Surprise!

It’s interesting to sit and listen to farmers swap stories of the strange and unusual. A city slicker like me cannot imagine the crazy things that happen with livestock, but most farmers have seen it all. Except perhaps, immaculate conception.

Not long ago, I was looking out the window, and noticed a foal running around, where a foal had not been the day before. Most are very dependent and won’t stray far from their mothers, but from a distance, this one looked like one of the foals from a different pasture. Too large to be a newborn, it must have been one of the foals that was 2 weeks old, or so I thought. I told Errol later that evening, but it was dark when he got home, so he couldn’t see anything.

The next morning, I looked out, and spotted it again, and this time it was nursing on the mare from the big team. She shouldn’t have been pregnant! She never spent any time with any of the studs last spring, always separated at least by a fence. Her belly had been looking mysteriously big the last while, but it was decided that she found lots to eat this winter and was just fat. Errol went out, brought her and her baby to the yard for a little look see. Baby was as big as the foals already 2 weeks old, and solid. No mistake that she is that mare’s baby. As we pieced the mystery together, we decided that the stud that was gelded last spring must have made his last hurrah before being snipped and knocked up ol’ Bonnie through the fence. He’s not very big compared to Bonnie (I maybe come to the bottom of her shoulder if I stand really straight), so it would have been quite the feat. Still no immaculate conception, just incredible acrobatics.