WoW. You took the words right out of my mouth (err… ummm letters out of my hands?) anyway, EXACTLY!!
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Is this the one everyone was referring to upthread that they keep chasing? I wouldn’t be chasing a goal in the field…personally. He cross canters (not that well-built, sound horses won’t occasionally cross canter). And, another rope around the neck?
Also…that knee action doesn’t scream “hunter prospect” to me. 
I own a selle francais and let me tell you, the French trotter really shines through. I can also tell you she won’t be winning a flat class in her lifetime.
I’ve cared for exactly 3 foals in my life, which arguably isn’t a lot, but we never, not once, tied a rope around a neck. We never chased them in the pastures. Or maybe ever? Once we free lunged in the arena with mom.
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Kate claims she will be taking the Florida bar (and getting a counseling license, even more scary) in 2024. I doubt the character and fitness committee will do anything without a criminal conviction, but if anyone wants to find out, here’s the contact information.
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Not at all defending, but that is a neck strap. We use them on our weanlings too, in case a halter breaks.
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Yes, that is not a “neck rope” contraption like upthread. Just a plain old neck strap, very useful on broodmares. You don’t want to breed the wrong mare!
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Ah okay thanks. It’s been close to a decade since I worked with the babies so I may not recall having used one (I don’t think we did). But the rest I’m certain of!
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There are approximately eleventy-million “racetracks” (training tracks, training centers) here in central FL. Probably half of them are no longer populated with race horses, but have been sold/rented to sport horse people. Most of these training farms have a 5/8ths track, anywhere from two to ten barns, a number of small paddocks, and a couple big fields. It’s quite common to rent out pieces of the farm barn-by-barn; so it makes sense that Kate has rented one 22-stall barn and the associated paddocks at that farm. The other barns are rented by other people. A lot of these cheaper rent places have fallen into disrepair, and fences in the fields may not be suitable for weanlings/foals. It’s possible the filly jumped out when she was weaned and stressed; a barn and nearby paddocks may not be the best situation at weaning time.
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So from the excellent sleuthing of FB posts, do I understand that @Kasheare says publicly that two of her mares died last spring from starvation at their facility and she didn’t catch that until too late? In April 2022? So she then went on and “fattened up” these mares and used them as brood mares to get her 2023 foals? Who does that? Or did she let the owners of the free lease recipient mares take them home to recover and then source new recipient mares from new suckers? Only to have the same care meltdown in 2023? No wonder KWPN is telling her the foals are undersized. Both the 2022 and 2023 batches have had malnutrition in utero and as weanlings.
Obviously in any bad situation some horses are better keepers than others or some may get preferential treatment because the owner thinks they are special. Very common in hoarders to have different levels of care and the bad cases to be hidden away.
I recalled that she ranted about the previous horse care in another state but forgot how recent it was and that she “lost” two mares. I guess I’m not a very competent stalker 
This just gets worse and worse. She’s clearly been skimping on horse care to the extent of losing mares and foals all along, and hasn’t learned from her past experience.
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I will reply that they are indeed outside my budget because I don’t want to have huge vet bills trying to fix the mess of an incompetent breeder who starves pregnant mares and weanlings. If I was in the position to take on a charity case rescue there are many sad but not actually starved little wildie yearlings upcountry who at least grew up on the open range, not a filthy stall. Very important for future foot health and proprioception.
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Except you actually take supremely good care of your horses so the likelihood of them slipping a foal from living in squalid conditions with dirty bedding and malnourishment from lack of food/clean water is pretty much nonexistent.
What a horror show this woman is.
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I would not foal the horse out myself. I am not experienced enough and my farmette and the place I board my riding horses are not equipped. So now I have an additional concern that anywhere I was to board her to foal out could be neglecting her like this. Because surely the people who allowed this breeder to use their mare could not have imagined they’d be maintained the way they were 
It’s so awful. That poor mare
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It’s awful. But you would never let this happen because you would go check on your mare! I foaled mine at my veterinarian’s barn and went to see her at least once a week, usually a few times per week.
