As readers of my FW column may be aware, one of our diversifications is a horse livery. The other day we were checking on the welfare of some of our charges and commented to the owner of a grey mare that had been with us for eight or nine months that we thought she was over feeding her. I'm not, she replied. I have a job to get her to eat enough. In that case she must be pregnant, we said, half joking.
But the seeds of doubt had been sown. The horse had been bought from a dealer who owned a stallion just before it came to us and it set our client wondering. A couple of day's later when the vet was visiting our client asked him to do an internal examination to make sure.
Oh yes, he said, as he took off his rubber glove after the examination. I reckon she'll foal in two to four weeks.
Having bought the mare as empty the present owner was not best pleased. That evening she phoned to tell the vendor what had happened. To which the vendor said "Oh". She then went on to tell how the mare had, indeed, been covered, three times, by a very good stallion but that it had not been thought she was pregnant. Moreover, she had asked the vet (by coincidence the same one that we use) to do a scan and he had assured her the mare was empty. That was why she had been sold empty.
But that was not the end of the story. The vendor, thinking the stallion was infertile, asked the same vet to castrate him, which he did. Apparently he's a very promising horse in performance terms and now his stud days are clearly over.
So, we have a worried vet, an unhappy vendor and a disappointed owner (she had intended competing the mare this summer) but an entire livery yard really excited at the prospect of a foal any day now. Together with a pretty little Arab mare that we already knew was in foal that's two expected within the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted.