This is San Cler Bridget Athol-Brose who was also known as San Cler Bridget Jones by her prior owner (and simply San Cler Bridget by San Cler, and simply Bridget by her original breeder).

When we purchased Denny (introduced as horse number 12), we were just getting into dun genetics.  When we did a pre-purchase visit for Denny, we met his mother, Bridget, and we fell in love with her, too.  After a summer and a good portion of mulling it over during the autumn, we succumbed to purchasing Denny’s dam.  Denny, Phoebe, Pink, and now Bridget.  We were stacking up quite a really nice collection of horses with dun genes.  Bridget is a bay-based dun mare that is homozygous black and heterozygous agouti (she won’t ever throw chestnut, but has a 50/50 chance on her own to make her foal bay-based).

Within the GVHS registry, there are four matriarch horses that are the heads of their own dun pedigree lines that are actively producing new foals.  There are two deadwood branches of dun that have not produced offspring for five years or more (or simply haven’t registered further offspring with GVHS).  Bridget is one of those four matriarchs that are completely unrelated to all other dun horses registered with GVHS.  The two foals that she has had, though, are tied back in to the Coates Shady Lady (one of the other four matriarchs) lineage through their sire, RiverPointe Numero Uno.  If she has a dun foal this year, it will be the second, including herself, that is of Bridget’s lineage completely unrelated to all other GVHS registered dun gene horses.  When watching coefficients of inbreeding like we do, having a clean lineage not so closely related to other horses with similar gene sets is something we strive for.

Before we had horses, we had poultry.  Chickens were our gateway drug to other sorts of farm animals (lots of poultry, pigs, horses, goats).  I have seen the horror of purchasing what I found out later to be chicken eggs that were highly inbred (I’ve hatched and raised hundreds and hundreds of chickens, ducks, and peacocks).  The inbred chickens, after hatching from our incubator (hatch rate was low), looked normal for a few weeks.  Then the flaws started appearing as they aged.  They developed crooked beaks so bad that they couldn’t eat or drink properly, legs that developed at crooked angles to where they couldn’t stand properly, and thinly developed bones that were slightly flexible.  They were incubated and raised alongside other chicks from another source that did not have these issues like that entire batch did from the one seller.  I absolutely refuse to risk this with horses.  I have a strict COI (Coefficient of Inbreeding) limit that I have set, and I will not go above that.  There are folks that line breed, and this is not a judgment against them.  I simply am not brave enough and/or knowledgeable enough to risk it.

I have a specific type of mare that I really enjoy as a broodmare.  I believe that this physical and personality profile is the absolute best for raising foals.  Princess and Jewel have this profile, and they share these traits with Bridget.  They need to be built heavy like a tank, be able to effortlessly carry a lot of weight, and not winnow down during the expected 4 to 4.5 months when they are nursing a foal.  They need to have a leader mindset in their pasture.  They also need to be highly observant and highly protective of their offspring.  I call this the “grumpy, frumpy” broodmare profile, but it’s pretty much what we call “momma bears” in the human world (the best moms ever!).  I have a soft spot for my momma bears.

We own Bridget’s first foal, Denny, but he is pending transfer to a buyer currently.  His original purpose on our farm is now superseded by our desire to not cross over inbreeding thresholds, because we cannot breed him to his dam, and he is somewhat borderline with all our other dun mares other than just one (Alice will be introduced next).

We own Bridget’s homozygous dun filly that was born in 2023, but she is also awaiting transfer to her new owner (Duna will also be introduced later).

We are also currently offering Bridget as she is borderline height with our horse height goals of 14.1hh or shorter.  I recently just put the sticks up against our current herd sire, Mason, and he’s now 14.2hh at the age of nearly 5.  That means we really need our mares down under the 14hh mark to help with keeping EMH down to 14.1hh or shorter with our foals.  Bridget turns six years old in August, and I fully expect her to be 14hh at full size if she’s not 14hh already (I haven’t measured her, but she was sold to us as 13.3hh and that looked about right).  I’m offering her while at the same time being very anxious to see her foal this year.  I really dislike “the selling half” of owning horses, because I do make strong bonds with all of them.

My time in the birthing barn with each mare helps cement these relationships.  My relationship with Bridget was further forged in fire during the heatwave last summer in July when I spent many days in the barn with her sponge-bathing her to give her relief (fans blowing) from the heat before she had an August 1st foal.  I know she trusts me, and I know that she knew that I was helping her feel more comfortable.  It’s not completely clear if she had a late foal heat last year or a heat cycle more soon than normal after her foal heat cycle, but we know by visible evidence with our stallion that she was being bred starting August 15th, so we marked our books as her being bred August 18th at the expected end of that heat cycle.  That should back her up into July for this year’s expected foaling date.  We’ve had a few mares that seem to wait 10 to 15 days for their foal heat cycle rather than the expected three days after giving birth.  This one seemed curiously long, though, to be a foal heat cycle.

Then she was pregnancy checked in September, and our vet said that based on fetus size, she was bred in June (which was absolutely not the case since she just gave birth on August 1st).  Mason seems to produce large, healthy, and sweet foals.

Whatever the future holds for Bridget, we are certainly happy to have her as a part of Horsefeathers Farm right now.  She’s an easy keeper with a very good track record as a momma.f