To be Registered Westfalen.
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For Sale
Expected in 2021:
| Expected in July 2021(Rotspon x Zigami)-could be black, bay or chestnut. To be Registered Westfalen. |
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| Zigami is bred to the Hanoverian stallion of the year for 2017 the renown Rotspon, famous for his beautiful, well-tempered offsprings. | ||||
| Expected in July 2021 (Secret x Kreation)-will be black. To be Registered KWPN-NA. |
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| The exciting young stallion Secret is turning head all over Europe and his outstanding scores both in movements and temperament convinced us he was worth breeding to despite his young age. | ||||
2020 foal crop:
| Marcello-Born July 7th, palomino colt (Milky Way x Zigami) To be Registered Westfalen. SOLD-in-utero. |
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| Zigami delivered a stunning golden beauty. Although by a pony stallion of top quality, this foal is all horse in proportion and movement. In fact, he looks a lot like his dam for now. Long lined, elegant, correct, and with a calm temperament, this looks like a super cross. He looks to have taken from the warmblood side of the family in terms of height although time will tell. We expect him to mature in the 16 hh range at this point. He is showing some very nice gaits, a calm and observant temperament, and a very high curiosity drive. All good things! | ||||
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| Pavarotti- Born June 26th, Black Colt (Fabregas x Kreation) To be Registered KWPN-NA. SOLD |
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| This striking black colt is full of energy, presence, and curiosity. He already has three, not extravagant, but correct and well-established gaits but the full out gallop right now is his favorite gear with the rollback as his favorite maneuver and we like that sits on his haunches to turn. He is responding well to basic handling. He is very correct with a nice sloping croup and a good shoulder. He is short-coupled and well balanced overall. We expect him to mature in the 16-16.1 hh. | ||||
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Some of our Alumni:
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For Previously Sold click Here
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| All our foals are handled, hugged, scratched, groomed, and loved from day one. They learn to wear a halter in the first week of their lives and they learn to trust us over the next few months as they pick up the basics of good horse behavior. They come in from the fields every evening for some handling or simply for some attention. We pick up their feet regularly, trim them as needed, and if not we still make them feel the rasp so their first trim is not such a ticklish experience! We make them walk up onto boxes, over tarps, and through man doors. They learn to walk away from their mother and their peers and although never tied hard they are expected to stand still when we groom them, they also learn how to move away from pressure. We load them onto trailers, first with their mothers and eventually on their own. When you get a foal from us you can be assured that it has been handled with calm, consideration, and firmness. It is well on its way to being a solid equine citizen, the rest is up to you! |
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HOW WE START ALL OUR FOALS- THE LONG WAY TO BECOMING A GOOD EQUINE CITIZEN Part 1-bonding with mom and staying healthy. When the foal is born, if we are present, and we usually are, there will be some amount of handling that will occur. We might towel the foal a bit to stimulate it, we will certainly feed him some colostrum and we will treat his umbilical stump right away. Then we let them be unless they require intervention or help. The veterinary visit the next day is usually excitement enough for both mare and foal! The vet will check the eyes, heart, lungs, and umbilicus, take some blood to assess the amount of antibodies the foal got from the colostrum in case he needs to be supplemented. We will also sneak in a few times a day, corner the foal, and dip his umbilicus in disinfectant. We use diluted iodine for the first two dips –at birth and a few hours later and then we switch to a less irritating solution for the next few days. We try to keep our intervention to a minimum. We prefer to let the mare and foal bond in the first 24 hours. We monitor and observe to make sure all is well but we generally let them be. Occasionally, we had foals that simply did not know how to lie down. They stand and try to sleep weaving and stumbling but not truly resting. In those cases we simply and without fuss drop them on their side so they can have a good sleep. They usually fall instantly asleep grateful to finally have found a comfortable position the moment they are horizontal in the deep straw. We rarely have to do it more than twice. Of course, if the foal needs treatment or attention of any kind then clearly we will handle them as needed. But otherwise, we wait a few days before we get to phase 2. The 2020 colts show how different foals can be at birth. The black colt would react as if he was getting an electric shock when we touched him: sharp quick response the moment he was out of his mother. Even his mother nuzzling him made him jerk away. He started to talk right way with a high pitch little whinny. The palomino colt was born almost completely passive, only the most vigorous of rubbing on his neck would give him a bit of a frisson, he was alert and responsive with a good suck reflex-just really chill and contemplative. We read nothing really into this, how they are just raw and into this world is anecdotally interesting but doesn't seem to carry much into their later behavior. |
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| Part 2-accepting touch. Once mom and foal are settled we like to start catching the foal. The catch and release phase ;-) Every time we feed the mare her supplement (2 -3 times a day) we take the opportunity to catch the foal. We work in a fenced-off area or in a shelter so that there is some limit to how far the foal can go. With her nose in the bucket, the mare is generally a nice passive helper. It involves a lot of slowly walking around the mare (often grooming her a bit or offering her scratches as we go around) to catch the foal. The young little horse is usually afraid of us tall bi-pedal creatures and being afraid of new weird things is the default setting for most horses as dictated by evolution. So the trick here is that for the first time in their short lives they will have to face their fear and learn that they can overcome it. And so we catch them: one arm on the chest at first and with the other hand we control the hindquarters. One of two things happens when we finally make contact: 1) The foal freezes. That is a normal response. Unsure as to what to do the foal freeze waiting for the next stimulus. 