March 2013, last 6 month update!

This year seems to be racing away with us.  I still am not able to ride at any great level because of my injury so we have had few changes.
Last year I sold my eventer to a lovely young rider and we wish them all the best.
Magic Moments had a beautiful foal by Stanhopes Magician, called Magic Bravo.  He is an upstanding colt that now has a new home in Cambridge.  Once weaned he will be making his way north.  We hope that he will be out and about at the in-hand shows as he really is a stunning boy.
Stanhopes Magician offspring are now starting to make their mark in the show ring.  The lovely filly bred and owned by Nicole Bulford was Supreme Pinto at Canterbury A&P 2012, which is amazing for a yearling.  Both this filly's parents have taken out this title so nice to keep it in the family!
Also the stunning yearling colt by Stanhopes Magician, bred by Joanne McGregor and now owned by Marie Bullivant in the North Island had a great show at The Horse of The Year Show 2013.
BV Windrivers Magician won the pinto foal/yearling class, and were 4th in the Pinto Horse of the Year title class.  Again, amazing results for a yearling.  This is very encouraging as a breeder and we are very proud of all our youngsters.
We loved this youngster so much, that we bought his dam off Joanne.  She is a lovely black mare by Voltaire II and she is now confirmed in foal to Whats Colour aka Tomtom.  So we await this foal with anticipation.
Our lovely mare Magic Moments is also back in foal.  This time to Andretti, the Grand Prix show jumping stallion that was imported from Europe.  My trainer Vaughn Jefferis is a huge fan of this boy and he encouraged us to use him.  We are sure this foal will be a gorgeous, athletic, and not to mention pinto :-)
Stanhopes Magician is now my riding horse. While I was recovering he had some time with Vaughn Jefferis and then later with lovely show jump rider Teegan.  He proved to be a bold careful jump.  Really good infront and lets go behind.  He was not worried about fill either, so I am looking forward to hopefully getting out and about with him in the not too distant future!
Magic Fluke is now started under saddle with Bert Elstob and now home for a rest before his first breeding season.  We hope to stand him to the public this season, and we also have a limited number of frozen semen available for Stanhopes Magician.

Photos are BV Windrivers Magician (by Stanhopes Magician)
Magic Fluke
Magic Bravo (by Stanhopes Magician out of Magic Moment/Whats Colour)

2012...

This year seems to have gone past while I have stood still!

Sadly my leg has not recovered as I had hoped so life has changed as I know it.  My physio has told me that I will never be able to cross country ride again, which after 10 months of hoping and going through the pain is pretty devastating. So decisions have had to be made and this was an extremely hard one, but my lovely eventer Hewston I have had to let go to a lovely new home. I am sure they will have lots of fun with him and he will look after his new rider as he did me.
We have also sold the lovely now 2yrs homozygous filly by Whats Colour to good breeders in the North Island that will use her as a broodmare in the not too distant future.

Stanhopes Magicians aka Marty's first crop of foals are all maturing nicely and all look leggy with good bone and great temperaments.
We are now awaiting the arrival of our homozygous Whats Colour mares first foal.  She took first pop to  Marty's frozen which was great.  This foal is guaranteed coloured and maybe homozygous if we are lucky.
We have also decided not to show any of our horses this year as I am not able to lead them, so it will be pretty quiet on the home front.  We will however update when we have a new foal !

Spring, summer.. Xmas 2011

This year has been a challenging one for those of us in Canterbury with earthquakes and snow.
Although it has been tough, we have also had some lovely highlights with the horses.

My first horse trial season with Hewston went well and we ended up winning the South Island One Day training trial.  He is a lovely horse to have around and a pleasure event.

Stanhopes Magician (Marty) is coming along nicely under saddle, I love riding this boy.  We have been taking things slowly and enjoying beach rides and the start of some jump schooling.
The biggest highlight has been the first crop of Stanhopes Magician foals on the ground.  We have been rapt with all of them.  All coloured so far, lovely leggy types with great bone and movement.  There are photos of them all on our web site www.colouredwarmbloods.co.nz or if you are a facebook fan we have some on our 'Magic Coloured Warmbloods' page.
We had a lovely coloured filly out of the quality Brillant Invader mare who reminds me a lot of her dad.  Cheleken Indy has had a very leggy pinto colt foal who is the biggest to date and has a gorgeous white face mask, so we have called him Magic Masquerade.  There are several outside mare that have had stunning foals and there are more to come in the new year and we look forward to seeing them.

We are also excited that our beautiful 3yr Whats Colour (Tomtom) filly is confirmed infoal to Stanhopes Magician via frozen semen on the first try.  So a guaranteed colour foal for her next year.
Also the lovely Brillant Invader mare is back in foal to Stanhopes Magician via frozen and will return to her owners after weaning, and I am sure will have another stunning Marty foal for them.

Unfortunately I was kicked by another horse (not one of mine!) while riding Stanhopes Magician and have broken my leg. (Marty was extremely good while trying to dismount with a badly broken leg and in a lot of pain).  After 12 days in hospital and 3 surgerys I am now home but not able to walk for 3 months.  So sadly all handling foals, riding and competing have all had to go on the back burner.  It also means no horse trial season in the autumn for me either!!  Not to mention our three kids on holiday for 8 weeks and I am not able to drive them anywhere!  Challenges..!!  I am so grateful to all family and my lovely friends who are helping out and making things work.

