to 32 days. I usually try to wait for this 2nd check before I will go ahead and make plans for the mare to come back home. Add the vet costs ontop of the shipping costs and boarding costs and we have spent between $3000 to $5000 for just one mare, in one breeding season, to get her pregnant, and that doesn't include the stud fee that we pay for the privilege of breeding our mare to the stallion of our choice.
If I could breed via A.I., I would not have the mare's shipping costs to worry about or the boarding costs. Yes, I'd have vet bills, but my home vet charges less than the Kentucky ones and the cost of shipping semen is no more than the cost of one way shipping of a mare. There are collection costs and shipping costs for the semen to get to you, but this usually costs me, in total, for one shipment, between $250 to $350, depending on the collection costs that the stallion's vet charges and the distance the semen has to travel, as it has to be shipped overnight, if it is just cooled semen, versus frozen semen, but even that has to be sent quickly.
I'd save anywhere from $2000 to $4000 if I could breed via A.I. and I could put that money towards paying for a higher quality stallion to breed even better stock.
Now, just because The Jockey Club opens up A.I., hypothetically speaking here, this does not mean that every stallion or farm has to do it. There are plenty of non-Thoroughbred stallions that are in registries that allow A.I. that do not have shipped semen available for a variety of reasons.
There are stallions who's semen just doesn't ship well, for some reason, the stallion may not like the collection process, and so on. And there are also mares that do not do well with receiving shipped semen, I've had one of these, so know the troubles that can come with a mare that reacts badly to the extender that is used to help keep the semen alive during shipping.
The Quarter Horse registry, AQHA, when it first opened up A.I. to the registry, first allowed only on site use of A.I., which means the stallion and the mare had to be on the same farm at the time of collection and then insemenation, no extender was allowed.
When I was in college, I assisted and watched as one of my riding instructor's AQHA stallions was collected and then we insemenated 3 mares from that one collection. All 3 mares got in foal. Then during a breeding class, we went to a Tennessee Walking Horse farm and watched them collect a stallion and then insemenate 4 mares from that one collection.
In Kentucky they have to breed the stallions up to 3 to 4 times a day to cover the number of mares they want to, especially if he is breeding over 100 mares. If they allowed A.I. they could just collect him once and breed all of those mares at one time. And if there were more mares than 3 or 4 in heat and needing breeding that day, they could collect him twice and double it to 6 to 8 mares being bred in one day and since he was only collected twice, he's not being overtaxed, overused, and so his semen quality will remain stronger. This could possibly help stallions that are starting to suffer some fertility issue.
The Jockey Club already allows the collection of the dismount, which not to be crude, but to explain, is the semen that spills out of the mare or is dripping from the stallion, after he is done breeding her. They can collect this and then put it into the mare, so they are already insemenating her artificially helping.
Collecting a stallion is safer than live cover. Stallions have been kicked and killed, have been thrown off balance and fallen, breaking legs, which has led to their being put down, and many other injuries to the stallion or mare, not to mention the injuries that can happen to the humans involved in this process.
Stallions that are having back trouble or any other issues that make it uncomfortable for them to live cover a mare, could be used longer if taught to ground collect, which means that all four of their hooves remain on the ground, while the semen is collected from them.
Allowing A.I. and shipment of the collected semen would mean that I could then breed to the Florida stallion I like, the California stallion I like, and so on, I wouldn't have to limit myself to breeding my mares within a few state proximity. Plus, I could spend the saved money on breeding to a higher quality stallion or even the purchase of another quality mare.
I think opening up A.I. and shipped semen would give others that chance to look all over the US for stallions for their mares and hence would increase the gene pool and not shrink it. Sure, there will be stallions that will always get over 100 mares, but the farms standing them could always help themselves and limit the number of mares that the stallion breeds, something they already do, but just because you can breed more, don't, so the value of the foals stays up, for those wanting to sell the offspring. But, for someone like myself who wants to breed a racehorse, not one that looks pretty in September of it's yearling year, looking like a 2 or 3 year old prematurely, it really would help me and the others like me, to get to that stallion who sires consistant solid runners. I already try to do this, but I have seen stallions in other states that I'd love to breed my mares to, but logistically I just can't do it and can't afford it, as I'm not rich.
And I don't think Kentucky would have to worry about a mass exodus of mares, because they still have the limestone rich pastures that are sought after by breeders and if they have a good incentive program in their state, make it even stronger than it currently is, it will just keep mares there so they can keep producing Kentucky breds. They may lose some of the seasonal boarders, like myself, but not the year round boarders.
I honestly don't think rich people are turned off by A.I., they don't care, they want whatever will get them the return on their investment. In fact, I bet they'd go for A.I. if they were a stallion owner and realized their top stallion could sire even more foals, meaning more money.
