Friday, January 30, 2009
Breeding By Candlelight
A major ice storm like we had this week in horse country means: breeding by candlelight.
Just kidding. But it can mean foaling by flashlight. When Central Kentucky loses electrical power (some 525,000 of us are without electricity) the horse farms face unique challenges.
I baked potatoes in the coals of a fire Wednesday night and had to leave home to find Internet service Thursday. That was after digging out the car. Meantime, those horse farms in my neighborhood with mares scheduled to foal have been bringing babies into the world under whatever alternative lighting they can muster up.
Most of the major farms use generators to provide alternative lighting: lessons learned from the big ice storm here in 2003. Not far from my place, WinStar Farm must have been caught by surprise, as most of us were, when the power went out in the middle of the night Tuesday. I read in the Lexington Herald-Leader that WinStar’s foaling crew helped a mare give birth Tuesday night – by car light.
Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm manager Joe Ramsey told the Herald-Leader: “I do have several mares close to foaling and, by golly, if we’ve got to use a flashlight, we just do.”
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Breeding by Candlelight"
Written by HRI Publisher
Visit Maryjean Wall's new site at "
Celebrating the Horse"
Monday, January 19, 2009
Timeless New Beginnings
Dawn on a winter’s day in Kentucky horse country is a time of pale beginnings. The sun rises slowly in the sparest shades of pink above treelines shorn of their summer leaves. Deep in the straw on nearly any Bluegrass farm, pastel wisps of dawn bring a new face peeking out with shy wonder from behind its mom. It is the new foal born during the previous night.
Foals have begun arriving in the Bluegrass. These are the hopefuls for the 2012 Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks, all of them learning to stand on wobbly new legs even as this year’s Derby hopefuls ramp up their training on race courses from Florida to Dubai. Veteran equine photographer, “Z,” shares with us her images of one such foal that charmed her during a routine assignment recently.
Here is her story:
My assignment was routine: to photograph the first foals of first-year stallions. But if I have learned one thing in 25 years as a photographer in the horse business, no routine assignment comes without surprises. That’s why I love photography. A surprise always awaits.
On this occasion, the foal I was to photograph was not available. This happens sometimes, for various reasons. The photographer has made the appointment but arrives to find that for some reason, the foal cannot be photographed that day.
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Timeless New Beginnings"
Written by Maryjean Wall
Visit Maryjean Wall's new site at "
Celebrating the Horse"
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Featured Farm: Airdrie Stud
In the woodland glades and verdant pastures that are Airdrie Stud, the notion of walking on hallowed ground is striking and real. The horse industry virtually began here. Airdrie stands on a portion of the fabled Woodburn Farm where Robert Aitcheson Alexander envisioned the role the Bluegrass was to play in a newly emerging commercial horse industry, following the Civil War.
Decades earlier, Bluegrass Kentucky already had won its reputation as the cradle of the nation’s Thoroughbred; Alexander, owner of Woodburn, would save and enhance Kentucky’s role at a critical turn as the nation embarked down new paths.
Alexander took what had been a hobby of the antebellum gentry class into the new realm of the business world, organizing his stud farm on a model of efficiency. Alexander understood record-keeping and marketing concepts when others had not. He played a key role in saving Kentucky’s claim as the nation’s horse-breeding capital at a time when this notion no longer rested secure.
In modern times, it is no small accident of history that the present owners of Airdrie, former Kentucky Governor Brereton C. Jones and his wife, Elizabeth (Libby) Jones (both on right in photo), have worked tirelessly to preserve Kentucky’s renown as the race horse capital of the world.
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Featured Farm: Airdrie Stud
Written by Maryjean Wall
Visit Maryjean Wall's new site at "
Celebrating the Horse"
