Student Blog from Lea Petit (France) and Jordan Kidd (Ireland)

Lea

This week, I was in Blandford Yard. It is where mare and foals who are not vaccinated for rotavirus are stabled. We also take care of the legends.

We started the week by teasing some mare and foals, some of them were not in season because they are only 6 or 7 days after foaling so it is a bit early for them. We took a nasal

swab off a mare from England, it is the process for the horses coming from another country.

We’ve put her in a little nursery paddock by herself until the results are negative. Monday was also the first time the legends went out in the paddock all together. We had to change their rugs for the cold nights. They were happy to go out. Sizing John joined the legends. He is making friends with the rest of the legends.

The lecture on Monday was disease of the foal 1 to 6 month with Dr. Kevin Corley. He talked about diseases that they can get.

On Tuesday we had a guest lecture from Ross O’Mahony, who is the Bloodstock Executive at Tattersalls Ireland. Ross spoke about his career in the industry and his role at Tattersalls.

 

Jordan 

Monday was my first day in the Kildare yard which is the yard where most of the mares and foals come after they spent their two days in the foaling unit in sun chariot, it was a enjoyable week because I got to see the ten mares I foaled while I was on foaling duty two weeks prior and I found it fascinating to see how much the foals grew in the past two weeks.

On Monday we started by making the vets list and tried to do as much of the general vetting for the week done before the Cheltenham festival started on the Tuesday, so we got to see plenty of veterinary action on Monday scanning and flushing mares that retained placenta during foaling.

On Tuesday we started at 7am, we had the help of the Maddenstown crew because it was muck out day and we got all the days work done at 1pm so we could enjoy the days racing at Cheltenham before coming back to bring the mares and foals in for the evening at 3pm.

On Wednesday and Thursday was relatively handy because we had the majority of the hard work done on Monday and Tuesday, bar the daily vet check of scanning and stitching the mares.

On Friday I had the day off so I went to Cheltenham for the days racing which was nice to get over to see my boss from home John McConnell, he had a runner in the Albert Bartlett, I arrived home at 1:30am that night and I had to be in work at 8am on Saturday so needless to say I was slightly tired.

We finished of the week with some simple vetting’s on Sunday and carried out the daily chores of the yard.

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