Part of this is tradition. Things seem to move at a snail pace, when you talk about change in the racing industry. They don't want to change their traditions, but times are changing and you need to move with the times to stay alive.
Again, Kentucky stud farms would not have to offer shipped semen or A.I. if they don't want to and it may not hurt them, because of the year round boarding mares that are already there, they'd stay there to breed to those stallions and if there is a stallion you really want to breed to and shipped semen isn't available, if you can afford to ship the mare and pay for those additional boarding costs, you'll ship the mare to breed to that stallion. This would only open up choices to everyone.
If there was a stallion in a nearby state that I really wanted to breed to and it was by far and away what I considered to be the best match for my mare, and they did not do shipped semen, I'd send my mare to be bred, if I had the money. So, there should be no threat hear by allowing A.I. and shipped semen for the Thoroughbred.
They are restricting trade here and also, I believe, hurting themselves, by not allowing A.I. I think it is fear of change and such, but I really don't think it would change the look of Kentucky by that much. So, I sure hope they will start allowing A.I. and shipped semen and sooner than later, please.
He did a good job explaining the situation, but I thought I might go ahead and chime in on this one.
We breed Thoroughbreds for racing and sport, but we also have bred Anglo-Arabians and Half Welsh Ponies. We have bred mares via live cover and A.I. so we are talking from experience in knowing the costs of both, the in's and out's of both, and so on.
The Jockey Club refuses to allow A.I., one of their arguements is that it would narrow down the gene pool of the Thoroughbred and there woulod not be as much diversity in the breed, but I strongly disagree, because we are already narrowing the gene pool and I think by allowing A.I. it just might spread it back out, again.
If you look at the number of stallions that the big Kentucky farms stood at stud just 10 to 20 years ago, and compare it to now, you'd see that most of the big farms are standing about half the number that they once had.
When I went to Kentucky in 1990, I went to Claiborne, Spendthrif, and Gainesway, all 3 had just about all their stallion barns full, very few empty stalls. I lived in Kentucky in 1997 and visited Lane's End, which also had it's barn full of stallions. I then visited Kentucky in 2006 and again in 2010, visiting some of the same places I'd visited in the past, along with a few I hadn't been to before, and what I saw was a lot of empty stallions in those stallion barns.
These farms weren't really breeding any less mares than before, but what they had done was increased the number of mares each stallions bred, so standing fewer.
Kentucky seems to get rid of stallions a lot quicker than they used to, if it doesn't get good sales prices of it's first few crops and if it's first two crops to race don't set the track on fire, they quickly send it to a regional market or even sell it to go overseas.
I have seen on quite a few occasions, that they get rid of a stallion way too quickly and the year after it leaves Kentucky, it gets a hot horse. Sometimes the stallion is welcomed back to Kentucky, but most of the time they have moved on to the next hot retired stallion prospect.
Now, I realize that the number of mares bred has dropped the last two years, but this is due more to the economy. I will be perfectly honest here, if A.I. was allowed, I would have a lot more foals than I currently do.
To breed my mares to anything decent, I have to send them out of state, because of the lack of quality stallions standing here in Virginia, these days. I could go on about that subject, but I'll save that for another time. We have bred Thoroughbred mares in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, when there was something worth breeding to here.
Shipping has cost us anywhere from $300 to $700, one way, depending on where the mare was going. Kentucky is usually the most expensive place for us to ship to, but I have looked into shipping to Florida and that would have actually cost me more. Then, once the mare is at the boarding farm, which is usually not where the stallion stands at stud, it costs $25 to $30 a day for a mare without a foal and $30 to $35 a day for a mare with a foal at her side. The shortest time I have kept a mare at a boarding farm was about 45 days, because she cooperated, came into heat as soon as she got to the farm and got in foal (pregnant) on that first heat cycle. You have to wait 14 days, minimum, to see if a mare is pregnant, and a heartbeat can be detected between 28 to 32 days. I usually try to wait for this 2nd check before I will go ahead and make plans for the mare to come back home. Add the vet costs ontop of the shipping costs and boarding costs and we have spent between $3000 to $5000 for just one mare, in one breeding season, to get her pregnant, and that doesn't include the stud fee that we pay for the privilege of breeding our mare to the stallion of our choice.
If I could breed via A.I., I would not have the mare's shipping costs to worry about or the boarding costs. Yes, I'd have vet bills, but my home vet charges less than the Kentucky ones and the cost of shipping semen is no more than the cost of one way shipping of a mare. There are collection costs and shipping costs for the semen to get to you, but this usually costs me, in total, for one shipment, between $250 to $350, depending on the collection costs that the stallion's vet charges and the distance the semen has to travel, as it has to be shipped overnight, if it is just cooled semen, versus frozen semen, but even that has to be sent quickly.
I'd save anywhere from $2000 to $4000 if I could breed via A.I. and I could put that money towards paying for a higher quality stallion to breed even better stock.
