Three Year Old's Training

Bolshoy (Donatelli/Jet Set)

Bagatelle (Donnatelli/Jazz)

Bastion (Sandreo/Floristan)

At three years old we continue with light training under saddle. The two geldings and one filly get several sessions a week under saddle. These sessions are short and just last as long as the young horses are relaxed and wanting to go. All three are progressing well

Photo

Some times you have a photo which is just so weird you have to share it. Florientina was having a roll and her filly was looking on. The dandelions are in full flower and do a great job of staining white sox

Its pasture season !

Sunny day !!

Enieta (Bretano II/Jazz)

Demarko and Dainoso

Zinosa and Enkeur (Lord sinclair/ Tango)

It was sunny day and all the horses are taking advantage of the nice weather and green grass.

Elzarma

Elzarma (Concorde/Hamlet) was out this morning for a walk with her mother!

Keuring Schedule

A KWPN/Na keuring:

Monday, September 21, 2009
Gingerwood Stables
67 Stanhope Lane
Queens, PEI
Host: Ken Mellish
ken@newperthfarms.ca
902-838-4032


This will be an opportunity for KWPN breeders to have their horses evaluated and mares entered in the marebook. For more information see: http://www.kwpn-na.org/keuring/

Elzarma Concorde/Hamlet

Another filly !! New Perth Farms is now four of five for fillies with the arrival of Elzarma a bay filly with a stripe and four white feet.

Training in Virginia

Recently, Megan visited Martha in Virginia for 2 weeks. In the pictures, the bay is the 6 year old Wiseman(Lord Sinclair/Lancet) and the chestnut is the 5 year old Zandman(Quattro/Cavalier). The geldings are both doing very well and are coming along nicely!

More Foal Pictures

We took the foals out for a walk with their mothers this morning, and got a few pictures!

The Lord Sinclair/Tango colt is showing to be nice and uphill!

Esprentina (Sir Oldenburg/Floristan) shows her flashy trot!

The Johnson/Jet Set filly is showing to have a very pretty head

New Rider

Victoria the youngest of the Mellish Family took her first pony ride yesterday.

A Colt ! Lord Sinclair/Tango

Breaking the streak of three fillies Zenosa (Tango/Purioso) had a colt by Lord sinclair last night. He is a big colt and will join Wiseman and Daniosa as Lord Sinclair offspring at New Perth Farms.

Foals

Foals cause a lot of sleepless nights waiting for them to arrive but when they arrive the pay back for sleep lost. Enieta (Brentano II/Jazz) is a week old today and showed us how she is enjoying the outdoors.

It looks like a "Filly" year.

Our third foal was born,the usual 3am arrival,and it is a filly making this is the third filly this year. She is a Johnson out of our Jet Set Mare Waltzlena. The suprising thing is that she does not have the usual white socks and blaze that comes with Johnson offspring.

TWO NEW FILLYS

The first foals of the season arrived last night. They were two fillys,a chestnut by Bretanna II out of Veganieta by Jazz and a Sir Oldenburg out of Florentina by Floristan. the Sir Oldenburg looks like it will be black with lots of "Chrome"

Florentina

Our Floristan daughter,Florentina is getting ready to have her fourth foal. She was bred as a three year old and has had a foal each of the past three years and is expecting her fourth by Sir Oldenburg. Sir Oldenburg is a stunning black Sion/Contender who has been trained as a dressage horse but has a lot of jumping blood in his breeding. "Flo" has always had a short gestation length, usually ten and a half months.




Her first foal was by Sandreo he is now three and just started under saddlle



Her second foal was a filly also by Sandreo. Caprice was sold to Pine Grove Stables in Nova Scotia.

The third foal was a colt by Johnson called Demarko




With these three great foals we now have to decide on which stallion to use on Flo this year. With two Sandreo foals we are thinking of using Johnson again but we will want to see the Sir Oldenburg foal before making a final descision.


In the mean time Flo is "Waxed" and is showing signs of soon adding to her list of great foals.

Photos

This is our 145th blog entery. All the photos we have used are archived at http://picasaweb.google.com/ktmellish/NewPerthFarmsNEWS?authkey=Gv1sRgCNKuoZiVyLfcHg#/picasaweb.google.com/ktmellish/NewPerthFarmsNEWS?authkey=Gv1sRgCNKuoZiVyLfcHg#
These make an interesing collections of photos with all the seasons and many of the stages of horse development represented.

Training this Winter

In developing young horses we think the first step is getting the breeding right by purchasing the best possible mares, the second step is raising them properly and the next step is “age appropriate training.”

We have purchased what we thing is a great collection of mares representing some of the great European Warmblood lines. The stallions include Jazz, Floristan, and descendants of Donnerhall, Sandro, Purioso and Nimmerdor. Many of our mare lines trace back to foundation lines of both Holland and Germany. We continue to breed these mares to what we think is the absolute best stallions available.

The next step, we think, is to develop the resulting foals to their full potential. We have a lot of space on our farm. Our barns are not fancy but are large open former cow barns. We have six mares in a fifty by fifty pen ! Weanlings have a similar sized pen. Our pastures are similarly large. With 400 Acers we can set aside as much as the horses need for pasture. This allows for lots of exercise with the young stock spending all the time they want playing with their mates. The same applies to fodder. We have haying equipment from our previous dairy operation. We do big round bales of haylege and feed the horses free choice from big bale feeders all winter. The haylege is dust free, nutritious and keeps the horses busy nibbling all winter. The downside is that idle horses can get fat but the growing young stock do well and the mares milk off the reserve nursing foals.


