2016 Foals Due

I will.

The issue we have had is there is absolutely no phone signal or 3G or anything at the yard, but the YO has an O2 booster box, so I've bought an O2 Sim which allowed me to do FaceTime from the stable on my iPhone.

Hubby is techie and we currently have a router and camera in the living room....waiting for a USB sim card dongle thing that plugs into the router that the O2 sim can go into.....we'll see if it all works when that arrives.
 
Quick question.

Those without cameras - at what point did you start sleeping over at the yard? I'm killing myself by doing late night checks (half hour round trip). Mare is 324, pH is steady at 7, back end not very slack, not running milk, no wax. Foaled at 331 with last foal. What made you decide to start sleeping over?

Hoping to have a camera up tomorrow so the question could be immaterial, but I can't decide if I should be there at this early stage...I'm nearly 21w preggers myself and NEED my sleep, it's making my sickness and heartburn/reflux 100 times worse.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions for a name...we sat with him and mum in the stable earlier tonight and came up with Coffee, James, Roger, Del, Sol...then came home and searched frantically on the internet for anything connected to beaches or eagles because none of them seemed to suit.

And then I found it; a synonym for 'coast' (Costa), which also tied in nicely (according to OH) with where eagles build their nests - CLIFF.

Meet Cliff, who is VERY lazy and VERY friendly!







CC - we're lucky enough that our house backs on to our training track on the other side of which are our stables so it's a 30 second walk across BUT I pretty much slept there Friday night and to be honest there's no set timescale anybody can give you as to when is right for your mare. There are general signs but as I've learnt over the years, horses can be very misleading. Tracey caught us out 2 years ago by not having any sort of udder, no visible signs of being anywhere close to foaling, no obvious changes behind. We had her pegged as around a fortnight away and then turned up to the field to feed Beachgirl, her foal and Tracey and found Tracey wandering around with her newly-born filly. OH says she won't do the same this year but I'm looking at her knowing her and Beachgirl were served the same time and thinking 'this mare doesn't look anywhere near ready'. Hard to know how she's going to progress/how quickly. Hopefully if you get your camera system set up soon then that will help!
 
Cc. We have an O2 mast literally 50 metres away from the signal so a very good signal. What equipment would o need? Iv got a wireless dlink camera but can't get the wireless bit working arrgh.
 
Cliff is utterly delightful!! Is it my imagination or does the wee man have a couple of white hairs on his forehead? Or is that just reflected light? At my age my eyes aren't the best ...

A quick query. I know absolutely nothing about pacers/Standardbreds. Do you breed specifically for pacing ability? What do you look for in a competitive trotter, type wise? I could always go and look at the breed standard, but I prefer to ask breeders/competitors what they look for in their chosen horsey passion!
 
My mare is huge, uncomfortable and looking ready to burst.... Night 5 of official foalwatch, hoping she gets a move on soon!!
 
Tetrarch 1911 said:
Cliff is utterly delightful!! Is it my imagination or does the wee man have a couple of white hairs on his forehead? Or is that just reflected light? At my age my eyes aren't the best ...

A quick query. I know absolutely nothing about pacers/Standardbreds. Do you breed specifically for pacing ability? What do you look for in a competitive trotter, type wise? I could always go and look at the breed standard, but I prefer to ask breeders/competitors what they look for in their chosen horsey passion!
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Unfortunately I think it's the light :( I went back to check a photo I had of his sire thinking he had a star but that's the sire of Tracey's foal. Cliff's dad has a white sock on his near hind and that's it, and Beachgirl is completely black.

We breed Standardbreds purely for racing, and we only breed pacers and not trotters so yes, it's all about how fast they can pace. Everyone has a different idea about what makes 'the perfect racehorse', and quite honestly all of the top horses in the UK and indeed the wider world have been so remarkably different in type. The fastest horse in the UK (who is the world record holder for a mile on a less than a half mile track) isn't even 14.3hh and is as fine as a horse can get, whereas the best racing mare in recent years here (who was subsequently exported to Canada to race) is a 17.2hh monster (which is probably why she was able to take on the best stallions in the country and beat them). Personally we're looking for them to be between 15.1hh - 15.3hh (bigger horses sometimes struggle with the tight bends as we race on primarily half mile tracks), not too long in the body, not too deep girthed, athletic light types with not too much bone. Gait-wise we don't like 'daisy-cutters' (pacers who flick from the fetlock and hardly bend the knee - they are at risk of struggling on the grass tracks by not clearing any bumps in the track) nor do we like 'ploughers' (horses who lift high at the knee - they will inevitably sustain injuries to their knees racing on the hard tracks due to the force with which they hit the ground). We don't know what their gait will be like until they begin work so all we can do is use well-gaited stallions on our mares who themselves were nicely-gaited, avoiding horses at risk of going to their knees or cross-firing.

Hope that makes some sort of sense!

TheMule said:
My mare is huge, uncomfortable and looking ready to burst.... Night 5 of official foalwatch, hoping she gets a move on soon!!
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Fingers crossed for you! As much as it's great to have foals, the stress/lack of sleep/worry of it kinda sucks! I'm one down, one to go...
 
Well tonight mare has come in leaking milk. Her vulva is very long and gaping open at the bottom, which I've not seen before. pH is 6.5-6.75 (the colour is very subjective!).

