by Helen Thomas
If I was going to make a go of breeding and racing horses, I had to have land and this was it. This was an amazing property, perhaps even a lucky one, even if it was pretty much just one long paddock with two dams.
Smaller spaces obviously had to be fashioned around the water and the good grass, and a stable built up on the hill amidst the peppermint gums, with a round yard with rubberised sides nearby. While a house for humans could wait, if horses were going to be handled safely here, if this was really going to be a working farm, getting these structures in place could not, and so I organised it, taking three months’ long service leave from the ABC.
I also found a sale yard in Canberra that specialised in old caravans. Some were big, some small, and most were long past their prime. I snapped up a vintage 1960s white Millard, complete with fading yellow trim. Inside, the little kitchen nook—Formica bench and striped yellow and gold window seats—matched the home-made orange-gold curtains and white lino; a concertina door discreetly tucked away the bedroom—a three-quarter size double bed. Years later, the blazing Braidwood summer would drive me to rent a small cottage in town. But that first autumn, my little 16-footer (that still takes pride of place on the top of the hill) meant I was good to go. The farm was up and running. And I was there, most weekends, from that time on.
None of it was cheap, as I fast discovered. Nothing to do with horses ever is and the proceeds of the sale of my house in Sydney stretched only so far. By April 2003, the farm was all set up and ready for equine use. So Poetic Waters came home, but she was not alone.
In the two years since buying her, I had continued to go to the various thoroughbred sales, to keep learning. But such studies led to close contact with too many horses needing homes—and two more mares had found one, through me. One, a big, strong grey called Noble Choice, was certainly on her way to the doggers before I put up my hand—the only bidder at $400. She was now in foal up at Jenny’s in the Hunter.
But accompanying Poetic Waters on the transport truck was a much older mare I had bought some 12 weeks earlier. Almost 20 years old, Express had been bred by Richard Kelly, one of Australia’s most astute breeders, and bore his famous old brand on her near side or left shoulder. Balancing it up on the other was his stud’s numeric count from the year she was born: 44 over 3, for 1983.
This indicated she had been the forty-fourth foal born on Kelly’s famous Wakefield Farm in 1983 and she had more than pulled her weight since, having a couple of race starts—including one in New Zealand—before starting a long career as a broodmare, producing no fewer than 13 foals; in fact, she had pretty much been in foal every year of her life. Surely this flaxen-maned chestnut with the one white sock deserved a happy retirement paddock?
Instead, in one of life’s harsh twists, she found herself and her youngest daughter—her thirteenth foal, only four months old—at the heart of her farm’s dispersal sale, one of a dozen mares on the market, their owners apparently forced to sell as they battled cancer.
My oldest friend and I went to inspect the chestnut with the thick-thin white blaze before she entered the ring at Sydney’s famous Kensington sale yard, talking to her from the stall door. Though courteously acknowledging our interest, she was well aware of her surroundings and didn’t like them one bit, tucking her foal safely behind her as we looked in on them both.
‘You know the old mare, do you?’ a handler asked, leading another past the stall. I shook my head and the woman kept walking, barely hiding her disappointment. This old girl was clearly held in some regard, and it wasn’t hard to see why.
A couple of years after buying Poetic Waters, I did know a little more about what the pedigree page in the summer sales catalogue indicated, and it was good. Express was actually a rather grand old broodmare, boasting what are now unusually close ties to some of the world’s most famous stallions. She was very well connected through the maternal side of her family, with the important local lynchpins Luskin Star (her maternal grandfather) and Star Kingdom linking her to some of Australia’s most precocious clans. A cousin called Sudden was the mother of Burst, one of the best winners of the Golden Slipper, the world’s most lucrative race for two year olds, back in 1992.
Paternally her family’s ‘coat of arms’ was internationally impres-sive, with the great Ribot a grandfather, and Nasrullah, Nearco and War Admiral appearing within four generations, which meant the legendary Man O’ War was also in Express’s family tree. These horses are no longer with us, but their names evoke racing eras long gone—and through their extraordinary genetic strengths, they are still revered in the breeding world. The influence of these stallions, through some of the oldest studs of Kentucky and Europe, was so potent, they were so successful at siring winners, they were deemed breed shapers.
War Admiral, immortalised in the movie Sea Biscuit, was the stunning black stallion from the American west taking on the popular little bugger from the backblocks in one of the most famous match races of the turf. And here in suburban Sydney was a mare who could claim him as a great-great-grandfather! These were some of the names, steeped in history and breeding folklore, that beginners learn to look for in pedigrees—and amazingly, this compact chestnut had them in her immediate family.
For a relatively small mare Express had done a pretty good job when it came to producing race winners. Two of her sons, full brothers, had won just on $800,000 between them, the oldest racing in Hong Kong and earning more than $500,000 in the process. Yet even though she was still a strong, compact horse, Express was getting on; a 19 year old with a foal by her side sired by Playing Hours, a no-name sire by most standards. So she was not exactly the ideal entry into this family, good as it was.
