Making Foals with Science

Last year I decided to breed my then- three-year-old filly, Faith, because, apparently having five horses only one of whom was ridable, was not stupid enough.

In my defense, that wasn’t the real reason.  It was a purely emotional decision.

Lucy and Faith in matching fly masks.
Faith was about two weeks old.

It was a very bad period. My elderly Mom was in the hospital and possibly dying, one of the horses was injured and likely needed to be euthanized and my old dog was failing.

Good times.

Three years prior when I first bred Lucy I simply went on the stallion version of Tinder and searched for the traits I was looking to pass on to the baby: good mover? Check. Great jumper? Check. Amateur friendly? Triple Check. When I found  a stallion with all the boxes checked, I swiped right, metaphorically speaking. (In real life I signed a contract and sent a money wire.)

 The stallion sent a Fed Ex of frozen semen and when Lucy came into heat, my veterinarian impregnated her. The only complication was that it was a Canadian stallion and the import forms for the semen were hilarious. I wish I’d saved them.

11 months later, out popped Faith. In my entire lifetime of horse owning I have never so  much fun as I’ve had with Faith. I met her when she was 20 minutes old, she had her first peppermints a few weeks later and we have been bonded ever since.

Time will tell if Faith has the talent it takes to win on A show circuit but that doesn’t really matter. She is like a giant puppy. When she lived in my backyard, my real giant puppy, Jasper, would throw his toys to her, and she’d gamely pick them up and shake them back at him. She is a hoot.

So, last year when my life went ass over tea kettle, I decided to try and replicate the experience.  

Because everything went so smoothly to get Faith, I thought that this would be easy.

Of course it wasn’t. Immediately after Faith was born I tried again with two different stallions. One was a tall, dark, sexy European. Typical of tall, dark Europeans, it was a rude experience .There were no guarantees of satisfaction; I paid my money and took my chances. It turned out that the hot European was shooting blanks. Shocking, I know.

So I chose again.  The second stallion was a tall, dark sexy European immigrant living in Northern California and was far more laid back. He also came with a live foal guarantee.  Yay!

Lucy, it turns out, got (and gets) pregnant practically with a sideways glance from a fertile stallion, but because she is older (23) and has Cushings Disease, she can’t maintain a pregnancy and would probably die if she did. So with Annaliese, my enabling friend who breeds sport horses professionally, we put together a plan.

Since I had this really nice stallion breeding, and Lucy was a really nice mare who gets knocked up at the drop of a hat, why not do an embryo transplant into Faith? Why not indeed?

 It made perfect sense. Particularly after a bottle or so of good Cabernet.

A smarter person might have sobered up and said, “No, no, I have more than enough horses and I don’t need another mouth to feed.”

I am not that person. 

The idea was to wait until Faith was three and then breed her. The key to this working was getting Lucy and Faith to ovulating at the same time.

That involved drugs, (particularly Regumate, which helps regulate mares’ cycle), and numerous vet checks. Initially whenever one mare was in heat, the other wasn’t. It took a while, but eventually they were both certified by vets to be in sync.  Winning!

When the girls were ready, the stallion, who lives in Northern California, had to be collected morning the semen same day via Fed Ex to the vet clinic where Lucy was waiting. Bada bing, bada boom. Done.

I took Lucy home after the event, (which really does involve something that looks like a baster ) and we waited.

A couple of anxious weeks later both girls returned to the clinic. Dr. Richard and Dr. Hannah did some hocus pocus with Lucy and removed an embryo. I got to see it. It was a dot surrounded by a chain of smaller dots.  

The embryo. It doesn't look like much, but once
 upon a time you looked like this too.

More magic happened and the tiny dot was transferred into Faith. Both horses went home to their respective pastures feeling very confused, and possibly violated.

I came home and had a drink. It might have been more than one.

After 30 days, Dr. Hannah visited Faith and detected a heartbeat! Annaliese, Dr. Hannah and I were ecstatic, Faith begged for mints. She got a handful.

A heartbeat!

Faith then spent three months of the summer in Santa Ynez being saddle trained. She was perfect. 

Because she was pregnant, instead of sending her directly into training, I sent her back to her Three Wishes’ pasture to think about what she’d learned, grow up and have her baby.

While she was in Santa Ynez, she picked up a nasty virulent bacterial infection that is also super contagious. In order that she didn’t infect Annaliese’s entire herd, Faith came home to my backyard for three months.

Her mother ,Lucy, wasn’t glad to see her, but I had a blast. Except for all the times she took the gates off the hinges and paced outside my kitchen door begging for snacks.

Faith got better with no residual scars. Then she got really pregnant. Horses carry for 11 months, and this last month has sucked for her. Like many expectant moms, her ankles are swollen and she is miserable. She groans a lot and is very depressed. She even spits out peppermints which makes me depressed.

She is technically due on March 19, but any second would be good for both of us. Most times horses deliver at night. They are prey animals, and if the foals are born at night, it gives the babies time to get their legs underneath them and learn to nurse before daylight and predators find them.

The closest Faith has ever come to a predator is when Jasper barks at her. Still, I’m sleeping with the phone by the bed.

Cross your fingers that when the call comes and the baby is born it stands on four straight legs and nurses.

Faith three months pregnant.

I really do not need another horse I can’t ride, but I can’t wait to meet him or her when he arrives.