But I would not advise anyone to breed. It’s expensive and often a heartbreaker even when you do everything right.
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I don’t understand the vet doing ets, etc on horses in that condition.
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It does raise a lot of questions about EMS honestly.
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Is it normal to charge a board fee for a foal still nursing? The breeder of the my filly kept her at no charge to us until she was weaned, and then for another month after that at no extra cost until we had a good shopping window. Mind you, that breeder is a highly experienced, respected horse person who carefully selects good quality, well-known bloodlines.
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I have no idea actually. I saw a reference to the dangerously skinny foal being on board for $450 a month and I think that post was from the purchaser not the breeder. But I don’t know who was paying that. I also don’t know when the foal was weaned.
Nothing about this operation is highly experienced or respectable. It’s a foal mill, like a puppy mill.
The breeder sources free lease recipient mares, buys up big name WB stallion frozen semen online, gets eggs from some random DHH mares, and pops “designer baby” embryos into her recipient mares. If your repro tech is good at splitting semen doses you can get multiple embryos from what’s meant to be “one dose” of semen.
Then she warehouses her mares and foals in very low cost situations where apparently the care fails multiple times. Her real income source is traveling as a high end show braider so she doesn’t visit her horses much or do anything much with them, they are at the mercy of whatever sketchy low-end farm she’s picked. At this point I have to believe she’s complicit in the sketchy care because it keeps happening over and over. She may not be paying her staff, or she may be skimping on feed bills, or she may be so toxic that no one respectable will work with her now. But she blithely posts photos of skinny mares like it’s all normal.
So i totally would believe she’d be charging board on a foal, if she could get away with it, because obviously money is very very tight in this operation. But I don’t know if she is.
Her business plan is to sell in utero and get them off her payroll when they are weaned but from the number of yearlings and weanlings she is advertising, that’s not happening much.
I only know what we’ve been able to piece together from FB and her participation in these forums. She has been around horses her whole life and should know better than to starve her horses multiple times, but she is a naive breeder without much understanding of the WB lines she plays with, beyond knowing Fad of the Day names. I believe her early experience was in the Arab circuit, and she breeds weirdly flat crouped harness horse types that aren’t a good fit for any of the English sport horse disciplines even when they have big name sires.
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I can attest that as someone who lives in the same state as EMS and who personally knows folks who refuse to use them after a TON of issues, that a lot of local people avoid them like the plague. But they make beaucoup bucks off people in other states who don’t visit in person 
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Yes of all the excuses I have heard, this is the only one that has been corroborated by multiple other breeders who do not have consistent issues with everyone else. Most of them were ultimately able to get weight onto their mares though. Personally, after whatever thread it was that I saw it all go down on, I would not purchase a foal from a breeder who was using EMS for ICSI and I would do a lot of due diligence about the recipient mare in any other similar situation. It’s just not a business I am willing to support where these mares are collateral damage to get a nicer foal on the ground.
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When I was shopping, I did come across a few who charged something that was more akin to handling fee (which amounted to handling/convenience - introduce the foals to farrier, basic education/manners, et cetera).
The majority I spoke with however, were similar to your experience and I purchased from a woman who gave me the same experience yours did, she has a well recognized and well respected program and did not charge me board, and while she was entirely within her rights to, also did not charge me for the week or two between weaning & transport pick-up.
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Are you saying that EMS is responsible for the mare’s condition in some way? I don’t think even Kate has argued that, she praises her repro vets and just blames the hired help or barn managers for her recurrent problems with starving horses.
It does raise the question of whether a repro service should be implanting skinny mares, but maybe they are in OK shape when she first gets them as free leases, and it’s after they are implanted and pregnant in the low cost barns that they go downhill.
It makes sense she’s using a sketchy repro vet though. Of course she is.
What are the general issues with EMS and how would they impact her mares?
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