I'll be popping back to yard later on and may sleep over. Bloody typical if it comes tonight when we have the camera to set up tomorrow!
 
Good luck cc. Fingers crossed for you. I've just popped up after work to check my mare as she has been very quiet for the last two days and has been caught laying down twice in as many days. She was also in no rush to get up either, and considering I've never seen her lated down it us quite unusual behaviour. May start camping out soon!
 
Thank you so much! The size is very much what I expected. When I went around the yards Stateside, all of the trotters averaged about14.2- 15 hands, and they were regarded as normal. Coming from an eventing/SJ/racing background, I was used to something 16h-plus, and now I know why the height difference, although I'm astonished at the huge mare doing all of the winning. The track was all-weather too - turf didn't seem too common for trotting, at least in New England, but then I didn't visit any others, so I may be talking through my hat, as it were. Thank you again for all of the information. I just wish trotting was covered on TV!

Crosshill Pacers said:
Unfortunately I think it's the light :( I went back to check a photo I had of his sire thinking he had a star but that's the sire of Tracey's foal. Cliff's dad has a white sock on his near hind and that's it, and Beachgirl is completely black.

We breed Standardbreds purely for racing, and we only breed pacers and not trotters so yes, it's all about how fast they can pace. Everyone has a different idea about what makes 'the perfect racehorse', and quite honestly all of the top horses in the UK and indeed the wider world have been so remarkably different in type. The fastest horse in the UK (who is the world record holder for a mile on a less than a half mile track) isn't even 14.3hh and is as fine as a horse can get, whereas the best racing mare in recent years here (who was subsequently exported to Canada to race) is a 17.2hh monster (which is probably why she was able to take on the best stallions in the country and beat them). Personally we're looking for them to be between 15.1hh - 15.3hh (bigger horses sometimes struggle with the tight bends as we race on primarily half mile tracks), not too long in the body, not too deep girthed, athletic light types with not too much bone. Gait-wise we don't like 'daisy-cutters' (pacers who flick from the fetlock and hardly bend the knee - they are at risk of struggling on the grass tracks by not clearing any bumps in the track) nor do we like 'ploughers' (horses who lift high at the knee - they will inevitably sustain injuries to their knees racing on the hard tracks due to the force with which they hit the ground). We don't know what their gait will be like until they begin work so all we can do is use well-gaited stallions on our mares who themselves were nicely-gaited, avoiding horses at risk of going to their knees or cross-firing.

Hope that makes some sort of sense!



Fingers crossed for you! As much as it's great to have foals, the stress/lack of sleep/worry of it kinda sucks! I'm one down, one to go...
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Are you sure it's not just wind? ;) So sorry to hear she's keeping you guessing, but surely it can't be long now! Hopefully you'll have your CCTV set up for tonight, and you can get a bit of rest while you keep an eye on her. Chin up, and keep drinking the caffeine! We're rooting for you (and the mare, of course!).

Custard Cream said:
Slept at yard last night, not a sausage!
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Nothing last night, though I think she looks more ready this morning- muscles very soft, teats pointing outwards. She didn't wax up with her last foal so who knows?!
 
Can we all have a stern word with our mares tonight please and try to hurry them along?! I don't like waiting, plus Cliff is looking for some online friends (not that he realises it!) and a real life companion. I had hoped that Tracey would think about dropping at the end of this week but there is minimal change in her udder and last night I overheard OH telling the stallion owner on the phone that he thinks she's around 10 days to a fortnight away and will probably go 12 months. I have no idea where he's getting that idea from given her two previous foalings (bang on 11 months 2 weeks).

The owner of the sire of Tracey's foal is also the owner of Cliff's sire and she rang last night as word had got to her of Cliff's arrival and she wanted us to send the photos as (and I hadn't even considered this despite knowing this was the stallion's first crop) Cliff is the first foal by his sire born in the UK (Eagle Luck was imported from America in the autumn of 2014). If he doesn't win any races, at least I can always say he was first in something!
 
I'm bloody stressed to the hilt. OH thought he had sussed out a camera to stream over the internet, but it won't bloody work. Is anyone here techy? This is the set up.

No natural phone signal on any network at the yard.
YO has O2 booster box.
I bought an O2 PAYG Sim and had the number added to the booster box so now when I'm at the yard I have phone and 3G and internet access. Brilliant so far. Works so well I can FaceTime from her stable.

So OH bought the following (he is reasonably techy having been a network manager in a former life):
Wifi Camera with night vision
Router
USB Modem with nano sim applicator.

We set it up at home and it worked perfectly over our wifi (of course!) but we have no O2 signal at home so couldn't check that bit. Took it all to yard. Put my O2 SIM into the USB Modem and set it all up. The router picked up the camera easily, not a problem, we could see the camera on the laptop screen that was connected to the router. We put the PAYG O2 SIM into the modem and plugged it into the router and tried to connect and it wouldn't work.

I'm going round in circles with O2 chat as this doesn't fit their script. They are trying to tell me that the PAYG O2 sim doesn't allow tethering to phones....they aren't listening at all!!!!!

ARGHHHH

I can't manage to stay at the yard again as I have spent ALL day today in bed. It's not good for me or for our business, I should have been at work. I NEED to get this camera working online.
 
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