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May 12, 2008 Good news and poor news this week. We received confirmation that Camaronni N Cheese is in foal to Artiscape and will be coming back to the farm from New York tomorrow. We have an active breeding week - at least 3 mares to be bred. The poor news is OK Amelia in that she didn’t have a 4th Q kick and finished 5th in her race at Kawartha Downs on Saturday. On the other hand, she has now picked up a cheque every time she has raced! May 5th, 2008 We are roughly midway through our breeding efforts, 4 mares confirmed pregnant, 4 pending pregnenacy checks (bred but not confirmed in foal) and the three mares who delivered in April due to be bred next week. We travelled to Georgian Downs on Saturday and watched OK Amelia lead the field until the last 50 yds where she was narrowly beaten into second place. She ran well and Robert Sheppard drove her beautifully for the second time. April 28, 2008 Amazing Amelia is back! On Saturday our 3YO, OK Amelia (Aces N Sevens – Jennies Girl) ran her 3rd race of her career and came in a decisive 1st in 1:57.1 at Georgian Downs. Amelia is now 2-1-0. Mike Wade, her trainer had the filly sharp for this race backed up by his team of Duncan and her warm up groom and biggest fan, Billy. Amelia will be running again next Saturday. April 21st Lots of good news this week - on the foaling side we are done! Erin Kay delivered a beautiful filly foal on April 16th, we have named the Art Major daughter OK Dynasty. This is the third Art Major foal for us and none of them bear any resemblance to each other. In racing news, OK Amelia qualified at Kawartha Downs and OK Acrobat ran his first race as a three year old at Northlands in Albert. He won by half a length - his owners must be delighted. We have confirmed another mare pregnant for next year - Wiggle Your Class is carrying a Real Artist foal. April 14,2008 WOW – what a weekend! We can monitor 2 broodmares at a time by a video system which is shown on the office TV’s and on the house TV’s. On Saturday morning at 4:00 AM Caroline noticed that Erin Kay and Color Me Beachy were very restless so she went to the stable to check on them. Lo and behold, neither was in labour BUT Island Escape had a foal on the ground, one week early! A beautiful, long legged but well proportioned Modern Art colt who we have named OK Diablo.
 April 7th 2008 It seems as if everything is on hold......we have three mares "ready to go" in the next ten days. In addition, all our young horses are close to qualifying. This week, OK Acrobat qualified as a three year old in Alberta. We expect OK Amelia to do the same in Ontario by the end of April. In May the two year olds should be running strong training miles and then they too will hit the race tracks. Good news - CC Stacy is in foal to Dragon Again. March 31st 2008 This time of year, the term "preg checks" becomes very significant. This morning two of our mares were confirmed pregnant for the spring of 2009. Bailey Bug is carrying a Mach Three foal and Jennies Girl is carrying a Modern Art foal. Two down, nine to go!On Wednesday we are going to Mike Wade's training centre to meet Mike Saftic (one of the top ten drivers in Ontario) He has generously agreed to drive our two year olds and give us some feeedback on what kind of prospects we have. We hope that OK Bravo, Great Luck and Great Diva will impress him! March 24, 2008 For those of you who read our news on a regular basis, in the past 2 weeks you will have noticed some strange things happening and some items missing from our website. We have changed service providers and some material was lost in the process, such as all the February news items and some horse pictures. All is well now but ain't technology wonderful! Monday, March 17th 2008 Today we went to visit one of the stallions we plan to breed to this year - Lis Mara. We have also bought a share in him and were delighted to see him "in person." He is a big horse (16 hands) and one of the fastest racehorses on record. Dr. Pat Meyers who looks after him describes him as "wonderful to work with" and "an easy horse in the breeding shed." On the way home we collected semen from Seelster Farms and got back to breed Jennie's Girl to Modern Art. Tomorrow we will breed CC Stacey to Dragon Again - exciting times! March 10, 2008 It was a traumatic weekend! Stolen Magic, in foal to Village Jolt, was increasingly uncomfortable and well past her due date. Kelli Gilson our vet recommended that we induce her since the foal appeared to be very large and it was risky for both mare and foal to continue. Magic delivered a large, long legged and beautiful colt. Unfortunately, as is the case