There’s been some cracking foal sales on recently, Cavan Equestrian Elite Foal Sale was a roaring night out even if you weren’t bidding, and last Saturday’s well-attended Breeders Select Foal Sale had almost 100 pre-selected foals on offer.

At our yard, it’s weaning time, and I’m not embarrassed to say I find it tough. My initial experience of weaning involved my first foal’s dam being whisked out of the pen by a smart friend who couldn’t stand to watch me chicken out of separating them any longer.

It was a colt, and to be fair he was starting to try to mount his dam, not ideal… a stern lesson from a good person, but I cried like a child that evening, the guilt of separating them.

These days I’m a little older and wiser, but not necessarily much tougher. I think I’ve read every article ever written on weaning and I’ve engineered it so I can leave my home-bred foals on for longer in a herd situation.

Sometimes with fillies I leave them on for ten months or so until the dam gets fed-up and the bonds begin to naturally fade. The herd always cradles the foal within its ranks, and I can slip the dam out unnoticed with the least stress to both mother and baby. Still plenty for me of course.

American dream

This year it’s a little different, having lost a much-anticipated foal in utero, I decided to fill that foal-shaped void, and after a couple of gins and chatting up my oldest pal from school (who aced the American dream after our Hebridean beginnings), he and I bought a very special filly together out of a mare I’d long admired.

All my New York friend knows of horses is my ongoing obsession and what he’s seen on Yellowstone. However, his interest is burgeoning and there’s now a monthly filly photo that wings its way across the Atlantic to much agreeing on how beautiful she is.

The filly and her dam came to our yard from the breeder last month and I made the decision to put an older ‘nanny’ mare in with them. My hope is when weaning time comes, she will provide some comfort and lower the stress for the little one. Thankfully the plan has come together and there is a little family of three munching their late grass in a field in Fermanagh for the next couple of weeks.

The extra bonus of this gives the old mare a job to do too, she’s happy to stand guard when the filly takes a nap, she shelters her from the autumnal rain and she is teaching her mare manners to boot.