May 6th
Day 348
This morning at 1.30 No Nonsense gave birth to a beautiful little colt with the name Escada!

Pictures will follow....after I get some well deserved sleep!

May 3rd
Day 345
Still no baby...How long can she keep this up?

No Nonsense was dripping actual milk late in the afternoon, and she is kicking at her belly a lot, but whether she'll actually pop...I don't know.

April 28th
Day 340
Well, let's hope the ticker is right....She has been dripping milk/wax since the 17th, but no foal yet.

April 19th
Day 331
Noon has dripped a LOT of milk today, her hind legs en belly are smeared in dried milk. She was also very restless when outside her stable. I think she wants to be in her "safe place" as much as possible now. We were feeling her belly, because it looked like she was having contractions. Her belly turned rockhard every ten minutes or so, and would then relax again.

So we believe she might foal tonight! That being said, we're putting her on low alert. All signs say go, so she won't wait that much longer.

April 9th
Day 321
We're past the 320 days (the last milestone), so if the little one decides to come early, it should now be safe. Noon has been a bit restless the last few nights, but we haven't spotted any milk yet. So it should take at least a couple of more days before anything happens.

April 5th
Day 317
The cam is now online and running. You can watch No Nonsense over here: [link]

Happy mareviewing!

April 3rd
Day 315
We have a few days delay in placing the cam...Yours truly hadn't realised that a video plug does NOT fit into a USB port... So we're getting a converter-thingie today and will be set on Sunday, if all goes well.

April 1st
Day 313
Noon is showing signs of preparation for the birth! Just another week or two before THE day. Tomorrow (if it'll al work like we want it to) she will be online!

March 24th
Day 305
We're so close!!

In the meantime, please check out Zephyr's profile for Holland's Next Top Horse. He deserves the title, so please vote for him! (I know, shameless selfadvertising )

Vote for Zephyr here!

Follow the link and enter Zephyr in the "Zoek een model" box on the right. Then enter your name in the "Stem op Zephyr" box on the profile page. They'll send you an email asking to confirm your vote.

Apparently I can't link directly to Zeph's profile for some weird DA reason, so if you want the link, send me a note!

Thanks!

March 20th
Day 301
And the foalseason has officially been opened!

At 6 in the morning, the other mare named Treasure gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Empire!

March 19th
Day 300
300! 3-0-0!!

The foalcam will be up on April 2nd. I'll post the link here when it's running.

March 3rd
Day 284
Next month!!! <- expect me to use this emoticon in every single post from now on...

We plan on having the foalcam up and running on April 1st...seriously. We'll probably use marestare, but perhaps my brother can come up with a website of his own.

Noon is starting to prepare for the birth. The muscles on her butt are starting to soften. In the last days before the birth these will be like jell-o The little foal was very active last Sunday, you could see it kicking in Noon's belly. It's almost ready to come out!

One of the other mares at the stable is due next week. I'll keep you posted on that one too.

February 25th
Day 278
Only a few more days before we can say that it will be "next month", heehee!

The foal now has its complete fur and will be growing another 9 inches or so until the birth. We've started feeding Noon special mare-pregnancy-food to help her through this last part. And apparently she needs it, cause she's digging in like there's no tomorrow!

I've almost narrowed down which foalcam we'll be using. I really hope we can get the stream to work. Keep your fingers crossed!

On another note, I'm not quite sure if I've mentioned it here before, but I've put up a short clip of Joy's and mine last ride back in November. Check it out here: [link]


February 12th
Day 265

Only another 10 weeks till the birth! I'm getting really jumpy right about now. I spam the crap out of my friends with pictures and movie clips of the stallion and foals of last year and it's even getting worse now that the first foals of 2009 are being born!

Noon now officially doesn't fit her saddle anymore, so if we do ride her, it's for 20 minutes at the most...and bareback. She's so big right now, you could have family picknick on her back... I will be making another set of belly shots this weekend.

The foal itself should be about the size of a German shephard (around 25-30 inches and 80 pounds). It has al its fur now, it's just a matter of growing from here on.

We're still working on the camerathing. If it all works out, we'll have a live stream running!

January 5th
Day 225
It will be born this year!



It's a busy little thing in there, kicking around all the time. It should be about the size of of a lamb right now, weighing about 45 pounds.


November 20th
Day 181


October 22nd
Day 152
We've now felt the foal for the very first time! It's a very active little thing (about the size of a big rabbit), which doesn't always sit well with Noon. As far as I've heard, all the signs point towards the foal being a mare (the belly growing mostly sidewards, the foal being active early in the pregnancy, Noon being more aggressive to other horses, Noon getting little bumps on her legs), which we also think it will be. It's very strange, with Zeph I didn't have a clue, but with this one I've been positive from the start that it's a mare.

