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.