with many internally underdeveloped foals, the colt never had the strength to stand, developed pneumonia and had to be euthanized. On a more positive note we are starting our breeding season with 4 mares to be bred in the next 2 weeks and 7 more to follow - it is going to be busy! January 28, 2008 As a continuous improvement to our equine management system (EMS), we have purchased a high powered microscope to support our de-worming programme. Rick Webb, our farm manager, has the unenviable task of collecting samples and determining worm egg count. This then enables us to treat each horse individually. Furthermore, over time we can track each horse’s response to a specific product and continue to adjust their treatment accordingly. January 21, 2008 This week Rick Webb had a chance to go and visit two of his favourite fillies at Mike Wade's training centre. OK Amelia has grown considerably since last August when Rick drove her to victory at Kawartha Downs. According to him, she is not just taller but longer too! She is full of energy and enthusiasm, we can hardly wait to see her race again. OK Bravo was the little foal that had to be carried as a newborn. Now she is pacing beautifully and Rick is very impressed with her action and her attitude. Mike and his team are doing a great job with these horses and we are all looking forward to an exciting racing season. January 14, 2007 We had 2 visitors from Morocco last week – Dounia Amrani and Driss Temsamani – who were fascinated with our operation and especially the yearlings. Driss had never seen snow before and while we tried to tell him that snow is not a great thing he loved it! Since he now lives in Miami he can afford the luxury of loving it and leaving it!
By the way, Dounia’s father owns one of the best restaurants in downtown Toronto – Matignon. If you have a chance to visit this exquisite international restaurant let Mustaffa know that you heard about it from Oak Knoll Stables.
 January 7, 2008 On Saturday we took some of the owners from our syndicate, Great Owners Stable, to see their 2YO's in training. Mike Wade, our trainer, showed off the young horses and explained how they will develop over the next few months. Great Diva won the hearts of all the partners!
In addition OK Bravo is jogging beautifully and OK Amelia is training in under 3 minutes. We are looking forward to seeing all these young horses on the track in May and June. December 31, 2007 HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Kelli Gilson, our vet, checked our new mares today – Whitesand Jewel and Camaronni N Cheese – and both are confirmed breedable. Today we finalized our stallion choices with Western Terror to Jewel and Artiscape to Camaronni N Cheese. If everything works out 100%, in 2009 we will have 5 Ontario bred foals and 6 US bred foals. With this many horses on the property we are now planning to rent additional land for paddocks which will allow us to rotate pastures and horses without as many constraints as we now have. December 24, 2007 To all the people who read this site – Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year. Big excitement for us, we have added two new mares to our broodmare band. Cameronni N Cheese is a 4yr old Camluck mare who has won $219,000 and Whitesand Jewel is a 6 yr old Artiscape mare who has won $328,733 and raced in 1.50.4 Both these horses were trained by Mark Ford and he is arranging to move them from the Meadowlands to Ontario. We are not quite sure when they will arrive but they will go under lights immediately and then we have the pleasure of deciding who to breed them to. This brings our total number of mares to 11 but we expect to sell two of them in 2008. The other great news is that the pregnant mares have very active foals, Double Crème is carrying a Camluck foal, from the activity we see this one should be a great racehorse! December 17, 2007 Since we were unsuccessful in buying broodmares at the Harrisburg sale, we are in the hunt for racehorses that fit our criteria for broodmares for our broodmare band - less than 6 years old and over $100,000 in earnings. We have identified 9 mares that are presently racing and have approached the trainers and owners of these horses. Everyone is interested in selling the horses but at what price? This week we will finalize our deals – look on our news next week to find out how we did and what we bought! December 10, 2006 This is a quiet time for us, settling in to wait for the spring foals. Meanwhile our soon-to-be-yearlings passed a major milestone last week. OK Bravo and her companions learned to work with hopples. Bravo has been pacing beautifully free-legged so she found the transition pretty easy. Mike Wade is very patient with the young horses and he takes his time with new equipment so they seem to accept his demands quite well. Now we have weeks and weeks and weeks of jogging before they can start to train seriously! December 3, 2007 Since we need information for breeding and broodmare purchases, we have been collecting data about all the stallions in the industry in a fair degree of detail. The information ranges from performance of offspring over time, size of the stallion, to the success of each stallions mares as broodmares. What we also need is "anecdotal" information about all the stallions. We need to hear "offspring tend to be hot" or "throws crooked foals" - information which is from observations. While it may be someones opinion, we would like to be aware of it and then make up our own minds. If anyone wants to send us such info we could consider sharing it, maybe in the form of blog site. November 26, 2007 We have been working on sire matches for our broodmares for some weeks now. Finally the lineup is complete - we are breeding to Modern Art, Lis Mara, Mach Three and Jeremes Jet from Ontario and Real Artist, Dragon Again and Western Ideal from the US. It is always a compromise depending upon whether we are breeding to sell or want the best match possible for the mare. Hopefully we have achieved both and are especially looking forward to the crop from first time sires - Lis Mara and Jeremes Jet. All we have to do now is get the mares in foal - no small feat! November 19, 2007 Now that all our yearlings are gone the farm seems really quiet! This gives us a chance to research the sires we want to breed to in 2008 for the 2009 foals. We expect to breed nine mares. Currently we are looking at breeding four of them to American sires (Dragon Again is the only one we have booked so far) four of them to Canadian sires (we have booked Mach Three and are considering Lis Mara and Jeremes Jet) and the other mare could be bred to either side of the border. One shift for us this year is that we will not breed to a New York sire because we have to move the mare to another farm and we think it is hard on the animals to travel long distances and be away from here for several weeks. November 12, 2007 We just got back from Harrisburg with empty hands. While we got a great price for OK Braveheart the high price was also reflected in the price of good broodmares – way beyond our budget! We are now searching for good racehorses who are still racing and who fit our criteria for our broodmare band – earnings over $100,000 and less than 5YO plus some other criteria. If you know of any racehorses in this category, please contact us – we may be interested. November 5, 2007 Well, this is a major milestone for us!! We sold our first ever $100,000 yearling. OK Braveheart sold at Harrisburg for $115,000. He traveled to the sale on Saturday and had lots of people inspecting him on Sunday and Monday. A lot of the credit for his price goes to Rick Webb who washed him, groomed him, polished him and managed him so that he was in superb shape for the sale date. It is both sad to see him leave us and a relief to know that all our yearlings are now part of the racing world as they prepare for their debut next summer. We have posted their “Graduation pictures” in the barn, a reminder of the B Babies – OK Brilliant, OK Bravo, OK Braveheart and OK Boromir. October 29, 2007 Who are the most successful broodmare sires?
With the fall sales upon us many of us are looking to buy broodmares with the hope that they will produce the next million dollar winner! To assist us in developing a purchase strategy, we researched which broodmare sires have been most successful in producing high dollar winning foals. Not surprisingly, Artsplace mares are the most desirable but the up and coming broodmare sires are Cams Card Shark and Jennas Beach Boy mares.
The full results are in the Research section of this website. October 22, 2007 We are having glorious weather here and our weanlings are having great fun in the sunshine. There is something very beautiful in watching a group of young animals play and chase each other around the paddock! Next month we will divide them into two groups. The four colts (OK Commander, OK Chivas, OK Cognac and OK Canada) will remain where they are and the two fillies (OK Carolion and OK Champagne) will join the gelding (OK Chaos) in another paddock where there is a protected indoor area for the winter months. Nominations close today for the names of our two new syndicate horses, each will be renamed “Great” and another word for the Great Owners Stables. We will announce the name selection very soon. October 15, 2007 Quite a weekend!
We went to the Forest City Yearling Sale where 2 of our yearlings were to be auctioned and we also were looking to buy 2 yearlings for our syndicate – Great Owners Stable.
The Oak Knoll Stables yearlings sold for a little less than what we expected but on the other hand the person who bought OK Boromir out of our mare Double Crème got a bargain. If he does great as a 2YO this will be one of those Cinderella stories that happen every year. OK Brilliant brought more than we thought so somebody believes that they have a winner.
Two of our new owners in Great Owners Stable were with us and we bought 2 yearlings. Tymal Diva is a Modern Art filly out of a Cams Card Shark mare whose half brother has won $165,000 and her 2nd dam is loaded with black type. The second yearling, Direct Business, is an E Dees Cam colt out of a Direct Scooter mare who has won over $200,000. Both yearlings are now with Mike Wade for breaking and training. October 8, 2007 We have a victory! CC Stacey, our four year old pacer, ran at Woodbine and won wire to wire. We are delighted that she raced so well but unfortunately we were not there in person. Ironically we had spent the Thursday evening at Woodbine with our Northern Lights Syndicate members. We had tried to arrange for them to be with us when we had a horse racing but the dates did not work out. Then, the next night our horse wins by a nose in a thrilling finish, four horses crowding the wire and she just hung onto the lead. Many thanks to Susie Kerrwood her trainer and Mike Saftic the driver. October 1, 2007 We have added the videos for our three colts – please checkout the yearling you want to buy! We all found the process of making the videos very stressful. We have trained our young horses to come to us in the field, to walk quietly beside us and to trust us when we are close to them. Suddenly, on “Video Day” we are driving them away, yelling and shaking things and they were truly panicked. We will not be making videos again! When OK Brilliant and OK Boromir leave for the Forest City Yearling Sale, Mike Wade will collect OK Bravo to begin her life in training. Three of our four yearlings will have graduated from the farm. September 24, 2007 Great Owners Stable, our syndicate operation, now has 7 partners who have invested in the ownership of 2 yearlings. We elected not to bid at the Standardbred Canada Canadian Open sale since there were a limited number of potential acquisitions. We have now identified about 20 yearlings at the Forest City Sale on October 13/14 which we are interested in. Bob Young, our trainer, is now in the process of visiting the farms where the selected yearling were bred and raised and will give us his evaluation next week. Then the fun starts – bidding at auction! September 17, 2007 We are fully engrossed in Yearling Preparation for the Sales. Our young
colts are being polished and taught how to behave like adults! The good
news is that they are all accepting the vacuum cleaner. It took a little
while but now they stand quietly while we vacuum their coats. CC Stacey
will have a week off this week but will race again next Friday at Mohawk.
She finished second in her first race for us so we are encouraged by her
progress. September 10, 2007 Our 4YO mare (soon to be broodmare), CC Stacy ran again last Thursday and ended up 6th BUT 1/5 of a second off the 2nd place horse! Her last quarter was a blistering 28.0 but traffic on the turn prevented her from getting free. Always next week. Today we are videotaping our yearlings – this will be fun! September 3, 2007 We have had a week of great visitors. Following the Hall of Fame inductions (special congratulations to Jack McNiven, an ally of ours!) Mike Kimmelman, President of Blue Chip Farms and Jean Brown, Vice-President of Blue Chip Farms came to see our operation. They were wonderfully informative and shared many helpful hints in preparing our yearlings for the upcoming Sales. In particuler, they were intrigued by OK Braveheart because they stand his sire, Bettors Delight and because he is an exceptional colt. We also had the honour of a visit from David and Peter Heffering of Tara Hills Stud. We have two of the Astreos offspring here, a filly yearling (OK Bravo) and a weanling (OK Chivas) They were very complimentary about our facilities and they enjoyed meeting the foals, the broodmares and the yearlings. August 27, 2007 Exciting news - last Friday we launched our new horse syndicate operation – Northern Lights Standardbreds Inc. If you know someone who is interested in owning a partnership share in a yearling to race in 2008 at minimal cost in association with our professionals, please direct them to www.greatowners.com.
Another good piece of news - our 4YO mare - CC Stacy - qualified at Mohawk last week. We are off to the races this week. August 20, 2007 The racing world is an unending series of triumphs and disasters! Just as OK Amelia begins to perform and win, she gets hurt. She has a crack in her pastern, she will have to remain on stall rest for six weeks and will not race again until the new year – her two year old campaign is over and we will wait to see what she can do as a three year old. Meanwhile we are weaning our foals, two of them are no longer with their mothers (OK Chaos and OK Carolion) and gradually we will wean the others. We had a fantastic trip to New Brunswick where we had a chance to visit Steve Downey and see his “Downeast Stables” – wonderful hospitality and beyond belief lobster! August 13,2008 Caroline’s pet – 2YO OK Amelia – swept the field last Thursday with an exciting win at Kawartha Downs. OK Amelia, with Rick Webb in the bike, took charge rounding the bend and never looked back going down the stretch for her first career win in 1:59.3. The plan is to keep racing her at Kawartha to give her experience and then make a decision about moving her to a higher purse races at other tracks. August 6, 2007 A thrilling event for us! Our first “homebred” filly raced for us at Kawartha downs. OK Amelia, trained by Mike Wade, driven by Rick Webb, groomed by Duncan Brock and warmed up by Bill put in a fabulous performance. She ran four wide at the last turn and still finished a close second. We were delighted by her performance and look forward to an exciting season with her. July 30, 2007 Our first Oak Knoll Stables bred and owned horse has made it to the races! OK Amelia, the daughter of Aces N Sevens and Jennies Girl qualified in a fast 1:58 at Kawartha Downs on July 26th. This Thursday, August 2nd, will be exciting when she runs her maiden race at Kawartha for a purse of $5,800 against a group of 3 and 4 year olds. Rick Webb, our farm manager, is driving OK Amelia as he did for her training and qualifying races. We’ll keep you posted! July 23, 2007 We had the great pleasure of a visit from Jack McNiven of Killean Acres – he came to the farm to help us with our Yearling preparation. He is acknowledged in the industry as a master in the art of bringing young horses to the sales. He generously offered to share his wisdom, his experience and his expertise. He actually demonstrated some of the grooming techniques on OK Boromir (No Pan Intended- Double Crème) The colt loved the experience and his coat is still glowing! Jack’s guidance will be invaluable to us as we work with the horses that are destined for the Harrisburg Sale and the Forest City Yearling Sale. July 16, 2007 Our 2YO mare OK Amelia (Aces N Sevens/Jennies Girl/Village Jiffy) had her first schooling race last week at Kawartha Downs. Rick Webb, our farm manager, drove her and she handled the track like a pro. No hesitation, responded when asked and didn’t shy away from the gate. The time was 2:07 without any urging. We are looking forward to a fun summer of racing Amelia after she qualifies in 2 weeks. July 9, 2007 We now have our final broodmare/sire pregnancy lineup for the 2008 foaling season – 6 foals from Cams Card Shark, The Panderosa, Village Jolt, Camluck, Art Major and Modern Art (4 US and 2 Cdn.). Three of our mares will be barren and in fact we have put CC Stacy back in training to race for the balance of this year. We always hope for more breeding success but coming off 100% success - 7 mares with 7 foals - in 2007 perhaps the odds are catching up with us. July 2, 2007 One of our foals – OK Commander had to have surgery to repair damage to his back leg caused by a kick. (We think his mother, Double Crème may have lashed out at another mare and inadvertently caught her own foal in the line of fire.) We are fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Dr Marc Desjardins of the Milton Equine Hospital – he is a renowned Equine surgeon and he and Kelli Gilson have managed this case together. The little colt has been remarkably co-operative and his wound is healing well. He