Tag: Horse Care

Old Friends, the Thoroughbred retirement farm in Georgetown, Ky., is pleased to announce that Fearless, a multiple-graded stakes winning millionaire, arrived at the farm Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023.

The 7-year old bay gelding was retired to the farm courtesy of his owner, Mike Repole, a longtime supporter of Old Friends.

“Fearless was a gutsy and determined racehorse with the perfect name,” said Repole. “The stable really thought Old Friends would be a great place for him to spend the rest of his career with other great horses.

“Fearless showed up every time and gave his best. He exhibited his versatility by winning from distances of six furlongs to a mile and three quarters. He was a graded stakes winner of $1,251,450.

“I'm thrilled people will be able to visit him at Old Friends.”

Bred by the Helen K. Groves Revocable Trust, Fearless, who is by Ghostzapper–And Why Not, by Street Cry (Ire), was foaled in Kentucky on March 17, 2006.

Initially owned by China Horse Club International and WinStar Farm, and trained his entire career by Todd Pletcher, Fearless broke his maiden in his first start in 2019 as a 3-year old in a maiden special weight race at Gulfstream Park on Dec. 22.

In 2020 as a 4-year old, he won two allowance optional claiming races, the first at Gulfstream Park on Feb. 1 and the second at Churchill Downs on May 30. Then, following a sixth in the Stephen Foster Stakes (G2) at Churchill on June 27, he closed out his year with a win in the WinStar Gulfstream Park Mile Stakes (G2) at Gulfstream on Feb. 27 for his first graded-stakes win.

In 2021 as a 5-year old, he finished second in the Oaklawn Handicap (G2) at Oaklawn Park on April 17, and third in the Pimlico Special Match Series Stakes (G3) at Pimlico on May 14. Later in the year he was purchased by Mike Repole, and then, still trained by Pletcher, he won the Harlan's Holiday Stakes (G3) at Gulfstream on Dec. 18.

As a 6-year old in 2022, his biggest wins were the Ghostzapper Stakes (G3), a race named after his sire, on April 2 at Gulfstream, the Brooklyn Stakes (G2) at Belmont Park on June 11, and the Birdstone Stakes (Listed) at Saratoga on July 28. Coincidently, Birdstone is a retiree at Old Friends.

Fearless returned to the track in 2023 as a 7-year old and ran in only one race, the True North Stakes (G2) at Belmont on June 10 where he finished fifth.

Following that race, he was retired with a record of eight wins, six seconds, one third, and earnings of $1,251,450 in 19 starts. It should be noted that in his 15 starts, he was in the money in 79 percent of his races, which included five stakes wins, four of them graded-stakes.

Repole then sent Fearless to Old Friends for his retirement.

“No one has been better to Old Friends and his horses than Mike Repole,” said Michael Blowen, President and founder of Old Friends. “We are grateful to him for several retirees, especially Fearless who won a Saratoga stakes race named for another Old Friends resident, Birdstone. And he's gorgeous. Fearless, that is!”

The post Old Friends Welcomes Multiple Graded Stakes-Winning Millionaire Fearless appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Some horse owners opt to feed their horses alfalfa pellets in place of forage in their horse's diet, but is this appropriate? Dr. Karen Davidson, of Purina Animal Nutrition, tells The Horse that while many horses ingest long-stemmed forage in addition to grain meals, most horses can remain healthy by eating completely pelleted rations or pelleted hay as long as the rations provide the appropriate type and amount of fiber. 

Forage a horse ingests in the form of hay, grass, chopped hay, hay pellets, hay cubes, or complete pelleted feed should be at minimum 1 pound of dry matter per 100 pounds of weight. In many cases, horses should eat 1.5 to 2.5 pounds of dry matter forage per 100 pounds of body weight. Exactly how much forage a horse should eat will depend on multiple factors, including the horse's activity level and metabolism, as well as forage quality. 

Dry matter content varies widely between forage sources. Pasture often has a higher moisture content, often between 15 and 30 percent, meaning a horse must ingest 30 to 60 pounds of pasture grass. Baled hay that is cured should be 85 to 90 percent dry matter and consumed at 11 to 12 pounds per day. Hay pellets or cubes and complete feeds often are closer to 90 percent dry matter, so should be fed at about 11 pounds per day.

When pasture is of poor quality or isn't available, horses require additional forage. Long-stemmed hay is ideal as it takes horses more time to ingest than pelleted forages, but pelleted hay is also an adequate choice. In cases where long-stemmed hay is not available, is expensive, or if the horse is unable to adequately chew or digest long-stemmed hay, pelleted hay may be the better choice. 

Pelleted forages are ingested more quickly so they should be divided into three or four meals per day. Spreading out the pellets on the ground or placing them in a feeder that had obstacles in it can also delay rapid pellet ingestion. 

There are limited studies on the effect of eating pelleted forage on dentition. It has been reported that eating pelleted forage encourages the development of sharp cups and reduces the directions in which a horse chews. Regardless of what type of forage the horse is eating, all horses need routine dental care; horses eating pelleted forages may need more-frequent exams than horses eating long-stemmed hay. 

Pelleted hay can provide adequate fiber to replace hay or pasture when fed properly. 

Read more at The Horse. 

The post Fiber Content Crucial For Adequate Pasture Alternatives  appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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The Jockey Club's Thoroughbred Safety Committee issued two new recommendations at the breed registry's annual Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing this week.

One recommendation urges public disclosure of the track surface measurements that racetracks are required to take by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. The national regulations require tracks to have a plan for daily tests of racing and training surfaces and to report those test results to the Authority within one week. These tests include geometry and slopes of straights and turns, cushion and base geometries, as well as daily monitoring of moisture content, cushion depth, weather, and penetration and shear (for turf tracks) at each quarter mile marker pole in at least two spots.

“The Thoroughbred Safety Committee today calls for that information to be frequently measured at periodic distances and made available to the public,” said Kristin Werner, senior counsel to The Jockey Club. “Working with other key industry stakeholders, especially the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory, The Jockey Club recommends exploring the best methods for providing the racing surface data to the horsemen and public, including through an app, website, or other electronic feed. As with all of its recommendations, The Jockey Club will help provide resources to ensure this recommendation is met.”

The other suggestion from the committee was that regulators should consider intervening in situations where trainers have two or more race-related fatalities in a short period of time. National regulations via HISA require that any on-track fatalities undergo a necropsy, and many states require a mortality review in which the equine medical director meets with the trainer to look at the horse's workout, race, and medical history to see whether the trainer could do anything differently in the future to prevent recurrence.

“The regulations suggested are not intended to be punitive,” Werner said. “Instead, the focus is on recognizing the trainer as a risk factor upon the occurrence of two or more race-related fatalities, and identifying opportunities for intervention, such as continuing education, rest, diagnostics, and veterinary consultation and care.

“In a similar fashion to other regulations in the realm of safety and integrity, the number of horses in a trainer's stable is not taken into consideration in applying the strategies. However, genuine accidents would not be included in the case criteria for intervention.”

Read our previous reporting on the ways mortality reviews can assist trainers and regulators for improved safety.

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The Jockey Club will begin a project to trace recently-retired horses as part of an attempt to improve traceability of first exit from racing. Kristin Werner, senior counsel to The Jockey Club, outlined the organization's coming efforts at today's Round Table.

The breed registry will reach out to last known racing connections for horses foaled in 2017 or earlier who have started in the past decade and whose status is not on record. This refers to horses that are not actively racing or breeding, were not officially registered as retired from racing, were not exported, do not have a Thoroughbred Incentive Program number and have not been reported dead.

Werner said the program will work to identify and exclude horses that have been adopted through a Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance-accredited organization.

“Owners are reminded that they can, at any time and free of charge, update ownership information with The Jockey Club through Interactive Registration and should report deaths to the registry in a timely manner,” Werner noted.

Physical registration papers have been replaced with digital foal certificates starting with foals born in 2018 or after. These foal crops were also required to be microchipped rather than have lip tattoos applied to improve traceability since tattoos can become difficult to read as the horse ages. The Jockey Club will contact the digital certificate managers for horses whose status is unknown to find out where they are, although Werner did not detail what the group will do with that information. The registry's online system will also trigger a prompt in its software that will go to certificate managers for horses born in 2018 and after whose status isn't officially registered with the organization. The prompt will include an explanation about why it was triggered and ask the user to select a response indicating the horse's status.

“When they have submitted a response, the certificate manager will be sent a message related to their selection, including how to transfer the digital certificate or complete the Transferred as Retired from Racing process, or aftercare resources for those horses consigned to non-racing auctions or sales,” said Werner. “In addition to collecting the data, the database will include a reporting function to monitor failures to reply and analyze the responses to assist with aftercare efforts.”

The breed registry has also made the process of transferring a horse as retired from racing digital. While it previously required that a seller and buyer submit a notarized signature in hard copy along with the physical foal registration papers, digital signature verification enables those transfers to happen online. This registration status means that someone cannot buy a horse at the track under the auspices of transitioning the horse to a second career and then put it back into training to race.

“Though much progress has been made in the area of Thoroughbred aftercare, we continue to see Thoroughbreds at low-end auctions, in kill pens, and in cruelty or neglect situations,” she said. “This population includes horses that do not enter the breeding or racing population, horses retired from racing, horses retired from breeding, and horses exiting the sport horse and recreational riding population.”

Kill pens and “bail pens” purport to offer time-sensitive sales of horses to the general public before the horses are allegedly shipped across the Canadian or Mexican borders for the purposes of slaughter. Pens will set tight deadlines for sales and provide no opportunity for veterinary or other inspection of horses before they're allegedly shipped. (It remains unclear how many of these pens do indeed send horses over the border, as horse exports for slaughter have dropped significantly in the past 10 to 15 years.) Thoroughbreds often command higher prices than other breeds when sold via online bail pen groups because they're easily identified and can be traced back to a racing or breeding record, resulting in higher social media engagement on their sale posts. We've reported extensively on the bail pen economy. Read previous coverage here.

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