We'll see in about 190 days!

We've taken another belly shot at 150 days, which I will upload later. In the meantime, new photos have been made of the babydaddy Spielberg. Take a look at this gorgeous stallion:

[link]

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October 2nd
Day 132

OMG, Noon's belly is growing so fast! Just look at the difference within two weeks!



The foals that were born this year by that same stallion, are all turning out to be quite...big. On a forum with a number Spielberg-foals, the smallest one is 1.25m at 4 months. The average though is about 1.37m at 5 months. (If you consider that those mares are about 1.62m (like Noon), and the fact that horses grow until their 8th year (though they only grow a few cms between 4 and 8), those foals will probably grow to be around 1.70m).

If only this won't cause any problems for Noon at birth!

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September 4th
Day 104
We're past 100 days! The foal is now forming tiny hooves and is the size of a kitten (around 17 cm). It should weigh about 400 grams.

No Nonsense is already growing immensely, though we aren't even halfway! I feel sorry for her when I think about how she'll be at 11 months.....

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August 12th
Day 80
With 10 cm and 62 grams we are now up to squirrel size!
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July 18th
Day 50-55

The embryo is now 2,45 cm big en weighs about 31 grams.
[link]

Day 60
The foals is now about the size of a hamster. It's 6,50 cm big and weighs around 35 grams. At day 60 and the upcoming month, the foal will move around in the uterus. This is to practise the movements it will make after birth, like moving the legs, sucking and shaking the head.

[link]

(source: [link])
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June 25th

We've had the final scan this morning. She is definately pregnant!

A picture will follow soon.

In the meantime, I've created a ticker for the countdown.

10 months to go!

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June 12th

We've scanned this morning....and she's pregnant!!!

Below a picture of our to be foal!




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June 3rd

There, I warned y'all. This is a 100% equine update!

I am thinking of using one journal for those interested to keep track on the pregnancy of No Nonsense and some other horse things. But I still have to think on how to do this. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Anyways, here's how we stand with No Nonsense.

On May 17th we noticed No Nonsense getting "in heat" so to say, so we contacted the vet. He would stop by on May 19th (Joy's birthday ) to make a scan. She was scanned on that Monday morning (8 in the morning, yay) and we found that she had a big egg ready to ovulate, so we should inseminate that day.

Now, perhaps this deserves some explanation. What we do is we scan the ovaries for eggs that are 4 cm in diameter or more. Once an egg is that size, it is likely to "jump"/ovulate within 24 hours or so. The mare is scanned in the early morning, because the owner of the stallion must have the order in before 9 o'clock. Then he can send the semen through same day delivery and we can inseminate in the afternoon. The semen survives for 48 hours, so two days after the first scan, you do another scan (again, in the morning) to see if the egg has jumped or not.

So there we were again, on Wednesday morning. But the scan showed that the egg was still there, so we had to inseminate again and do another scan on Friday. But the vet was pretty sure it would be gone by then, because the egg was already over 5 cm in diameter.

On Friday, still no luck. Apparently that egg wasn't going anywhere (I sure hope that's not a warning for the personality of the foal ), so Nonsense was injected with extra hormones to make sure the egg would jump again. We also ordered a new straw of semen. In the afternoon we inseminated again (and cheered the swimmers on, of course ), with another scan planned for Sunday morning.

Yes, my week was totally shot to hell.

But, finally, the egg was gone on Sunday. The egg will take around seven days to arrive in the uterus, so next week we are going to make another scan to see if it arrived there. No Nonsense has changed a bit in attitude though, so we hope that's a sign that she is pregnant.

On June 10th we'll know for sure! I'll keep you posted.

On another equine note: My friend and I have another horses added to the collection since April. It's only for a couple of months, to train him (he's only 3), but for now we have 4 horses between the two of us, so time is a bit short these days.

But it is a lot of fun. It's a black gelding named Adonis (now named Doughnut by us), about 1.68m high. He's absolutely gorgeous and was going to be on the inspection last year, until he got into a serious accident. He was running and acting silly, when he decided to make a 180 degree turn. He fell and slammed his hip into the wall, fracturing his pelvis. After a recovery of months, he did get better. He won't be able to jump or probably do very difficult dressaging excercises (which is a shame because he is so talented), but he's still alive, and happy.

Allright, enough for now. Steph out.