stays indoors during the day to avoid the flies and is turned out at night – he plays and bucks in the paddock so we think he is feeling better now. June 25, 2007 We are now in the final stretch of breeding – in fact we may be at the finish line! Kelli Gilson, our vet, has confirmed that out of 9 mares we have 5 mares in foal, 1 probable and 1 to be checked on Friday. It will be a great 2008 if everything goes according to plan since we would have foals from some very exciting sires - Modern Art, Camluck, Art Major, Village Jolt, The Panderosa, Mach Three and Cams Card Shark – 3 Canadian and 4 US breds. June 18, 2007 At last we have all our foals at home – Erin Kay travelled back from New York on Friday and we watched with delight as her 8 week old colt, OK Cognac, set foot on his home turf for the first time. He is a lovely, long legged little guy and bears no resemblance to his half brother, OK Braveheart (both of them are sons of Bettor’s Delight) Today we weighed all our foals, yearlings and broodmares (a monthly ritual at Oak Knoll Stables) and were entertained to discover that one of the yearlings - OK Brilliant - has increased his weight to 1000lbs and actually weighs more than one of our broodmares! He is a huge colt and looks more like a two year old than a yearling. June 11, 2007 We sold our last non-Oak Knoll Stables bred horse on Sunday. Santana Seelster, who we purchased at the Forest City Sale as a yearling in 2004, was sold in the Standardbred Canada Spring Fling mixed sale on Sunday. Santana won $35,000 for us but we felt that she was worth more as a racehorse than a broodmare. However, she brought the low end of our range - $15,000 – but a bargain for her new owner. We now only have Oak Knoll bred horses with the first crop (all the “A” babies) at the track this summer. June 4, 2007 Exciting news for us – new pregnancies to announce! Erin Kay is in foal to Art Major and will be traveling home in mid-June. In addition, Color Me Beachy is in foal to The Panderosa and our new mare Island Escape is now in foal to Modern Art. In the ”very exciting category” Caroline had a chance to drive our 2YO racehorse, OK Amelia, this week – the first of our home bred foals we have kept for ourselves. She is training well and we anticipate that she will qualify at the end of July. What a coincidence - for a few minutes we shared the track with one of the premier Canadian racehorses - Invitro is at the same training stable as Amelia!! May 28, 2007 The Two’s In Training sale is now history and OK Acrobat and OK Amazing have a new owner. Steve Mitchell from Alberta is establishing a new racing stable in the East and he purchased both geldings. While we hoped that the sales prices ($14,000 and $15,000) would be greater it is satisfying to know that they are going to a good owner and will continue to be together as an OK team. We will keep you posted on their successes during the summer. May 21, 2007 Big excitement at the farm this week - for the first time in our business we took two year olds we had raised and sent them out to qualify. Both OK Amazing (the Presidential Ball colt) and OK Acrobat (the Mach Three colt) behaved very well and finished their mile successfully. Tim Gillespie, the trainer and Rick Webb, the driver were delighted to have both these young horses perform so well. Next week they go to the Two\'s In Training sale. Meanwhile we have moved our six mares and foals into one extended paddock, they look truly beautiful out basking in the sun. The four colts and two fillies are learning to play together and we hope OK Cognac will return from New York soon to join them. We are waiting to hear that Erin Kay is in foal to Art Major before she returns to us from Blue Chip Farms. May 14, 2007 Our 2YO colts – OK Amazing and OK Acrobat – were in a schooling race on Saturday at Kawartha Downs. Both colts were very impressive! They were the only 2YO’s in the schoolers and they ran as though they were experienced racehorses – no holding back from the gate, no hesitation when asked to move out and no problem accelerating on the stretch. These colts should