Spring a welcome visitor

The end of the foaling season is nearly upon us, with just one mare left to foal at Granham Farm.

It’s been a long winter but we have some very special foals on the ground and it’s great to see them becoming bolder as they strengthen and become more independent. Now all we need is some nice warm spring weather – and also, dare I say it, some rain to help the grass grow.

We’ve both had plenty to do on the farm and the horsebox has clocked up plenty of miles with Jenny at the wheel taking mares for cover – usually in the wee small hours of the morning – all over the country.

I managed a one-day trip to the Guineas Sale on Friday to help William buy a breeze-up horse for our longstanding client Chris Van Hoorn. His new recruit is a beautiful daughter of top American turf sire Kitten’s Joy (pictured right), who has gone into training with Dennis Coakley. We were also pleased to see Chris’s colours carried to victory recently aboard Regicide, whom we bought for him as a yearling and is trained by James Fanshawe.

Jenny and Rachael made it to the 1,000 Guineas on Sunday, having kindly been invited as guests of Tweenhills. They blamed the cold weather on the fact that they both had to make a purchase at the cashmere stand at the racecourse!

We’re hoping we’ll have a few more days at the races in the coming months as our filly Amenta has just gone back into training with Roger Charlton. She had just one promising run last year at two so we’re looking forward to seeing what she can do this season.

One other horse we’ll be keeping an eye out for is Glorious Journey, the Dubawi colt bred by Philippa Cooper and sold though Norris Bloodstock to be joint-top of October Book 1 at 2.6 million gns. He received a favourable mention in the Charlie Appleby stable tour recently, which was music to our ears.

Very soon we’ll be welcoming representatives from the sales companies to assess the yearlings and decide which sale they will be entered for. Once again we are planning to have a select draft of yearlings for our clients at each of the major British sales.