Casey’s Racing Blog

A nurse mare at Juddmonte Farms, KY

Nurse mares are a common sight around the world on Thoroughbred farms. You can usually spot them easily when looking out on the huge grassy pastures. They are the paint, dun, or palomino in a sea of bay, chestnut and grey Thoroughbreds. Or they are the large drafty type mare, or ex-riding pony, or huge Friesian.

Nurse mares are a necessity in a world where catastrophic leg injuries are often part of the game. A mare who may have been injured as a racehorse will probably have been good enough on the racetrack to want to breed her. But she may not be able to keep up with her foal, so a nurse mare is needed to raise the foal.

This situation is just one example of the many reasons why nurse mares might be used; others include debilitating illness, or poor quality or quantity of milk. Needless to say, they are a common sight.

The problem with nurse mares is that, like dairy cows, they need to have a baby to produce milk. These foals are then separated from their nurse mare mothers so that they can provide milk for the Thoroughbred foal. Since they usually come with mixed breeding and little pedigree, it can often be hard to find homes for nurse mare foals. And since they have to be separated from their mothers at an early age, the whole process of obtaining a nurse mare is less than desirable.

Or so the problem was.

A recent advancement as reported by TheHorse.com by the operators of Walnut Hall, a Standardbred nursery in Kentucky, has shown that having a foal at foot is not needed for the onset of lactation. A drug protocol for open mares using oral domperidone gel administered once a day to induce milk production and oxytocin, prostaglandin, and vaginal/cervical massage to induce maternal behaviour has proven successful to create nurse mares from non-pregnant females. Any mare that has had a foal in the past can become a nurse mare. This opens up the market to retired Thoroughbreds that just aren’t able to carry a foal to term anymore, but still may be able to nurse a foal. Or to rescued mares whose foals would have little chance at finding homes.

This new drug protocol is definitely a step in the right direction. It is truly a great application of science to a problem facing the industry. Many nurse mare foals do find good homes – with the large number of horse-loving farm employees, nurse mare foals are often successful pleasure horses. But sometimes they don’t end up so lucky, so this method of inducing lactation I’m sure will become a popular way to reduce the number of unwanted horses out there.

I love the nurse mares on our farm, they are great characters to be sure. And their foals are always very adorable. But to have the mares not have to have a foal taken away would be an even better sight to see.

Whywhywhy

Since Thoroughbreds all age a year on January 1st, the foals of 2007 are now two year olds and in need of some official names! The Jockey Club requires names to be entered by February 1st. With the American Stud Book containing over 435,000 registered Thoroughbreds, it can be tricky to pick an original and catchy name. So it’s time for owners to put on those thinking caps!

No name can be re-used unless the horse that formerly had the name is over ten years of age and has not been raced or bred for the past five years. This rule is voided for certain iconic horses that have had a large impact on the breed and whose names are in many Thoroughbred pedigrees.

Sometimes it works nicely to mesh the name of the stallion and mare to create a mixed name of the two, such as the horse Media Giant, whose dam is Media Nox and sire is Giants’ Causeway. Or to mix the meanings of the sire and dam’s names such as Native Dancer, who was by Polynesian and out of the mare Geisha. If only it was that easy for every horse! Some owners go for names with a personal meaning. A clever name currently in racing is that of Tale of Ekati. He is owned by Canadian diamond prospector Charles Fipke, whose first mine, and consequently the first Canadian diamond mine, was called the Ekati mine. Fipke’s horse is by the stallion Tale of a Cat, so the name Tale of Ekati fit the bill perfectly.

And then, some people just like originality, like the stallion named Whywhywhy. Or they go with names that all start with a certain letter. No matter what though, every Thoroughbred owner wants his or her horse’s name to be iconic. Would Secretariat would have been so great without such a regal name? Or Man O’ War? A name must be deserving of a racehorse. Who really wants a horse named Mutt or Slouchy or something along those lines? Funnily enough, a horse named Onion once beat Secretariat.

And me, what would I call a horse? Well my favourite names right now in racing are Soldier of Fortune and Evita Argentina (who is by the Argentinean sire Candy Ride). If I had one of my own though, I like using the sire and dam’s names, but originality is important. Growing up, we used to compete on our hunter ponies and the best pony around was named Never Before Copper, so I’m sure I’d be tempted to use that one since it will always remind me of that perfect, never-put-a-foot-wrong pony. Maybe it would rub some good qualities off onto my racehorse!

Last weekend at Harvey’s, a pub in Lexington, Kentucky, a fundraiser was held for a friend of mine named Torey Phelps. Although in the central US, the event drew a crowd from across the globe. I gather it was a huge success.

Torey is an American. She was seriously injured in a car crash shortly after arriving to work at a farm in New Zealand. We all knew that Torey was a popular girl, but she truly has a world of friends behind her for her recovery. It seems that everyone in the Thoroughbred industry knows about her story and is praying for her recovery.

I’ve only been involved in horse racing for the past eight months, but with out question, I can state that, to me, people involved in horse racing are the BEST kind of people out there. Horse racing is a global obsession. Yet the people you find involved with our great Thoroughbreds are invariably cut from the same cloth. Genuine love-everything-to-do-about-horses people. The kind that know what it takes to make it to the top in a very wealthy, storied, and prestigious industry.

But everyone, absolutely everyone had to start at the bottom of the totem pole when they got into horse racing. Everyone has had to muck stalls, groom persnickety horses, hay, sweep, and rake; to learn the ins and outs of daily life on a farm before they can become the next farm manager, bloodstock agent, or track manager. So when word spread that Torey had been injured while experiencing the New Zealand Thoroughbred industry and while she herself was trying to make her way to the top, I think everyone felt a bit of her pain.

Torey’s on her way to recovery, but her illness has truly brought out the kindness in people. It could have been any one of us down there. With so many critics of horse racing these days, we need to put aside the business and racing rivalries, because we’re all in this together.