Each year we select stallions that we think will make a perfect match with our mares to be bred.  We have used local studs, standing at Olds College as well as famous and distant ones at big stud farms in the USA.  Each stallion offers something unique - their conformation and size, their performance history, their disposition and ease of handling, their colour and of course, their previous offspring. 

 

Like a gardener browsing seed catalogues as the winter wind blows, breeders research pedigrees and watch performance videos through the cold, slower months.  In the past couple years, shipments of semen have been difficult and unrelliable from the USA, and so we have concentrated on studs standing in Canada. 

 

If possible, I prefer pasture breeding as it is the most natural process for the horses and generally leads to the best pregnancy rates.  Not every mare will allow this process and many studs no longer provide live cover at all due to the risk of injury.  Aritificial insemination is a marvellous technilogical advance in the breeding world, but it is not always easy or successful.  It can involve many long drives, sometimes with a large thermos marked "SEMEN" strapped securely into the passenger seat. 

 

At 14 days post insemination we can ultrasound the mare to determine if we have achieved an embryo but things are still tenuous.  At 30 days, a live heart beat is a joyous sound.  And somewhere around 11 months, if everything goes right, when no one is around, the foal will arrive - a gangly, wet and confused creature..  From birth, a foal should be standing within an hour and suckling within two.  Each live foal is a true miracle!