"Hello and welcome to my blog!

I'm not really sure where to start so I will just dive in...

This breeding season had a very wobbly start for us. We only had one foal due this year, and she was born on 3 May. A beautiful filly foal by the Gribaldi son Adonnis out of Tanza, my super Fidertanz x Worldchamp mare. As you can see from the pictures below she is absolutely gorgeous, but when she was a week old she came in from the field lame. We called the vet out and he confirmed our worst fears - she had fractured her hind cannon bone. The fracture was a vertical one extending almost the entire length of the bone. The vet said he was amazed that the bone had not totally collapsed and we had to put both the mare and foal on box rest. They have now both been on box rest for a month and we are hoping to xray again in a fortnight to check that all is healing as it should.

The foal still doesn't have a name yet, so any recommendations would be gratefully received! We are going to wait a couple of weeks before putting this mare back in foal as it is not ideal to cover them when they are on box rest. Jazz (number one stallion on the WBFSH sire rankings) is going to be Tanza's new husband, so any baby will most definitely be a ginger next year...

I had yet more bad news on the breeding front. My gorgeous KWPN mare Dessa, by Hotline x Ixion, who was covered recently is not in foal. We tried using frozen semen the first time round and she has not reacted particularly well to it and has short cycled. I think we will try again as it is still early enough in the season. More vet bills, joy!

We have chosen the Jazz son Wynton for Dessa as we feel he is a very good match for her. He has an phenomenal dressage index of 182, one point more than his superb sire. We ummed and ahhed over whether to use a proven grand prix performer, like I had chosen to do with Tanza, but then decided that Wynton was such a special boy that it was worth the gamble. This is always a consideration for us when choosing stallions. Though younger stallions are often cheaper to use, they don't have the progeny results to back up their potential as sires.

Anyway, I could talk about breeding all day, but I have been given a word limit! I will fill you in on our other news and tell you about my current ridden horses in the next blog."