Now finally to the training discussion. We handle and halter break the foals while they are still with the mares. We do some work with them after weaning to remind them of their training. In the spring of the yearling year we do some more in hand training. They learn to walk and trot with the handler. At this stage they learn to move away from an inhand whip. This is a valuable life lesson. We do not “drill” any of these lessons. Four or five of these lessons at each stage gets the point across.

In the year the horses are two we teach them to lounge and they are introduced to the saddle and bridle. By the end of the second summer they should be comfortable with a rider sitting on them while being led. We again do a minimum of work as they are still growing and developing.

This winter we are at the next step of training which is to walk and trot in the arena with a rider asking them to halt and go and be able to trot a figure eight in the arena. We have three coming three years old this spring. We have two of three which will trot a figure eight on the instructions of a rider. Bastion (Sandreo/Floristan) was the first to get the next stage of training this winter. He is “super cool” as you would expect from his training. We reviewed his lounge training and he quickly progressed to listening from the rider and not the handler on the ground. The other big lesson at this age is to learn to be separated from the group and stay quietly in the stall. We use an indoor arena away from the farm so the young horses are trailered frequently and learned to load and unload from the trailer. Bolshoy (Donnatelli/Set Set) was the next up for training and he quickly moved through the training and now is back home thinking about his lessons. Next up will be Bagatelle (Donnatelli/Jazz). The plan will to do some out door arena work and have these ready to hack later this summer. We like to introduce the three year olds to the trails in the summer. This allows them to build strength with out the repetition of arena work.

They can learn all these lessons later in life but they are more impressionable at a young age and are not as big or as strong. There needs to be a balance of training and care to not injure the developing horse.When all these come together we think we will have a youngster that can go on to be a great dressage horse or jumper.

Foalings 2009

We have seven mares to foal in 2009


Veganieta (Jazz/Zeoliet) Brentanno II April 15

Florentina(Floristan/Phonix) Sir Oldenburg April 22

Wascalina(Jet Set/Haarem) Johnson April 24

Zenosa (Tango/Purioso) Lord Sinclair May 2

Vuzarma(Hamlet/Purioso) Concorde May 11

Verginia(Welt Hit II/Zeoliet) Donnatelli June 9

Virtual Rose(Idocus/Quattro) Sir Oldenburg June 11

All the mares have had foals before and Florentiena will be haveing her fourth foal and we expect she will be early as usual. We have not had foals by Brentanno II or Sir Oldenburg so these will be very interesting to see. Also, we expect to be busy with five mares in a one month peroid.

Breeding Descisions

Breeding Decisions

It is that time of year when breeders start thinking about what stallions to use next year. New Perth Farms currently has seven mares in foal and we must have a plan to breed them back after foaling. As we use almost exclusively frozen semen there is an almost unlimited list of possibilities. Foals this year will be by Brentano II, Concorde, Sir Oldenburg (2), Donnatelli, Lord Sinclair, and Johnson.

Breeding descisions are guided by the foals we have produced earlier years, breeding indexes, performance results of stallions in competition, and the results of the stallion selection. This is also influenced by discussions with other breeders. Right now we are at the “wish list” stage of the process and would need twice as many mares to use all the stallions that attract our attention at this stage. In reality we will probably make our final decision on what semen to order just after the KWPN/NA meeting in San Diego in March. That is four days of immersion in breeding, selection and training of Dutch horses.

What are we looking for in a stallion ? The usual that all breeders look for that long lined, super mover with correct feet and legs but we also must look for ridability as many of our clients are amateur riders that need a safe horse to ride. As we continue to start and train horses be become more and more aware how important it is to have suppelness in dressage horses. The horses like the Sandreo and Lord Sinclair offspring have those flexable backs and backs that makes their work effortless.

So what are we thinking now? We have several Sandreo offspring including one three year old that we are starting under saddle. He is from our Floristan mare and is a joy to work with as he is very willing and learns quickly. He is also a super mover so looks like the complete package that we would want more like him. Also, we see that Sandreo had the most sons, six, at the second round stallion keuring. Two of these went through to third round so this is another indication that Sandreo is making good offspring. Right now Sandreo is high on our list and added plus is the high quality of his frozen semen.

We have a Six year old Lord Sinclair, Wiseman that had done very well at the keuring and we have found very trainable. We had a very nice Lord Sinclair from our Tango mare and she is back in foal to him again. We think he needs some “Go’ on the mare side and the Tango mare is forward with out being spooky. He puts very nice heads on them and lots of bounce. So Lord Sinclair is back on our list.

Johnson also had several sons at the stallion keuring. He brings some Jazz blood which is good energy and movement and the Flemmingh influence brings a good mind. We have a very nice Johnson foal from our Floristan mare. We have one Jet Set mare in foal to Johnston and at this time we are considering him for next year. Also, Johnson usually brings lots of bling for those who like white socks.

We have a Jazz mare so Contango has to be on the list with all the great Jazz/Contango crosses out there. This mare is in foal to Bretano II , has a two year old by Sandreo and a three year old filly by Donnatelli.

On the jumping side we have a Concorde foal coming from our Hamlet mare who had a super Verdi foal last year. Vuzarma also has a Concorde two year old which we like very much. There is a large number of Concorde offspring doing well in the jumping ring. Verdi himself is doing well and has great bloodlines. No decision on this yet. Also, for jumpers we think we should be bringing in some Stakatto blood as this line is doing very well.




We have two foals coming by Sir Oldenburg. We saw him last year and he is stunning in the flesh. He is being used as a dressage sire but has a great jumping index with a lot of jumping blood with Sion and Contender in his pedigree. We will look at the two foals before we decide on using him again.

That is a few of the stallions under consideration and we will refine and expand the list until the semen is in the mares next summer.

The green grass will come !