I’m a first time breeder with a maiden mare. I’ll be blogging about the entire breeding process over the coming year and hope to welcome a new foal in 2016! Click here to read part I.
Corollary whispers sweet nothings to Fey. Photo by Mary Quarles
Since we are breeding Fey through live cover and not AI, we are tracking Fey’s cycle through teasing rather than using an ultrasound machine. When I moved Fey to her new barn at the beginning of March, we started teasing her immediately. She was conveniently in season at that time, which made the process of tracking her 21-day cycle much simpler.
She has a teasing chart, and each day we mark whether she was in season (a big X) or not in season (a big O). There is space for additional notes to mark things like vaccinations or vet visits. On March 30, we wrote a big B, for Bred!
We’ve been teasing Fey every day with Corollary, a 15-year-old Thoroughbred stallion who has sired many of the horses on the property. With him in a stall, we walk Fey up to an outdoor window and see what happens.
If she’s in season, he will make funny faces and she will turn her rear towards him and urinate. No, it’s not especially romantic, but Corollary is perfect for the job. He nickers at her and is gentle when he bumps her with his head. This was important because we need Fey to be accustomed to the stallion touching and bumping her backside.
If Fey is not in season, Corollary will usually leave the window and return to his hay. If we press the issue, Fey will squeal at him or ignore him completely, searching my pockets for treats instead.
Fey’s teasing chart.
Yesterday, Fey was coming in hot, so we decided to introduce her to Mysterious Peintre, the stallion she would actually be bred to. Mysterious is an 11-year-old Thoroughbred that raced in France, and he’s significantly more “stallion-like” than Corollary. He adds a lot of bravado and noise to his interaction with the mare. He’s not dangerous – just loud.
It was important for us to make sure Fey wasn’t going to be afraid of Mysterious’ behavior, so we put them next to one another in two foaling stalls so they could “talk.” Mysterious did his thing, but Fey charmed him, and when things settled down we decided it was time. Mysterious’ equipment had been cleaned already, so we wrapped Fey’s tail and got to it.
The breeding itself went about as perfectly as you could hope. Fey didn’t try to leave the scene and Mysterious was very well behaved. Again, not so romantic, but they got the job done.
Afterwards, I threw Fey back out with her friend, Willow, who I think was more concerned about the affair than anyone else. She gave Fey, who was prancing giddily around the field, a dirty look after smelling what she’d been up too.
We’ll skip today and then breed Fey once more on Wednesday before I leave for The Fork. She was in season for about five days that we tracked during her last cycle, so she won’t be bred more than three times in this cycle. If she doesn’t take this time, we will continue with the daily teasing and try again next month.
Hopefully in a couple weeks we’ll see that little black dot on the ultrasound. Hooves crossed!
