Wednesday, May 5, 2010

On the disadvantages of live-breeding horses...

Well, my neighbors finally got all their horses back in one place. Which makes more work for me, which is good because more work pays more.

It seems they decided to celebrate Unification Day by breeding Paulo, the Stallion from Hell, to Solari, the World's Most Nervous Mare - who is also a virgin. The best that can be said of the outcome of this celebration is that there were no serious injuries. The same can't be said for property damage.

Solari is...still a virgin. But the fencing in Paulo's corral has got that "experienced" look. He's been in training for Western Pleasure class, but it seems that while in the city that boy might have profited more by some lessons in Foreplay Technique. Anyway, Solari wasn't having any of it, Paulo wasn't taking no for an answer, and in the negotiation some things you wouldn't have thought a horse could bend got pretty severely bent. But humans and horses remained miraculously untrampled.

Our neighbors have decided that skipping the insemination fee might just be a false economy after all.

2 comments:

suek said...

Have they never heard of "teasing" mares? or of breeding chutes?

Of course, in nature such things are unnecessary, but nature has her own way of ensuring "manners" are learned, and that mares learn to stand for mounting... When we take horses out of their natural surroundings, we sort of have to "arrange" things.

Insemination can be expensive unless you send both horses somewhere to have it handled - and that's expensive. The mare has to be palpated daily to determine when she ovulates - that gets pricey if a vet has to come out every other day... At least in my area, it's pricey.

And it sounds like that mare isn't exactly hormonally "average"... I had one mare that on checking, turned out to ovulate the day _after_ she went out of season. Makes breeding the normal way -very- likely to be unsuccessful.

suek said...

Paulo...and Solari...

Are these Andalusians by any chance?