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Horses Education
News Regular mail © 2003-2011 Amberlea Equestrian Services, all rights reserved as protected by law. Please obtain permission to use the content, photos or graphics found on this site. |
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Amberlea Equestrian Services |
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"Training for Pleasure" |
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Station Lane, Northfield Station, Ontario |
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Amberkiera Hennessy by Cognac (by *Bask) x RL
Melissa by RL Witraz (by *Count Locust)
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Kiera is the latest addition to the AES family. Born on January 16, 2004 at 1:00 pm, she picked a very cold and windy day to arrive. |
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| In fact her dam, Follie, was out in the paddock with Hennessy and I was lucky enough to look out and notice that she was lying down in front of the round bale with her tail straight out. So out I went to bring her into the barn. Her water broke on the way! | |
| I was thrilled when Mary McBride offered me this mare to breed to Hennessy for a foal for myself. She is a beautiful mare, with huge luminous eyes, a lovely elegant neck, great bone and substance. Not to mention nice neat little ears. | |
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Follie has been an excellent producer for all her owners, producing 8 foals now - 4 fillies and 4 colts. Only one of her foals has been shown, Ibn Ibn Bee, who was twice named Top 6 Stallion in the Eastern Canadian Breeders Championships. Her 2003 colt will be shown this year and even Kiera may make it to the ring this summer! |
| Kiera is everything I wanted in this cross so far. She is personable, very typy with teeny tippy ears, lots of substance and bone, not to mention tall and leggy. I was "hoping" for a filly and born black and going grey. This is my most favorite colour in all of its stages. |
Watch for more photos! |
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January 21st...
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One week old, January 23rd...
Photos by Pat Garland |
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January 28th... finally warmed up enough to snow, what
fun!
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Kiera has a special "joi de vie" that is
wonderful to behold. She has her own personality already
and is quite the character. She refused to wear blankets
indoors when she turned 10 days old, worming her way out
of them. Insists with ears pinned and making faces for
you to back off while she piggs out on Mom's grain &
bread. We have never seen such a greedy, hungry little
girl at such a young age. She is also Miss Independent
for a filly and likes touring the yard before gracing
the barn with her presence... follow Mom... whatever
for? For a Hennessy kid, she isn't quite as
"easy" as the others, but has a charisma and
charm all her own.
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At 8 weeks of age, Kiera measures in at 46" and 255 pounds! We call her "tank" as she is built like one! I go away for 9 days and she gains more inches and another 25 pounds... growing like a weed for sure. We will likely wean her the first week of April as she is taking quite a lot out of mom and eating more than her fair share of the meals. She is getting friendlier and easier to handle with time, not quite so skittish and a lot more curious about people and those wonderful hands that have fingers to scratch her with. Needless to say we are just in love with this girl. |
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We weaned Kiera just shy of 3 months of age. She weighed practically 300 pounds and her dam was losing weight. Since about day 2, Kiera has been a real piglet and even with weaning, never went off her grain and it was quite uneventful. When it came time to put them all out again after a day or so, she refused to stay in the paddock with Amberlysa and her foal and we ended up letting Hennessy 'babysit' his kid. They get along great and there are no issues, not surprising as this isn't the first youngster that Hennessy has weaned (That is Henn's eye in the last photo.) She gets upset when I take him out for rides, but isn't totally stupid about it. She is slowly shedding out and will likely have to be body clipped in May before going to the Tulip show as she is just covered in very thick January baby fuzz. She is now leading and trotting along with her handler and has become quite friendly now that her dam has left the property. Still very much a tank and sport horse looking, yet very feminine. |
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