be standouts when they go into the 2YO sale on May 27th! May 7, 2007 You know our lives are hectic when the update is late! This is a big training week for us. We went to see OK Amelia train with Mike Wade. She looks terrific, she has grown quite extensively in the past month and has added bulk – she looks like a real race horse. Our geldings went to Kawartha Downs today – their first trip away from their home track. Both OK Acrobat and OK Amazing behaved like pros, they were settled and attentive and performed very impressively on the track. Thanks to Tim Gillespie for getting them ready for the sale on May 27th and to Rick Webb for driving OK Acrobat in the schooling work today. We are going to Woodbine on Thursday to watch Santana Seelster race – her last performance before moving to Mohawk. May 1, 2007 Last week we traveled to Blue Chip Farm in Walkill NY to see our Art Major colt out of Erin Kay and to visit with the Blue Chip people. Blue Chip is the home of Art Major and Bettors Delight and is located about 80 miles west of New York City on 600 acres of rolling land. We were treated wonderfully by the management of the farm and got to see exactly how a 1st class facility is managed. We named the colt OK Cognac and he is one great looking foal! We also had a chance to see Art Major (Erin Kay will be bred to him) and he is a magnificent looking stallion. No wonder OK Commander is also so good looking and with great presence. April 23, 2007 Twins – sort of! Despite the fact these two mares were due ten days apart, they managed to deliver on the same day. Erin Kay had a Bettor’s Delight colt, born at Blue Chip Farms, at 1.40am on April 17th. The call came into the barn as we were working with Wiggle Your Class to deliver her Art Major filly. It was an extremely difficult delivery and sincere gratitude goes out to Kelli Gilson (our vet) and Rick Webb for – literally – dragging this foal into the world. The filly is called OK Champagne, she is making remarkable progress and is turned out in the paddock every day. We have named the colt OK Cognac and will travel to Blue Chip today to see him. April 16, 2007 One more foal – 3 to go! Last Thursday Bailey Bug had a great looking Astreos colt. This one is a handful – big, strong and active. The remaining foals to arrive are sired by Art Major (Wiggle Your Class), Bettors Delight (Erin Kay) and Royal Mattjesty (Color Me Beachy). We are still projecting that these 3 will arrive by the end of April. April 9, 2007 We are anticipating three foals this week, Erin Kay is five days late and both Bailey Bug and Wiggle Your class could deliver “at any minute.” We have undertaken a big step in our feeding program. We are working with Robert Van Camp and Vernon Avery of Brooks’ feed in Port Perry. We have bought a new scale and started a monthly measuring program to track the growth of our yearlings and foals. Each animal will have an individual profile matched against the norm for an animal of that age. We can rapidly identify growth spurts, weight change or an indication for a ration adjustment. Both Robert and Vernon have great expertise in feeding and managing young horses so we are very excited about our new partnership. All our horses are fed exclusively with Kentucky Equine Research products. April 2, 2007 Sanatana Seelster continues to show good form. She had her second straight victory last Monday and is the favourite in the 5th race at Woodbine tonight. Compared to her 2YO season the Camluck filly has lengthened her stride and is responding well to her driver who has yet to touch her in the stretch. Foal watch starts again this week with foals due each week of April. Then we are finished for the year! March 26, 2007 We are back at the track! Last Monday our three year old filly, Santana Seelster raced at Woodbine. Paul MacDonnell drove her beautifully and she won by two and a half lengths!
We also visited our two year old filly – OK Amelia who is jogging with Mike Wade. She looks very fluid on the track and Mike is pleased with her progress. She has settled into his barn and is (so far!) behaving beautifully.
