Tuesday 16 July 2019

This wonderful weather continues and we have been making the most of it with lots of barbeques and swimming in the river. We have been very full with guests but managed to have a lovely family barbeque at the cosy cocoon site on Friday evening. Jay has been in the UK for the last three weeks but went back to her very successful restaurant in India yesterday morning. It was wonderful to catch up with her.

Jessica at the cosy cocoon site
The breeding programme has been somewhat fraught to say the least although we will start with the good news first - Both Jess and Popaway have been scanned with viable embryo's at the 16 day stage - Absolutely fantastic that our gamble of going all the way to Ireland to visit Elusive Pimpernel has seemingly paid off. Jess had twins but they have been successfully squeezed (hopefully) We thought the same with Dove and Dream - Their twins were squeezed and we ended up with them all dying which was really sad. Dove hadn't recycled so we have decided to give her a year off and Dream went back to the stallion - this time to Telescope as we were picking Burrows Spring up at the same time. Spring has been scanned as definitely in foal to Dartmouth. Both Dream and Popaway's foals got bad scours but thankfully they have pulled through. Tik disappointingly scanned as not in foal yesterday but has gone back to the stallion (Telescope) today for her last chance - We probably made the mistake with Tik of trying to hurry her along with prostaglandin injections as we wanted her to go to Ireland with Popaway. Consequently her follicles weren't quite right. She obviously likes to do things in her own time and left to her own devises has now get a very healthy corpus luteum which the vet said was much more hopeful - Fingers crossed....
Popaway's Irish embryo -

At this stage it seems to be true that "Fools breed for wise men to buy" but hopefully we will prove this saying wrong! If it was that easy then everyone would do it and we like a challenge...