This is HF Liza’s Iceblink Luck, or, as we called him, Lucky.

How Lucky came to exist was unplanned.  We wait until our mares are three years old, and then we evaluate them for physical and mental maturity before being bred.  We have had mares that do not check all the boxes until they are six years old.

Liza was two years old.  She was in love with our stallion Mason.  They were separated by five-foot fences in paddocks across from one another.  Early one day in June of 2023, we noticed some signs of fraternization over the fence line between Liza and Mason.  The next day after noticing their frisky behavior, a hotwire was installed over that fence-line.  Problem solved…

Until January of 2024, when we noticed that Liza was looking rather large for a nearly three-year-old mare that was not bred.  We had the vet out.

Pregnant.  Estimated fetal age pointed right at that one day as being the day she was bred…over a five-foot fence.

She received a 9-month rhinovax, but had missed her five and seven month vaccinations.  We keep up on all our pregnant mares, so herd immunity likely helped keep her healthy.

During a routine Friday farrier session in late March or early April, I noticed her urinating, and the urine was dull gray-green.  She went directly to The University of Tennessee for examination, and she was diagnosed with placentitis.  Liza was one of those mares that never lifted her tail properly for defecating, and this likely contributed to an infection.

Not long after being there, she foaled out on what is estimated to be Day 309 or Day 310.  Lucky was healthy, though.  Just a few more days at the hospital, and both were released to come home.

Both were released into pasture with other mares that had foals by their side.

Lucky’s DNA came back, and, as far as we know, he’s only the second ever homozygous black, homozygous agouti, and homozygous cream perlino tobiano Gypsy Vanner stud (the other being Hersheys Sandstone of Valhalla) capable of making both tobiano and solid offspring.

May 15th during my daily hands-on with the foals, I noticed that Lucky had a swollen hock on one of his rear legs.  Back to the University hospital with both Liza and Lucky.

Lucky had a slight fracture of his tibia.  After several days there, Liza and Lucky were released to come back home with instructions that he needed to be on stall rest until mid-September (with instructions that he was “not allowed to walk”).  Never once during this time did Lucky even display a limp or any sign of discomfort from the fracture.  We could stall rest Lucky, but there was absolutely no way to keep him from walking on his legs.  That just wasn’t going to happen with a lively young colt.  A very small paddock was fashioned outside the barn stall for his time on stall rest.  Big enough to get some sunshine and see other horses, but not large enough that he could do any real running.

Time passed and it became clear that stall rest was doing damage to Liza’s legs.  She was so severely stocked up that after several veterinary consultations, we were informed that what would be best is to release her back to pasture and to wean Lucky early.

Lucky did just fine with weaning.  To help keep him company, at a local auction, we picked up a tiny little bay tobiano miniature horse gelding named Poptart as his emotional support buddy.  That little miniature horse was personality-plus, but Lucky’s larger size balanced out the situation for the two of them.  They got along swimmingly as fellow stall prisoners even though Poptart still thought he was the boss.

Before Lucky’s final X-rays in mid-September, locals that were purchasing a pair of our other foals this year expressed interest in taking both Lucky and Poptart as a package deal.  They fell in love with them both in the barn stall where they were kept.  We let them know that everything depended on Lucky being fully medically cleared in September.  We told them that we would sell Poptart to them for X-thousand dollars and that we would throw Lucky in for free (haha).

The X-rays came back in September with Lucky fully recovered.  There were no signs left of his prior fracture.  He was delivered that same day with Poptart to his new owners.

Getting off the trailer at his new owners’ beautiful farm into green pastures was the first day that Lucky had full freedom to run and play in the sun since that day in May when he had fractured his leg.  In between the business side of things (paperwork and such), it was a very bittersweet and poignant day for us.

This was the beginning of the part of Lucky’s life that would not be as difficult as the first nearly-six months had been.