2) The foal struggles to get away. That is an equally normal response to a stimulus that overwhelms them. And since these are horses there is a range of responses between those two extremes. In all cases we do the same thing: we simply hold them gently but firmly. If they struggle we go with them without letting go until they quiet. Then we generally lighten our touch and just stand beside them, being as Zen as we can be. The point is that the foal needs to realize, at its own pace, that nothing bad or painful is happening once it is caught. They also start to learn that struggling is not the way out of a situation either. Once the foal is still and not struggling we simply gently release and walk away without looking back. We never release during a struggle. We release in the calm. Although they will later learn to appreciate a good scratch at that age they cannot tolerate it: it is too much, too intense. So we gently stroke and just rest our hands on them. At first just on the chest and croup but eventually, we touch them all over. That is the foal’s first lesson and one we spend the first week or two teaching and re-enforcing. However long it takes for the foal to accept us walking up to them, reaching out and touching them, and gently cradling them. 2020's two cases: The black colt: although electric to the touch he was one to freeze once caught. The contact at first clearly overwhelmed him. He would turn his head away from us. We kept the touch gentle and light but we stayed with him until he was no longer overwhelmed and then we would back off. Any new touch would get him all tensed and reactive, but he got better and better with every day. Now that he appreciates the scratches there is no catching him: he catches us… The palomino colt if you remember was born almost passive. But when caught he would leap forward, then back, trying to get away. He eventually would still and unlike the black colt would right away turn his head toward us and start to smell our arm, our face, our hair. So he was startled by the initial contact but not overwhelmed and he was quickly un-afraid. He is still hesitant to be caught about 4 days in but once caught we are touching him all over without a struggle and he started to nibble our sleeves and coats in an attempt to groom us or investigate: we are not sure. |
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| Part 3- The halter. You might have noticed that until now no halter has been involved. There are a few reasons for that. The main reason: the moment you have a handle on something you will want to use it! Why is that a bad thing? Our tendency when handling any horses is to grab the halter and tell the horse where to go. It might sound redundant or pedantic but babies are not born halter broke. They are not even born with an understanding of giving to pressure. In fact, it's the opposite: you cannot push (or pull) a foal because its instinct and first reaction is to LEAN into pressure. That is what makes it so hard to move a foal toward mom for example when helping it figure out where the milk bar is when they are a bit slow. If you put pressure on their butt they will lean into you and literally sit in your lap! So back to us: if the baby has a halter you will want to use it as a handle and will hold that halter as the baby fights back and pull. Babies' necks are delicate and can be damaged by too much force. There is no point in using a halter on a baby that doesn't understand the concept of giving to pressure. That is our next lesson. The second reason, therefore, is that the halter is of very little use at this point. All we were doing in Step 2 was making the foal comfortable with being around us, being touched and hugged and facing his fear of being “caught”. So now we introduce the halter, we make it part of our routine: we catch the foal, we touch it all over as usual and then we gently slip the halter on, any movements the foal does; we match it and follow it and quickly secure the halter. We then finish our handling when the foal is calm, quiet, and accepting us. We then take the halter off and then on and then off…. You get the picture. It is really not that big of a deal for the majority of foals. They shake their head a few times, surprised there is something there, and quickly get used to it. Once we have the halter, we use it to clip a lead shank to it and do a figure eight around the foal’s butt-usually crossing over their back. (I like to put the tail end of the lead shank back into the snap ring). We then encourage the foal the move and we walk with it wherever it goes. If he tries to get away: confused by the rope or by us following it everywhere we have the rope to hold on to him –NOT the halter. We will pull on the rope to keep control of the foal and yes there will be some scrambling and some pulling but it will not be on its head or very little of it and if fact we try as much as possible to go with the foal whatever it chooses to do. The point is for it to understand that we walk “together” and it is ok and nothing bad or painful happens because of it. A word about the inevitable resistance (I prefer to fight a horse when it is 200lbs baby): we will HOLD-we will keep the same amount of pressure, following the foal if need be. When the foal yields to pressure or just stops fighting for whatever reason we will right away release the pressure and be calm. We always end during a quiet moment, a gentle unclipping of the lead shank and we walk away. The foal continues to learn that fighting leads nowhere, that nothing bad happens, and that things are rather pleasant and calm once everyone stops scrambling. It also starts to learn about giving to pressure. |
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Part 4-Leading in hand. I prefer to continue to loop a soft leadshank around the butt, over the back, and back through the ring of the lead shank. I hold the base of the halter and the foal and I go for a walk. The first few times the foal decides where to go, sometimes we follow mom but every time we do this I ask him to do something I want to do and he doesn't. I expect some disagreement and we work through them but I have control of its body via the leadshank looped around its body. Over the next few days or maybe a week I will graduate from directing mostly from the leadshank to directing mostly from the halter. And then the foal will be halter broke- following the tension and the release in the halter, knowing when to give to the pressure of it. The rest is just practice, exposure to more and more complicated questions: stepping over a pole, backing away with a bit of pressure on the nose, walking through a gate, or a man door. We aim to gradually build its confidence and understanding, trusting us to be calm and fair and to not get them into trouble. |
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