Round up for the year
02 January 2015
2014 was a tough one for the stud after losing two of our much loved horses. Keeping horses has so many positives but losing them is never easy. Talland Ace Hill was our 27 year old thoroughbred. He was the reason we decided to try Simple System in the first place, as he was always difficult to keep weight on. Unfortunately his age just got the better of him this year and we couldn’t ask him to make it through another winter. We also sadly lost our 16hh buckskin and white stallion Jackie Chan.
On a positive note we have been blessed with 6 super foals this season. We had the first and last crop of Jackie Chan babies. All 3 of them are crackers and two are staying with the stud, along with our long awaited first filly from our 18 year old national champion mare, Loobie Lou.
While not quite as successful as our 2013 show season, we have had a great year showing and catching up with friends. The highlight of the year, as ever was CHAPS UK national championships. It’s such a well-run show and the Saturday night party was great fun! It’s a must attend for anyone who wants to show their coloured horses, with classes for everyone from beginners to the pro’s.
Sherlock’s Maybe It’s Maybelline, who has elite graded parentage on both sides of her pedigree achieved her star graded status and also had her first experience of an evening performance under saddle. She finds this sort of thing quite stressful but didn’t put a hoof out of place for her first time! Our 2013 HOYS finalist, Brickell Mr Pickwick won the hotly contested Traditional Pony of the Year in-hand final. We have seen the hairy classes go from strength to strength and there is so many quality animals out there on the circuit. We also had a few other wins over the weekend, qualifying for next years’ champs!
In November we took two of our foals to the national foal show! Sherlock’s Lily Lou (Sherlock’s Seren Dreamer x Loobie Lou) and Sherlock’s Captain Jack Sparrow (Jackie Chan x Blondie Blue Noble) Who’s half brother and sister have been previous BNFOY champions. It wasn’t our year this year in the coloured classes, but Sherlock’s Lily Lou took second place in a very strong Welsh part bred class, in which she was the only coloured exhibit.
We had weaned our four earlier foals around 4 weeks before, as it’s always a worry that they will drop condition due to the stress. We have found that this is another benefit to Simple System. We have them on TopNosh and Red Bag Grass Pellets, as well as much hay that they can eat, which had them looking their best. The two later foals are still on their mothers and will be weaned at the end of January.
Sherlock’s Seren Dreamer, our dual graded native stallion who was a HOYS finalist in 2013 has also been trying his hand at the BSJA circuit this winter, and he’s has already jumped 2 double clears in British Novice with his 12yr old rider Jessica Howard. Being only 138cm (13.2hh) the maximum age for someone to jump BSJA is 14. Despite Jess being just 12, he is so polite and loves his work, which shows what a lovely temperament he has for a stallion. We plan for him to continue doing a bit of show jumping and he will be back out on the 2015 show circuit too.
We also moved all the out horses onto the winter grazing and are very lucky to have a nice big barn for them to come in and out of. At this time of the year a lot of people will bring in and rug up, but we find they prefer to be turned out for a break and to enjoy being part of the herd. It also meant we were able to have our first holiday in nearly a decade! A whole week without horses felt very strange.
We will start bringing a few of the show team in January so we can start to get them fit for the 2015 show season, although there is plenty of moving horses around to keep us busy as we like to rest our ground so that it can cope with the horses living out as a herd, offering as natural a life as possible. It’s amazing to watch the interaction with the group. One thing we have noticed is that none of the mares get fed up with their foals and I’m sure this is due to having enough other foals and young stock in the field for the foals to go off and play and leave mums to do what they do best - eat!