This is SSFR La Reina de Los Sueños.  She was previously called J-Lo by her prior owner, but we call her Alice.  The English translation of her name is, “The Queen of Dreams.”  We believe that a good, anglicized version of this is “Alice in Wonderland,” and it goes with our naming scheme (a song named “Alice” by one of our favorite British Isles bands that has “Alice in Wonderland”-like qualities).

When we arrived at the farm to pick up Bridget, the seller lamented that she had multiple individuals interested in and committed to purchasing Alice that had backed out on purchasing Alice last-minute.  That’s the reality of selling horses.  Until the contract is signed and a deposit is placed, nothing is even close to being firm.  Even after that deposit is placed, people can be very fickle and back down on the deal.  Nothing’s ever final until the last penny is paid for the horse and the horse is in the buyer’s possession.  Even post-purchase, there can be flaps.  We try to avoid all that drama.

As we were taking possession of Bridget and loading her onto our two-stall trailer, the conversation went something like this (condensed for brevity):

Seller:  “You want her, too?”

Us:  “How much?”

Seller: “X dollars”

Us:  “Yep.  Let’s load her up.”

I probably had the biggest grin on my face ever, and the seller probably couldn’t help but notice that.  I wanted both Bridget and Alice (and her other horse, Danica, but she wasn’t for sale at that time, and Victoria made that clear).  I was like a giddy child in a candy store, though.

Now, every time we’re down in Florida with a horse trailer, we joke with the her that we’re coming through, we have one or two stalls open on our trailer, and “Watcha got for us?”  That’s a joke, but it has led to more purchasing.  We’re addicted to RiverPointe Farms horses, and Victoria Patterson is our dealer.  Six of our 20-some horses have been sourced from RiverPointe Farms (three more of them to be introduced later).

Alice is a chestnut dun.  She has the distinction of being only one of two broodmares actively producing offspring from the Dun Dreamin’ line of dun horses registered with GVHS (though, I’m thinking there might be a few more added to that list soon by way of Dennis DeBruyne’s farm (Wild Rose) up in Canada if there hasn’t already been…SSFR Belle Meade is the other broodmare that I know of, but I haven’t really looked since about a year ago).  Like Bridget, Alice is completely unrelated to over 90% of the horses in the GVHS registry that are dun and come out of the Coates Shady Lady pedigree lines.

Alice is also hiding a genetic secret.  We DNA test all our horses for color/pattern and disease.  When we tested Alice, Etalon Diagnostics took more time than usual to come back with results.  We reached out to them to see if there were problems with the sample.  There were no problems with the sample, but there were some questions about the validity of the results even after re-tests.  They asked for another sample.  We provided one.  They re-ran the tests.  They came back with “inconclusive” for some of her factors.  That was a bit unusual.  We later found out that Alice is harboring something new that will be released after careful peer review of scientific papers and studies.  I’m very excited about this, and I can hardly wait to see what is announced.

Unlike Bridget, Alice was open.  We brought her home, quarantined her together with Bridget, and then she was integrated into our herd with our stallion, San Cler Nazareth of Bellissima Farms while Bridget was integrated into our other stallion’s herd, RG Encore’s Mason.  Integration requires removing the stallion from the pasture, introducing the new mare to the other mares, allowing the mares to re-sort out pecking order, and then re-introducing the stallion after the mares have all settled down (usually a few days).  We’ve never seen it in action, but there is suggestion out there that if you leave the stallion in, the stallion will reject the new mare because of the treatment of the mares to this newcomer (and then the stallion will be aggressive to the new mare when teaming up with his existing harem).  We don’t want to risk that.  Putting the stallion back in later forces the stallion to re-integrate again into the new social order that the mares have created.

One of our primary guiding philosophies with horses is that we want to, as much as we are able, allow them to live as natural of a life as possible for a horse, as God had intended it to be for horses.  We pasture our stallions with their harems of selected mares year-round.  They have multi-acre paddocks to live in, and we normally pasture four to six mares with each of their bonded husband stallions.  Three days after foaling, the mare and her foal go back into the paddock with their stallion and other harem mares (the foal gets to learn to be a horse by their mommy’s side very quickly).  Our horses pasture breed, which means that they get to choose when and how they breed.  We have found that to be, as the literature suggests, over 90% effective for mare breeding over a season.  That is opposed to a 30% effective average rate with each attempted AI and 60 to 70% effectiveness for standing mares for live cover.  We don’t believe that our stallions should live in small, dark stalls in the barn their entire lives and only taken out when we need them to breed a mare.  That’s cruel, inhumane, and unnatural.

There are pros and cons to this method.  On the positive side is the breeding success rate.  We also avoid a lot of the human danger associated with stallion aggressiveness during collection or live coverage activities.  One other benefit is that it teaches our stallions to be respectful to the mares.  They learn to only breed the mares when the mares are ready for it.  All other times, the stallions are effectively just another horse in the herd and a good citizen.

One of the cons is that this must be carefully assessed for each stallion.  Not all stallions, especially of other horse breeds, are up to being polite and non-aggressive enough to live with mares and foals year-round.  Along with this, there are inherent risks of the mares and stallions injuring one another through the course of their mating rituals.  Another con is that you must have adequate pasture space for each stallion and their harem of mares to safely and securely live together with some separation between family herds to avoid stallions fighting with neighboring stallions along a fence line (as they jealously protect their herds from the other stallion…at least in their minds).  One other con is that you should be willing to actively monitor the behavior of your horses so that you can calculate each individual mare’s heat cycles and breeding dates so that you have some expectation of timing of each mare’s expected foaling dates (whether or not you put them in camera-monitored birthing stalls like we do to give them some space away from the other horses when foaling and to be in the safest and most secure environment possible during that activity…especially if you find you need veterinary assistance).  Another con of this approach is that you then also need a separate pasture space for younglings and mares that you don’t want bred.  It takes more real estate and infrastructure.

There’s a lot of thought that goes into deciding which mares should be in which stallion’s pasture.  I individually rate and gauge each horse’s conformation and temperament aspects (and track it on a spreadsheet).  That’s usually where the decision is made…after I critically over-analyze all the impacting factors.  Absent any other clear decision-making criteria, I’ll then go to color-pattern choices, but that’s a one in ten situation usually, and only when two or more stallions are equally suited for the mare.

The decision for Alice was Naz for a lot of reasons I’m not really going to go into (trade secrets).  Much like Bridget, though, Alice’s 14.2 to 14.3hh size means that absent the balancing height factors of Nazareth as one of our stallions (he’s being advertised currently and he’s 13.2hh), we have no way to bring down the size of her foals to our target height range of 14.1hh or lower.  It is for this reason that we are also offering Alice currently.  It’s difficult to choose criterion as the basis for selling horses when you must sell some.  A lot of the shorties in our pasture are only saved from this by virtue of their stature.

I haven’t had birthing stall bonding time with Alice.  Her prior foal was born long before we met her.  I’m super excited about the foal she is going to produce this year.  On the other hand, I must make long-term decisions that are best for our farm and for all the horses.  It’s tough, but that’s how it must be sometimes.  If she goes before she foals, we’ll be anxiously observing from a distance.