Now, just because The Jockey Club opens up A.I., hypothetically speaking here, this does not mean that every stallion or farm has to do it. There are plenty of non-Thoroughbred stallions that are in registries that allow A.I. that do not have shipped semen available for a variety of reasons.
There are stallions who's semen just doesn't ship well, for some reason, the stallion may not like the collection process, and so on. And there are also mares that do not do well with receiving shipped semen, I've had one of these, so know the troubles that can come with a mare that reacts badly to the extender that is used to help keep the semen alive during shipping.
The Quarter Horse registry, AQHA, when it first opened up A.I. to the registry, first allowed only on site use of A.I., which means the stallion and the mare had to be on the same farm at the time of collection and then insemenation, no extender was allowed.
When I was in college, I assisted and watched as one of my riding instructor's AQHA stallions was collected and then we insemenated 3 mares from that one collection. All 3 mares got in foal. Then during a breeding class, we went to a Tennessee Walking Horse farm and watched them collect a stallion and then insemenate 4 mares from that one collection.
In Kentucky they have to breed the stallions up to 3 to 4 times a day to cover the number of mares they want to, especially if he is breeding over 100 mares. If they allowed A.I. they could just collect him once and breed all of those mares at one time. And if there were more mares than 3 or 4 in heat and needing breeding that day, they could collect him twice and double it to 6 to 8 mares being bred in one day and since he was only collected twice, he's not being overtaxed, overused, and so his semen quality will remain stronger. This could possibly help stallions that are starting to suffer some fertility issue.
The Jockey Club already allows the collection of the dismount, which not to be crude, but to explain, is the semen that spills out of the mare or is dripping from the stallion, after he is done breeding her. They can collect this and then put it into the mare, so they are already insemenating her artificially helping.
Collecting a stallion is safer than live cover. Stallions have been kicked and killed, have been thrown off balance and fallen, breaking legs, which has led to their being put down, and many other injuries to the stallion or mare, not to mention the injuries that can happen to the humans involved in this process.
Stallions that are having back trouble or any other issues that make it uncomfortable for them to live cover a mare, could be used longer if taught to ground collect, which means that all four of their hooves remain on the ground, while the semen is collected from them.
Allowing A.I. and shipment of the collected semen would mean that I could then breed to the Florida stallion I like, the California stallion I like, and so on, I wouldn't have to limit myself to breeding my mares within a few state proximity. Plus, I could spend the saved money on breeding to a higher quality stallion or even the purchase of another quality mare.
I think opening up A.I. and shipped semen would give others that chance to look all over the US for stallions for their mares and hence would increase the gene pool and not shrink it. Sure, there will be stallions that will always get over 100 mares, but the farms standing them could always help themselves and limit the number of mares that the stallion breeds, something they already do, but just because you can breed more, don't, so the value of the foals stays up, for those wanting to sell the offspring. But, for someone like myself who wants to breed a racehorse, not one that looks pretty in September of it's yearling year, looking like a 2 or 3 year old prematurely, it really would help me and the others like me, to get to that stallion who sires consistant solid runners. I already try to do this, but I have seen stallions in other states that I'd love to breed my mares to, but logistically I just can't do it and can't afford it, as I'm not rich.
And I don't think Kentucky would have to worry about a mass exodus of mares, because they still have the limestone rich pastures that are sought after by breeders and if they have a good incentive program in their state, make it even stronger than it currently is, it will just keep mares there so they can keep producing Kentucky breds. They may lose some of the seasonal boarders, like myself, but not the year round boarders.
I honestly don't think rich people are turned off by A.I., they don't care, they want whatever will get them the return on their investment. In fact, I bet they'd go for A.I. if they were a stallion owner and realized their top stallion could sire even more foals, meaning more money.
Part of this is tradition. Things seem to move at a snail pace, when you talk about change in the racing industry. They don't want to change their traditions, but times are changing and you need to move with the times to stay alive.
Again, Kentucky stud farms would not have to offer shipped semen or A.I. if they don't want to and it may not hurt them, because of the year round boarding mares that are already there, they'd stay there to breed to those stallions and if there is a stallion you really want to breed to and shipped semen isn't available, if you can afford to ship the mare and pay for those additional boarding costs, you'll ship the mare to breed to that stallion. This would only open up choices to everyone.
If there was a stallion in a nearby state that I really wanted to breed to and it was by far and away what I considered to be the best match for my mare, and they did not do shipped semen, I'd send my mare to be bred, if I had the money. So, there should be no threat hear by allowing A.I. and shipped semen for the Thoroughbred.
They are restricting trade here and also, I believe, hurting themselves, by not allowing A.I. I think it is fear of change and such, but I really don't think it would change the look of Kentucky by that much. So, I sure hope they will start allowing A.I. and shipped semen and sooner than later, please.
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