It's My Birthday!

Well, today was the day we have been waiting for. Our little colt finally decided to grace us with his presence. His name is Twist of Fate, but we call him "Twister". His dam is our Tennessee Walker Mare, Sally and his Sire is our Quarter Horse, Lightning.

Twister's Story has more twists and turns than you can imagine. It all started when we purchased a "bred" Tennessee Walker Mare. She was bred to a Tennessee Walker stud for a late summer early fall 2007 foal. Well she was underweight when we bought her because these awful Welsh Ponies were beating her up and keeping her from the food. We brought her home to add her to our herd.

She got larger over time but at the end of July 2007 the changes were slowing down. Her udders were smaller and the milk was only a bit cloudy. She was not getting any bigger around her belly and we made an appointment at the vet. The vet palpated and ultra sounded her and to our disappointment, told us that she was not pregnant. She thought that the udder development was due to excess hormones.

We also had our 2 year old Lightning gelded the same day. He had been sold to us as a gelding and because he was so young he had not dropped and until we put Sally in the field with him he showed no signs of being a stallion (not to mention..we thought she was already pregnant!)

At the end of February 2008 we noticed that Sally was getting more wide. It was definitely no longer a hay belly. Because she had had an ultrasound at the first of August with no baby and Sally had only been with our geldings, we thought that there was no way she could have been pregnant...just that we would have to really work her in the spring! We grew concerned then though because her belly was growing so rapidly. We took her into the vet the first week in March. After a quick palpation it was quickly discovered that there was a nose and two very big feet. We were going to have a baby...and it was our boy Lightning's baby. This was ideal. We had regretted gelding Lightning as he is such a wonderful horse. He is confident, and very much a partner. He is very well balanced and can balance a new horse in the course of a few days...they just can't help but follow his lead.

Because the baby was so large, it was difficult to get a due date. This was the beginning of a lot of worry for us. We had not had Sally off of fescue because we did not know she was pregnant. She had less udder than she had had in July of 2007. We immediately took her off of fescue and gave her a high protein feed divided into several meals a day. We bought foal colostrum..just in case and began monitoring her progress. At the time of her exam, the vet thought that we had maybe 2 weeks left, if that. Well of course just to be more unpredictable, Sally went almost 4 weeks!

When we first thought Sally was pregnant we came up with Twist of Fate as a foal name. We had moved from Louisville KY, where we had lived for 11 years to Bolivar Missouri and this was a great move, but very unexpected. We certainly had not seen ourselves in a place where we would have a farm with horses (expecting to stay in the Louisville area), so we thought that this name was fitting. Well, considering the twists and turns in our foal's story, this seemed even more fitting now.

We would like to introduce.... Twist of Fate or "Twister". He was born on April 12, 2008. He was of course born on a day in the Ozarks where it was 32 degrees with 20 mph winds. We had sleet, snow flurries and it was just plain miserable! The week before we had 60 degree days and beautiful days, though we had had excessive rain. Very unusual weather for a very unusual baby.

We have been using imprint training and he has even been exposed to the halter. Here is a photo of Twister. We will update his blog so friends and family can watch our boy grow!