But the truth was it was the only way I was going to afford to push in to such illustrious company and the cheeky little foal, still to be weaned and careering around the sale ring on tiptoe hooves, carried the same vintage blueblood in her veins. She could carry on her mum’s good work as a broodmare, even if she didn’t amount to much on the track. And the old mare looked strong enough to deliver one more foal.
I wasn’t the only one thinking along these lines. There was some competition around the summer sale ring, albeit at the low end of bidding, as the ‘two-for-one’ package did circle after circle around the ring. While the bored auctioneer failed to mention the outstanding performers in the mare’s family, he did note her solid track record at stud, with ten of her ‘babies’ going to the races, seven of them winning. But in the end the hammer fell in my favour: $1250 the pair!
Mother and daughter travelled up to Timor Creek, where the foal was weaned under Jenny’s care and stayed to run with a mob of youngsters of similar age. And then, astonishingly, several weeks later—early one autumn evening—Poetic Waters and Express stepped off the transport truck at the gate of my farm, dark shadows keen to canter into the newly fenced front paddock.
There was a slight chill in the air, as well as a real snap of electricity as this part of the adventure unfolded. I had been waiting all afternoon for their arrival in what proved to be another lesson in horse management: the amount of time it takes to get a horse from one point to another is never easy to calculate, and rarely runs to schedule.
The original estimated time of arrival was 3 pm, then 4.30, then 6 pm, my excitement turning to worry and then genuine concern. Where could they be, on what was essentially a straight-line route? No matter what the distance, these pick-ups are never quick, because the large, cumbersome transport vehicles can never really travel too fast given the valuable, live cargo they are carrying, all standing side by side, balancing against the roll and sway of the truck.
When I heard the truck’s engine in the distance, relief flooded through me as I listened to it splash across the causeway linking one side of the Shoalhaven to the other. Even though I couldn’t see them properly, the light having dipped away an hour before, it was thrilling to watch the mares walk down the ramp of the transport at the front gate.
We’ve made it, I th
ought, as they moved in and out of view in the paddock, against the beam of the truck’s headlights, their hooves beating a gentle tattoo in the night. ‘That old mare’s lost of bit of condition on the way down,’ the driver told me, as he led her into the paddock. ‘She’s very light on for one in foal.’
When I ask him why this would be, he grudgingly admits the two of them had been waiting for some time in a yard at the transport company’s Sydney depot, the older mare visibly distressed and walking around and around the inside fence. It was a lifelong trait, I would discover later from a manager at one of Australia’s big studs, who had handled her for many years. Still, it wasn’t quite as bad as the driver was describing; neither of the mares was expecting, which meant the old girl would be able to put on condition quite quickly now. I tried to get a better look at them both, but the travelling companions had already moved away into the night’s cover.
Could they sense my anticipation as I strained to see them as the truck pulled back and drove off ? Did they appreciate the occasion? They sounded calm enough as they explored the boundaries of the pasture, and were obviously happy to be stretching their legs after the arduous trek from the Upper Hunter that had started the previous day and included an unexpected overnight stop in Sydney.
As they found their bearings I guessed they were completely unaware of the giant steps they were taking on my behalf, and as I closed the gate I realised I could officially give the farm a name now, as my two foundation mares were at last in residence. Picayune, a Cajun word meaning ‘small change that jingles’, seemed appropriate as Jinglemoney had been the original name of the local shire. So Picayune Farm it became and we were on our way, a fledgling business up and running.
As the next few months rolled on, Poetic Waters grew fatter and her coat shone with good health, and I started to think she might be in foal after all. But all the experts, the local vet included, reassured me this simply could not be the case. She may well have been served twice by the stallion in Queensland, but she had not fallen pregnant. The stud’s own vet tests had come back negative. She was what they called a good doer, a mare who put on condition easily and held it. It was a good thing, I kept being told. She was a bonny mare.
I tried to accept this advice, but the better she looked and the bigger she got, the stronger my suspicion grew. Whenever I asked why she was looking so good and getting so big, the expert advisers just smiled and sighed; this was a genuine blessing, after all.
‘Should she have an ultrasound?’ I finally asked the vet. ‘Just to be sure she isn’t in foal.’
‘No need, the stud would have done that—twice,’ he replied. ‘Don’t waste your money.’
The vet was at the farm to check on Express, who was due to leave for one last roll of the genetic dice with a Victorian-based stallion, Snaadee. He had sired her best two sons, Chiming Door and Look Who’s Angel, and as she had blossomed over the past few months at Picayune, she was on her way to one last date in the breeding barn.
‘Just one more son and you can retire,’ I told her. It was a deal I felt comfortable with, given she was so vibrant and strong, though I had almost changed my mind on the morning the truck arrived to drive her south.
As I headed down the hill to walk her up to the gate, she was stretched out in the grass, sound asleep in the spring sun—a deep, relaxed sleep. Pangs of guilt rolled over me. Was it too much to ask of the old mare? Would she be better off just staying here for the rest of her life, where she obviously felt happy? After gently waking her up and slipping her halter on, I marvelled at her stamina, her natural brilliance as a mother.
‘This is the last time,’ I whispered, as the truck pulled up at the gate. ‘I promise. Once you’ve had this baby, you can come back and never leave home again.’