We wish everyone a great Christmas and some down time, and all the best for 2012.

Middle of the year already!

Time seems to be flying by..... and the snow has arrived!

The end of the Horse Trial season was May and my young TB Archie did very well up in the NI with Matt and Vaughn.  The idea being to bring him home and carry on eventing with him.. as it turned out I am still not that brave on the eventing front even though he did very well at the two events I took him to recently.  As hard as it was I decided to let him go.  The up side is he has gone to a great home that had watched and wanted him for some time.  I will enjoy seeing him out and about and hopefully still doing incredibly well as he really is a very talented chap!
As it happened an ideal horse came up very quickly after Archie left that will give me the confidence and fun that I think I need at my age!  So we now have Hewston in our paddocks and he is just gorgeous.  It is great to have a gentleman around with all the young horses.
It was nice for my 12yr old son to ride Hewston the other day and I was able to ride Stanhopes Magician (aka Marty)  on his first hack out beside him.  I am really enjoying riding Marty - he is such a character and is always first up in the paddock with something to say!
The Mares are looking bigger and we look forward to October when Millie (Brilliant Invader TB) is due, and November when Indy is due... both infoal to Marty so a really exciting time for us.
Well the earthquakes seems to have settled down but now we have the snow... making feeding out hard and riding almost impossible - I said almost!!

April, May...winter!

As we head into winter, things settle down on the breeding front.
We have had one major change, our lovely colt Stanhopes Magician aka Marty is now gelded.  Having collected  more frozen then we could ever use I decided that I really did want him as my up and coming sport horse.  It was a hard decision but the right one.  He is now very happy and hanging out with the other boys about to continue his riding education.  I will take him slowly but hope to have him out and about at small things in the summer.  Needless to say, he will be available via frozen to outside mares.  We also hope to have our other colt, Magic Fluke (Whats Colour) who is homozygous for the pinto gene  available to a limited number of outside mares in 2012.

We are looking forward to the spring when we have 2 Marty foals of our own and several quality outside mares also due to him.  We did sell our lovely Pintado Desperado/Broadway Aly mare to a great family that are big pinto enthusiasts so we know she will be very well looked after.  She is infoal to Marty and due in September so this will be Martys first foal.
We have leased a lovely Brilliant Invader mare who was a competitive Intermediate eventer in her time.  She is a beautiful leggy mare and she is infoal to Marty and we are excited about her foal due this spring.

We only had one foal to wean, the lovely Magic MacPherson aka Elle, and that all went well and she is now with her full sibling Magic Moments.  They are quite a pair together and get on really well.  Both are by Whats Colour and are homozygous for the pinto gene - lucky us!

My TB Artwork has been doing well eventing with the help of Vaughn Jefferis and rider Matt Gilmour.  He went up north for another stint and won Woodhills prenovice, and was 5th at Taupo 3 Day event prenovice championship class - great results and now lovely to have him home.  I now have to get on and ride him!

I hope everyone survives the winter and we look forward to the spring!

Jan and February and Earthquakes!

We have been very lucky here not to be too affected by the latest earthquake to hit Christchurch.  Our thoughts and hearts go out to those that have lost loved ones.
All our horses are ok luckily.  I was just about to get on Archie to have a lesson with Vaughn J when it hit and I was knocked off my feet.  Oblivious to the devastation happening in Christchurch city, and being so used to big aftershocks we carried on with our lesson.  We were all in shock when we heard the news afterwards.

The beginning of the year involved scanning mares, collecting off Stanhopes Magician and a bit of showing and dressage.
Magic Fluke went to the Pinto SI show, shown by Nikky Dalley.  They did well to take Champion Pinto Youngstock Inhand from some nice competition.

Archie aka Artwork went to the SI dressage champs and did well in the prelim classes against some very fancy warmbloods, even placing 2nd on 74% in one class - not bad for a TB!  He has also been out competing show jumping and cross country schooling with the great Lucinda Green.  I am planning to run him pre-novice this season and if all goes well head to Taupo 3DE in May... we shall see.

Stanhopes Magician aka Marty has had a busy time collecting for fresh and now frozen.  We now have a lovely stock of good quality frozen semen which is great news.  We now can continue with our plan of gelding him so he can be my competition horse in the future.  Very excited about that!

This coming season we now have 3 mares of ours confirmed infoal to Marty.  I have leased a lovely intermediate event TB mare by Brillant Invader who is infoal to him so cannot wait to see that combination.  We also have our lovely mares by Pintado Desperado and Cheleken Kickback confirmed infoal to him.  There are several quality outside mares also confirmed, so it will be a very special time to see them all in the spring/summer this coming year.
So for those of you that are wondering, this coming breeding season we will be offering limited abouts of frozen semen to Stanhopes Magician.
We will also be looking at training Magic Fluke (who is homozygous for the pinto gene) to collect depending on his maturity and developement.  So will keep you posted on that front.....
We also had the good results that our latest Whats Colour filly is confirmed homozygous for the pinto gene, just like her full sister!  So it was not a hard decision to decided not to sell her!
Till next time, take care.

Happy New Year!

We hope everyone has had a good 2010 and we wish everyone a fantastic 2011.
We ended the year by having Karen Livingstone come and take some amazing photos of Marty aka Stanhopes Magician and all his achievements from 2010.
To see more of them have a look at our facebook page :
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Magic-Coloured-Warmbloods-NZ/131599390194220

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!