New Traditional Cob Stud to start at Highland Wildrides

Just as I blogged on here last month after revamping this site, in every end there lies a new beginning. When I wrote that I had no idea what it would be. When we let Gus go last week I had made my mind up that once Brook was old enough we would breed again and continue his legacy, but even last Friday I had no idea that our New Adventure lay just around the corner!

I had tried very hard to ignore photographs of a particularly lovely filly that I kept seeing on different websites. She looked so like Brook in size and shape, and was a cob filly with a very nice head ( I have a real “thing” about cobs having nice heads!), but even better than that she was tri-coloured with my fave colours - white, dun and black. I kept looking at her, and then I kept clicking onto something else as I wasn’t convinced now was the time to be buying.

But it was no use - I couldn’t resist that colouring and I had just one last look at a post and picture of her on facebook……from then on a new beginning began. I saw that she was the first foal, and to date only filly of a particularly gorgeous young Stallion I have admired over facebook for about a year or more. He is a beautiful homozygous Traditional Cob stallion called Mickey Marley. He has a fantastic head and hair to spare -which I had to admit so did the filly so I contacted her owner, and, well, you can guess what happened can’t you?! Ellie, the filly was soon ours.

I was due to collect her on the Sunday which helped so much with the grief over Gus as I had something to look forward to instead of thinking back to his demise. I was making arrangements on the Saturday night when her owner told me that she had spoken to Ellie’s breeder and owner of Mickey Marley and she had mentioned she was thinking of selling him. She wanted to get out of breeding as her young family was making it tough to run.

My heart fluttered and my stomach flipped.  I just had an opening in my herd for a stallion, I have also liked this stallion very much for a very long time. Somewhere inside a voice told me this was not the right time, but then another one shouted right back “no time like the present! What an opportunity!!”. Before I could let my RB side have its way I called about Mickey Marley to see what kind of a boy he was. If he was a difficult fella then it was out of the question. It appeared however he was a perfect Angel and no problem whatsoever, probably because his owner had never made a thing of him being a stallion and had socialised and handled him well.

The next few days were frantic with calls and emails and trying to get the time to go see him. I spoke to my father about him, he had already been admiring pictures of him. We chatted briefly about the prospect of starting a Traditional Cob stud here - well bred, well cared for and well started youngstock of that type always have homes to go to - and seconds later he shook hands on it with me as half owner of Mickey Marley if we liked what we saw when we saw it.

And we did - what a head, what markings, what hair, what a kind eye, what a temperament!! 

He is probably RBI but playful and bolder than normal due to being a stallion. We will have tons of fun with him ridden and loose - can not wait to get going at the program with him!! He’ll lap it up!

So now all I need to do is go and get a name for my stud, I’m looking into getting them both CHAPS graded,  I will also be keeping an eye out for the right kind of mare to buy in as a second broodmare - not sure yet if I want to get something sporty or traditional?….

YOU CAN FOLLOW ELLIE AND MICKEY MARLEYS PROGRESS ON PARELLI CONNECT .

This entry was posted on 14/09/2011 at 10:50 am and is filed under Horses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.