Meanwhile we are having fun with our three foals, they are out playing every day and growing rapidly. March 19, 2007 We have added a new feature to our website. You can now view the pedigree for any horse in our stable by highlighting the horse and then clicking on the link displayed in the picture of the horse. This will bring up a Standardbred Canada breeding and sale pedigree report showing complete details of the dam and 2nd and 3rd dams with offspring earnings. The data reflects the most current information on all the offspring, including race winnings of the previous night. March 12, 2007 Now that all our “early” foals are on the ground we are preparing for the four foals due in April. Erin Kay has moved to Blue Chip Farms where she will deliver her Bettor’s Delight foal. After she recovers, she will be bred to Art Major and then return to Oak Knoll Stables later in the summer. We are hoping to travel to Blue Chip to see the mare foal but given our record with due dates it is a bit of a trick to predict when these foals hit the ground! Meanwhile OK Chaos is making remarkable progress and he will be turned out in a paddock today. Stolen Magic will be relieved to get outside, she has been in the stall with him since Feb 21st. March 5, 2007 Quite a week! OK Chaos returned home and has shown an amazing recovery – a large colt who is bucking, kicking and running around his stall! On Thursday Double Crème had a beautiful fine boned Art Major colt (OK Commander) who is now running around his stall. Last night - Sunday night - Jennies Girl only took 5 minutes to deliver a gorgeous Island Fantasy filly (OK Carolion) who is now (6 hours later) following her mother around the barn when being relocated to another stall. All foals are in great shape and look like WINNERS! See the Foal section for the latest pictures. February 27, 2006 An intriguing week for us – one we would never have predicted. Stolen Magic delivered a stunning colt on Wednesday evening and it seemed all was well with him. However, a few hours later he developed a hernia which rapidly grew to be a life threatening situation. We planned to send him to Guelph but the storm conditions (major snowfall and very icy roads) suggested he might not survive the journey. Our vet and her colleagues at Millbrook Equine Clinic agreed to take him as an emergency procedure so at the tender age of 15 hours he underwent major surgery. The three young women vets took turns nursing him over the next four days and he is now home with us. We have named him OK Chaos! Very special thanks to Kelli, Lindsay and Kristin who pulled him through this ordeal. February 20, 2007 Our 2YO’s – OK Amazing (Presidential Ball) and OK Acrobat (Mach Three) -continue to come along nicely. When they started in November/06, Amazing took to the bike and track like a duck to water but Acrobat was a handful! Last week, our trainer Tim Gillespie reported that they were both doing 2:50 and Acrobat was on course to overtake Amazing. Both 2YO’s are being trained to qualify at the time of the 2YO In Training sale in late May. February 12, 2007 We are still waiting for Stolen Magic to foal!
During our travels in the North Island of New Zealand we drove past a stud farm and decided on the spur of the moment to drop in and talk to the owners. We had the great good fortune to meet Greg and Tina Tilden, the Studmasters at Woodlands Stud. This is one of the premier breeding operations in the southern hemisphere and where Bettor’s Delight stands. Given that we have a colt of his here (OK Braveheart) and two of our mares are carrying his foals this year it was very wonderful to see him playing in his paddock. He was due to return to Blue Chip Farm four days later so we caught him just in time. Greg and Tina were very generous and very welcoming – this little detour proved to be a highlight of our trip. February 6, 2007 We are still waiting for our first foal to be born. Stolen Magic had a PFD of January 19th for her Western Hanover foal BUT no signs of anything imminent. We contacted her previous owner and found out that she went 367 days last year before foaling, so we may have to wait until February 14th! Double Crème is due on March 3 with her Art Major foal and she has shown signs of an early foaling. We will keep you posted. January 29th 2007 We are home! After our many adventures in Australia and New Zealand we have returned to the frozen north (-25C at night for those of you Down Under and a “High” of minus 16C!!) Stolen Magic, due on January 19th has elected to wait for our return and – so far – there is no indication she plans to deliver. Before we left New Zealand, I was invited to ride with the Papakura Hunt – what an amazing experience! Four riders (luckily, one of them was the Huntsman) set off with the hounds, 16 of the dogs were “puppies in training” so it was great fun to try and get them to work with the pack. A very special Thank You to Joy Calway for making the calls to allow me to participate in this great event.
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