Breeding Season: The Chaos and Wonder it Brings!

August 1st marks the birthday of all the Southern Hemisphere bred sport horses and with it the start of a new, exciting, and somewhat daunting breeding season.

The breeding season for me conjures up a mixture of sleep deprived emotions!!!!

The highs of seeing my seasons foals safely born, taking their first wobbly steps, and dreaming of what their future holds.

The trials and tribulations of using frozen semen to inseminate my mares which often involves scanning every 2-3 hours throughout the day and night. Synchronising deslorelin injections to allow this scanning to happen in the hours I’m not at work sometimes meaning scanning to look for ovulation, and inseminating in the middle of the night (often in my PJ’s or worse lol). After AI, flushing and oxytocin protocols involving injections every six hours for three and a half days and trying to fit this all in around work, Angus, farm duties, keeping competition horses in work, and of course collecting from the stallions for clients.

Waiting the long 14-16 days for the pregnancy scan to either feel elated at a positive test, or deflated at a negative result and having to start the process all over again lol. A roller coaster that’s for sure!!! I ask myself every year why I do it!!!

Collecting from the stallions for clients at 5am so I can get back up the hill by 7am to sort Angus for school and get to my actual day job as a vet on time. Relying on the somewhat dubious efficiency of overnight couriers since flights are unfortunately not an option from my location. Waiting with trepidation at the pregnancy results of each and every mare inseminated for as if they were my own.

Aaarrrggghhh no wonder I feel exhausted just thinking about it. Exciting all the same though!!!!! Roll on October and my first foals making an appearance…. What will they shape up to be?????