As the truck drove away down the gravel road, I walked back up and stood at the top of the hill, while Poetic Waters stood at the front gate of the paddock, listening as the truck carrying her friend disappeared across the river, out of sight and, eventually, out of earshot. She knew what was happening, knew not to expect Express back in the short term and, after listening and staring into the distance for more than half an hour, Po (as I now called her) turned and walked slowly back to stand under the line of poplars they both loved so much.
At least there was no doubt about keeping her at home this year, I thought. Even though her last foal, the little colt her former owners had kept when they sold her, was now racing as Aerosol, I felt the mare herself needed more time to recover from the unsuccessful matings of the past two years.
Jenny, my mentor in the Hunter Valley, agreed, adding that—no matter how good she was looking, no matter how fat—there was no way such a reputable stud could have got it so wrong. She simply was not in foal.
With this in mind, Po was kept in the least lush paddock and carefully not given any of the special feed with extra daily nutrients that a broodmare coming to the end of 11 months of pregnancy needs to best grow a foal. She wasn’t happy about this, and tried at every opportunity to steal as much of the lucerne hay I put down for the other mare, who was on loan from next door to keep her company, as she could. Fair’s fair, I could almost hear her thinking, give me a go here. But there was really no reason to give either of them anything more than the good pasture.
I had become especially diligent after what seemed like a straightforward breeding assignation for Express turned into what could have been a life-threatening experience, with an injury sustained the morning after she left the farm while waiting at the trucker’s home base. No doubt she had been pacing up and down the yard again, hugging the fence in consternation—but somehow, along the way, she collided with a piece of wood, perhaps even the edge of a metal fence post, hard enough to puncture one of her back legs. It was quite a severe wound, and required bandaging before she got back on the truck heading south, and again on arrival.
‘It was just a centimetre away from the tendon,’ the stud master reported after he had unwrapped the bandage and got his vet to look at the mare’s leg.
‘Any closer and the danger would have been an infected tendon sheath. But I know this old girl, she was at Emirates (stud) for many of the years I was working there. And she’s tough, she should be right.’ Luckily, she was and the crisis was averted.
But one evening in November that year, 2003, another loomed. Poetic Waters delivered a filly foal alone as I was eating dinner 20 metres away in the caravan, only alerted to this unexpected arrival by a sudden burst of loud banging and thumping coming from the stable. Even as I sprinted over to see Po looking quizzically out at me over her stall door, I knew what had happened and prayed all would be well. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she was definitely asking, looking me proudly in the eye, a squirming bundle of legs and ears at her feet, still in the sac.
As I eased past her and dropped gently to the little one’s side to help push her nose through the membrane, I knew I had to work harder to learn more about these extraordinary animals. But first things first. I had to help the mare get this newborn to its feet and nursing. Within minutes, the baby was up on unsteady legs and it was quickly apparent this was a filly, bay in colour, the white smudge on her forehead almost a mirror image of her mother’s. Within half an hour, Po was well into the process of cleaning and coaxing her gently towards the first few sips of milk that contained the all-important colostrum.
This, I knew, was crucial to a foal’s wellbeing, but as I watched this one totter around the stall, not overly interested in drinking, I began to quietly panic. How long could a new foal last without drinking? How hard would the mare try to convince her to keep trying? And was there a window of time before she would become frustrated and turn away? I sensed Po had it under control. Still, I needed advice, but at 11.30 on a Saturday night, my access to advisers was limited. And nowhere close. Then again, the vet owed me phone backup, at least.
‘Guess who just had a foal?’ I asked.
A short silence.
‘You’re kidding �
��’ he replied, already sheepish. ‘Not that bay mare of yours?’
I quickly filled him in on the scenario and he assured me that as long as the filly drank within the next five hours, all would be well. He also told me not to try to remove the long bag of afterbirth that was still hanging beneath the mare’s tail. It would fall away by itself and if I interfered with the process, infection could set in. He asked that I keep the membrane sac so he could inspect it in the morning.
As he talked, a sense of calm returned, especially as I watched the mare taking care of her foal. She knew what needed to be done; I should just let her do it and do whatever I could to assist. But even having talked to the vet, I knew I had to find out more before my anxiety levels rose again. Research, a journalist’s first friend, could help here. Back in the caravan, I remembered, was a book I had ordered months ago for this kind of tutoring. Joe Taylor’s Complete Guide to Breeding and Raising Racehorses.
‘America’s Master Horseman Tells You How to Breed and Raise Winners’, the blurb promised. Goodo! Surely Mr Taylor, a horseman of 50 years’ experience, 40 of them overseeing the famous Gainsway Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, would help get me through this?
Although it was written for American readers, Joe Taylor’s horse management manual kept me occupied for the next couple of hours while I read relevant chapters—Part 3: Horse Farm Management especially—over and again, almost memorising the tenth chapter on foal management.
If nothing else, it kept me out of Po’s way. Perhaps most importantly, Joe Taylor made me see I had not been up to dealing with even the most basic step: sterilising the navel stump immediately after the birth.
‘The easiest way is to pour iodine into a jigger,’ Taylor instructed.
I didn’t have any.
