Friday News & Notes from Kentucky Equine Research

Photo courtesy of Tik Maynard.

Big congrats go out to new parents Sinead and Tik on the birth of their son, Brooks! Their little bundle of joy was born on Tuesday, and everyone is happy and healthy and heading back to the barn to start training him up as the next four-star champion in the family! Also, guys, best thing now is that you can start buying ridiculously cute and slightly evil ponies for him! OK, maybe in a few years, I don’t know, perhaps I jumped the gun on that…

National Holiday: National Lazy Moms Day

U.S. Weekend Preview:

Course Brook Farm H.T. [Website] [Ride Times]

Seneca Valley Pony Club H.T. [Website] [Entry Status] [Ride Times] [Live Scores]

Five Points H.T. [Website] [Entry Status] [Ride Times] [Live Scores]

Bucks County H.T. [Website] [Entry Status/Ride Times/Live Scores]

Dunnabeck H.T. [Website] [Entry Status/Ride Times/Live Scores]

Chardon Valley H.T. [Website] [Entry Status/Ride Times/Live Scores]

News From Around the Globe:

Speaking of Tik and Sinead, check out this quick “Day In The Life Of” feature that the Trafalgar Square Books (publisher of Tik’s In the Middle Are the Horsemen) blog did before the arrival of Baby Brooks. They have 23 horses in their barn and live in Florida, so the day starts early at 5:45 every morning, and Tik becoming a functional human being around 10 a.m., due to him not being a morning person at all. Top things on the day to day list: bad dad jokes, burritos, mowing the lawn, coffee, and ridiculous basketball outfits. [24 Hours with Tik & Sinead]

Do you like Plantation Field? Do you like running? If you check both those boxes, make sure to attend the Plantation Field Fun Run! On Saturday September 22, there will be a low-key 5k race around the cross country field at Plantation Field, with awards to the top three men and the top three women. Dogs and walkers welcome! [Plantation Field Fun Run]

This week, it’s the event that needs no introduction. THE Event. That one in Kentucky, in April I think? Equestrian Events, Inc. was formed in 1975, three years before the Kentucky Horse Park opened, to stage the World Championships at the Horse Park. In preparation for the event, they held the first ever horse trials at the Horse Park in the fall of 1976. The following year they hosted the National Pony Club Rally in August and staged the North American Junior Three-Day Event Championship in September. The World Three-Day Event Championships were held in September of 1978 and were an unprecedented success. [USEA Events A-Z: Kentucky 4*]

If you’re any kind of self respecting horse person, you’ve seen trailers for the new series Yellowstone, and you’re just as pumped as we are to watch it. It’s like a rule: if a new movie or TV show comes out and it has horses in it, you gotta check it out. Yellowstone is Dances with Wolves meets The Sopranos, with a cattle baron versus a land developer in Montana. Horse Nation took a deeper look into why we love it so much. [8 Reasons We Totally Love “Yellowstone”]

WEG Forage & Feeds Update from KER: The WEG feed and forage team from Kentucky Equine Research is hard at work getting the first flights of horses set up. About 170 eventing, endurance, dressage, and reining horses have arrived on the venue so far. As horses arrive from abroad, they transfer from the airport to post-arrival quarantine on the venue.

Most horses will require a delivery of feed and forage to tide them over during the 42-hour quarantine. When the horse is released, anything brought into quarantine has to be disposed of, so a separate order of feed and forage needs to be available when they arrive at competition stabling. Fulfilling these double orders has the team hopping! Stay up-to-date with the latest from behind the scenes at WEG here.