Baby April, Part One

Some people have children, I have fillies.  April was my first baby and she took 11 months to arrive.  Yes, 11 months, not your typical nine.  You should have seen the horror on the lady's face in front of me in the checkout line at Safeway one evening as I explained to my friend Jessica that my baby was due in 11 months.  Actually, April popped out about three weeks late and she arrived around midnight in mid-April. (She celebrates a birthday in about two weeks).  Your first child is special and April is no different.

Here is a photo of her at 5 days.

I own April's mother, Sega, who has been my horse for 14 years and is now a very young 17 (more on her in another post).  Everyone who knows Sega thought she would have a lovely baby but for many reasons it was not a good idea for Sega to carry a baby so we hired a surrogate and performed an embryo transfer.  Technology is a wonderful thing and it is amazing what you can do today with the right vet and technology. Doing an ET today is quite simple and everything went as planned, on schedule, no complications.  Viola, the dark bay horse in the photo, is April's surrogate mom who carried her and cared for her until she was weaned.

From the very beginning April was a good looking filly.  Huge chest, long legs, athletic from the start and that has not changed.  We are lucky.

April lived in Pennsylvania, just north of Baltimore until she was six months old.  Here she is at about 5 months.  At this point she was not yet weaned from Viola and she was turned out with other moms with their fillies, just like in the movies.  This was a warm sunny August day and all of the young horses were running and playing but never getting too far from their mothers.  I remember it well.

Like children, horses grow very quickly.  My how time does fly:

This photo was taken of April the day she left the farm in PA to move to Maryland, her next temporary home.  Her huge size was becoming even more apparent.  At this stage she was bigger than all of the colts.

When you register a filly with a breed society, you have to take shots of her from all angles and also send in a piece of her mane for her DNA test (to make sure daddy is who we say he is).  This photo was sent in to the American Hanoverian Society, where April is registered.

She gets really big, really fast.  Stay tuned.