How is Hop, @Arzny? I hope no news from you just means she fooled you and is keeping things in the oven.
I posted about my mare’s difficulties with her pregnancy in a separate thread, but now that we’re a month out from her twin reduction and she still has one healthy fetus, I’m going to share her info in this thread with cautious optimism!
She’s my AO jumper who, due to an injury this summer, is taking time out to have her baby. She has Contender and Corrado I lines and is in foal to Grafton (Calvaro Z x Vondeen). If everything goes to plan, she should have her filly in July!
I love reading about everyone’s babies and hope I’ll have some happy updates for you all as well!
I’m going to try to add some pictures of my mare - let’s see if uploading from phones works, haha
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She’s beautiful!
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Welcome to the thread! I will add her to my calendar 
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Oh yes, she’s okay! It’s just tax season so I’m drowning in work and forgot to update.
She’s spent the past few days looking very uncomfortable, waxed up, milk testing at 6.2. So 
. She’s probably waiting until Tuesday, when I have an important meeting at 8:30 AM.
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Yep, yep, that sounds about right. Def probably her plan. Why do they DO that???
Good news, bad news for us. Unfortunately, we lost our second foal. But our colt, now named Hawking, is doing great.
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I’m so sorry for your lost foal, @LaurieB.
That colt looks like a cute little wild child, though!
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I’m so sorry to hear that.
Hawking looks wonderful. 
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I’m so sorry, LaurieB. Heartbreaking. What a lovely photo of Hawking though!
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Oh, I am so sorry, @LaurieB. I hope the mare made it and recovers well. Hawking looks like he’s doing his best to cheer everyone up tho. Handsome little pistol
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Interesting development for Hopper - I ran out of PH strips and bought a new bottle. The new bottle is saying the PH is much higher. Can the strips go bad or has anyone experienced variation between bottles?
So sorry. 
Hawking looks great!
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The strips can go bad over time, yes. Were the old ones left over from last year? If so, I’d trust the new ones more. I think some of them are just easier to read than others, too.
Day 304 for Sydney, and the vet was here this morning to do her vaccines and take her Caslick out. He also did a transabdominal ultrasound. Baby was very active and kicking up a storm; the vet also noted that it is quite large. (Ugh. Always fun with a maiden!) It hasn’t turned yet. The vet says that can happen as late as 2 weeks before foaling, but I’m a bit nervous about that.
We also started Arielle’s pre-breeding work for the season. We pulled a culture/cytology and did an ultrasound. Looks like she is actively cycling, with a big, healthy CL and a 30 mm follicle on the left ovary, along with a 25 mm follicle on the right.
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Is that how twinning happens?
Twinning in horses is almost always the result of a double ovulation, yes. Interestingly, the rate of double ovulation increases as mares age, presumably nature’s way of compensating for reduced fertility in older mares.
Most twinning seems to be twinning from both ovaries? bc the foals usually look dissimilar. So then identical is rare? Lucky you weren’t using this cycle right.
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Identical twins in horses are exceedingly rare. We used to say they just plain never happen, but I think there has been a case or two confirmed.
Most vets love the mares that double ovulate - double the chance to get a pregnancy! Just have to be watchful and pinch one if she does conceive twins.
In this particular case, since the mare has an active CL and isn’t yet in heat, we don’t know for sure that she will double ovulate. She could regress one follicle and ovulate the other, or regress them both and bring up a totally different follicle to ovulate. Especially this early in the year, it’s hard to predict what she might do. We will wait for her culture results to come back and then figure out what kind of timing we want to work with.
In past years, I’ve had to work entirely off of ultrasounds. This mare, though, teases VERY strongly when she happens to be in heat on a day I take her over to my trainer’s place to ride. Almost to the point of being embarassing. 
That will at least give me a time frame to work around for getting started with her this time around. 
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Seeing if it will let me attach a video… we have an appointment Saturday for follow up x-rays. I am cautiously optimistic because of how he’s moving, but still nervous to see how his hocks look and what we can expect for his future. Also I apparently love punishment because Fuego’s dam was bred on Feb 22nd, so we will be checking in the next couple days to see if we will have a 2025 out of her. 
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He looks amazing!!!
