It’s a Boy!!!

We woke up to six horses instead of five in the pasture this morning. Nessarose had a colt sometime in the night, and when Tom went out to feed this morning the foal was nursing and Nessa was waiting for her breakfast, just like always.

This was a little bit of a surprise, although about a month ago I remarked to Tom that I wouldn’t be surprised if we woke up one morning to another horse in the pasture. Tom looked at me sideways and said he’d been thinking the same thing. It was funny, because all three mares – Esmerelda, Glinda, and Nessarose – arrived here with a comment from their owners that they might be pregnant. I think that was supposed to be a selling point – two for the price of one – but what the sellers didn’t know is that Tom and I have no interest in keeping broodmares. But, we kept a close eye on them, and with all three actually thought early on that they were pregnant because all three gained a significant amount of weight shortly after arriving here. However, we know the gestation period for a horse is 11 months, so after we’d had Es and Glin for almost a year, we knew we’d dodged the bullet with those two.

We’ve had Nessarose since early August of last year, so we figured that if we made it to early July we were out of the woods with her too. But, Tom and I noticed that she just got fatter and fatter in a sort of weird way. Then, about two weeks ago, Selwyn was trimming her feet and looked up at her udder, and said “Margie, I think we’re having a baby.” I just sighed and told Selwyn that Tom and I both thought the same thing, so since then we’ve just been waiting, but still sort of hoping that maybe she was just fat and that no baby would appear over the next few weeks.

But, there’s something about babies, and when Tom ran in to tell me this morning, I rushed out and it felt like Christmas morning when I was a kid. I pretty much knew what was under the tree, but just the fact that it was finally there was exciting.


Everybody seems to be doing fine, although of course it poured all last night so we feel bad for making Nessa give birth in a muddy pasture in the rain, and we’re worried because it’s continued to rain off and on all morning and the foal is a little shivery, and Es kicked him although he popped up right away – but we’re hoping for the best and they both seem fine so far.


Selwyn and I cleaned all the dangerous stuff out of the cage that we’re turning into a barn, then he put a tarp on the roof and I fitted a door, and we dried the foal off with a wool blanket and took the two of them back there – so now we have a barn and a place where they can stay dry.


More pictures to come, no doubt!