We want to wish everyone a happy Mother’s Day, especially Cher, the newest mom in the Sunny Coast family. We also wanted to share the story of this amazing mare.

She came to one of our clients in 2009 with a yearling foal at her side. She had previously had a successful career as a broodmare, producing five lovely foals, and entered her second career as an adult’s barrel racer at that time. Like with Muhammad Ali’s career trajectory, she retired in 2013 but made a comeback as a kid’s barrel racing horse in 2014. She ran all the way up to the ripe old age of 23, when her retirement from racing spurred her owner to try her luck at another baby.

Since getting pregnant is difficult for a mare in her 20s, and holding onto the pregnancy even more challenging, we were all taking a shot in the dark. Dr. Francheville cultured her uterus to find it negative, bred her using artificial insemination with chilled semen on her next cycle, and lo and behold, she not only got pregnant on our first try, but got pregnant with twins. Twin pregnancy is the leading cause of spontaneous abortion in horses in the US, and we could not allow her to try to carry the twins to term due to the risk to Cher as well as the unlikelihood of the foals making it to term, so we pinched off one of the twins. Unfortunately, as is commonly the case, she lost the other twin.

Dr. Francheville short-cycled her back in and bred her on her next cycle. This time, she got pregnant again, but with a singleton, and here we are 11 months later: a 25 year old mare with a beautiful, healthy filly at her side! Breeding can be a bit of a roller coaster of emotions, but the payoff is often well worth the effort and emotional toll. This baby could not have come on a better day, especially with Dr. Francheville working through Mother’s Day. Getting to share this special mare’s joy made this Mother’s Day one to remember.

Congratulations Cher and family!

Check out a video of Cher and her adorable baby here, and Cher in action a few years ago here.