I thought this was really cool (and adorable). I’m surprised the vet didn’t catch that it was a twin pregnancy–can anyone offer insight as to how it was missed on imaging?
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What looked like a typical day for Lori Hendrickson, who manages her family’s Meadowbrook Farm in Shelbyville, Ky., was anything but as she discovered around 2:30 in the afternoon of March 10.
Hendrickson spied one of the farm’s broodmares lying down in a paddock on a day that hinted spring is around the corner. She knew the mare, Kona Kai, owned by Surfside Stables and in foal to four-time grade 1 and Breeders’ Cup winner Oscar Performance, was due to give birth any day so she went to check on her.
What came next is something Hendrickson, a former stakes-winning trainer, said will forever be imprinted in her mind.
“I walked out to the paddock to check on her, and (Kona Kai) kinda sat up to see me. I said, ‘You OK, Mama?’ I walked away to let her rest,” Hendrickson recalled. “She had waxed for a couple of days, but not much. As I was walking away, I kinda heard her grunt, and I looked back, and she was pushing.”
Things moved quickly from there, with Hendrickson being assisted by her staff. Kona Kai, an 8-year-old daughter of Palace Malice who had given birth to her first foal in 2024, an Oscar Performance filly, was led into the barn with her water breaking before she got there.
“We get into the barn and she starts pushing standing up. This is my second year of foaling horses, so I haven’t yet experienced a horse foaling out while standing up, but I had heard about it,” Hendrickson said.
“The baby came out perfectly, the umbilical cord broke quickly, and then Kona took two steps forward and laid down. At that point, I thought something was wrong with her. I gave her a Banamine shot (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory to relieve pain). We heard her grunt again and my guy went back behind her, and said, ‘Boy, there is another baby.’ My jaw drops. Another guy that works for me came to help. There was no pulling and the baby came out easily. I was concerned the second baby would be dead or compromised, but she was breathing and moving.”
Hendrickson said neither she nor the vet, who cared for Kona Kai throughout her pregnancy and had scanned her, had any inkling that she was carrying twins.
“As a maiden mare last year, she was big, and she was big this year,” Hendrickson said. “Maybe the only difference was that her belly was lower to the ground this time.”
Hendrickson called the vet and then she and her staff took the mare and foals straightaway to Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, about 60 miles from Meadowbrook Farm, to be evaluated by Dr. Bonnie Barr, a neonatal specialist.
In a 2022 BloodHorse story about healthy twins born in Louisiana, Barr’s associate at Rood & Riddle, Dr. Chris Newton, explained how twins are a rare occurrence and when it does happen, it can be a very serious situation for the foals and their dam.
“The rate at which mares twin is about 14%, meaning about 14% of pregnancies will have twins,” Newton said. “Most of the time we reduce that, by manually ablating (removing) one fetus prior to 16 days. … And almost always if not checked, the mare will result in aborting
the pregnancy (or) end up with a severe dystocia (slow or difficult birth) which could result in the death of both the mare and foals.”
Thankfully, Kona Kai and her foals are healthy and the family of three left Rood & Riddle to return to Meadowbrook Farm the afternoon of March 17.
“The (foals) are getting up and down pretty well, and nursing well,” Barr said while they were at Rood & Riddle. “They play around in the stall a little bit. All normal vital parameters. For the fact that they are twins, it’s going remarkably well. And Kona Kai is a rock star and doing great with all of this.”
Upon arrival at Rood & Riddle, the fillies received nicknames of “Mary-Kate” (the bay who foaled first) and “Ashley” (the chestnut). For those not well versed in '80s and ‘90s television culture, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are former twin actresses who starred in the hit sitcom series, “Full House,” which ran from 1987-95.
It will be up to the twins’ owners, siblings Debbie and Howard Appel of Surfside Stables, to come up with the official registered names for the twins. No doubt, they will be bouncing all sorts of clever ideas off of each other.
The Appels only recently became involved in the breeding end of the business with two broodmares, Kona Kai and Phantom Opening. They started their racing stable in 2018 and among their top runners are a pair of graded stakes-placed geldings, Oceanic and Midnight Rising. Oceanic won the 2022 Da Hoss Stakes at Colonial Downs.
They bought Kona Kai for $75,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale in 2018 and raced her four seasons. She retired with a record of 1-3-1 in 11 starts. Debbie Appel said the mare was a trooper even before giving birth to twins, as she survived strangles (a bacterial infection of the upper respiratory tract) which she contracted while on lay-up at a farm recovering from a leg injury.
“We’re so excited. This has been a crazy, wild ride,” said Debbie, who first announced the news through photos and videos posted March 12 via the social media platform X. Not surprisingly, these posts were greeted with a frenzy of “likes” and reposts.
"The fact that Kona and these foals had such a good outcome is obviously a testament to Kona, but also to her vet who provided her care during her pregnancy and particularly Lori, who provided just exceptional care. In my view, if they hadn’t really taken such good care of
Kona, we actually wouldn’t be here.
“I think over the last (several days), we’ve all—my brother, Howard, and I, and Lori—come to appreciate just how rare this is.”
Right before Kona Kai and her daughters were about to board a van back to Shelbyville, Debbie shared that each twin gained 22 pounds while at Rood & Riddle and that Barr told her they were so “active and playful” she could barely contain them to do an exam. Debbie said,
“we’re all very thankful” for the care the horses received
at Rood & Riddle.
Besides the steep odds of twins surviving or thriving after birth, those who do rarely make it to the races, let alone win. A BloodHorse statistical report covering the years of 2018-22 in North America shows there have been 16 horses registered through The Jockey Club that were born as part of a surviving twin set. (According to TJC figures, from 2018-22, the North American registered foal crop totaled more than 92,000, meaning twins accounted for just 0.0002%).
