Friday News & Notes from Kentucky Equine Research

Lauren Billys is excited to welcome two exciting new horses to her string of upcoming talent. After a whirlwind trip to Europe to shop with the support of two syndicates and their members, Lauren selected Can Be Sweet (Tres Belle X Candyman), a 5-year-old German Sporthorse gelding, and Caletina (R-Landau Z X Calido I), a 6-year-old Holsteiner mare to bring back to the United States with her. Owned by the Can Be Sweet Syndicate and the Caletina Syndicate, these exciting young horses were hand picked after Lauren saw over 100 horses on her trip. [Lauren Billys’ New Mounts]

Love a big chestnut stallion with lots of chrome? You’re going to adore Emerald N.O.P. if you haven’t already fallen for him. He’s stunning in more way than one, and is taking the show jumping world by storm with Dutch rider Harrie Smolders. Check out the COTH Behind the Stall Door feature on this big guy. [COTH: Emerald N.O.P.]

CDCTA Horse Trials is one of Area II’s most beloved and long-lasting competitions. Since 1989, this event has been on the USEA calendar, but not always at the same location. Offering Intro through Preliminary, CDCTA is held twice a year, and is a must attend event for all local competitors. [History of CDCTA]

KER ClockIt™ Session of the Week

Kentucky Equine Research (KER) takes a lot of the guesswork out of conditioning with its free smartphone app, KER ClockIt Sport. By tracking an individual horse’s intensity and duration of exercise through speed, heart rate, and GPS, horse owners and trainers can condition and feed each horse appropriately for the work they’re actually performing.

The ClockIt Sport session featured this week belongs to a rider who was prepping her horse for Training horse trials that were to take place in two weeks, before advancing to Preliminary level. The pair set out for hill work, including a ten-minute trot set, followed by three three-minute canter sets. Check out a segment of the session below. As you can see, the horse’s heart rate (purple line) increases while ascending hills (blue line).

Multiple KER treadmill studies have shown that exercising horses on an incline greatly increases work intensity as measured by oxygen consumption, heart rate, and lactate production. These studies have shown that at a canter, a 1% increase in grade increases a horse’s heart rate 6 bpm—the same effect on heart rate as increasing speed 35 m/min on a level treadmill. Therefore, equal heart rates can be obtained by cantering horses on a 6% grade at 490 m/min as from galloping on the flat at 700 m/min.

To see a detailed report like the one above, go to the KER ClockIt website and log in to your account. Once you are signed in, you can view your detailed sessions under the “Sessions” tab.