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Sunday Morning

Greetings from the absent blogger. My last entry announced the arrival of Roller Derby. At that time we were awaiting the second foal out of Nate’s other mare Chocolate Overdose. I went out early this morning to check Coco, she had foaled and much to my distress the colt was dead. He was a great big beautiful colt who was a great-grandson of Seattle Slew on his sire’s side and Secretariat on his dam’s side. We were devastated by the loss.

Mares exhibit great distress at the loss of a colt, much like what you see and hear about elephants upon the death of a family member in the herd. That is what came to mind as I observed the hoof churned soil around the silent prone body. Coco perplexed and distraught started her nervous head swaying from side to side, once in awhile making a full arching circle as we loaded the corpse into the back of a truck.

Each wished we had checked her just one more time during the night.

Comments

Hi Robin--I'll bet the sac was over his face. I always say that for everything I know about lambing, there's a dead lamb that taught it to me. I'm sorry for your bad news. Sharon

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The opinions expressed in the Western Folklife Center's Deep West online journals are those of the online journal participants and not the Western Folklife Center. The Western Folklife Center does not moderate these journals and as such does not guarantee the veracity, reliability or completeness of any information provided in the journals or in any hyperlink appearing within them.

About Robin Boies

Robin Boies
Robin Boies is the product of a northern Texas cattleman and a city-bred girl from Boulder, Colorado. As a child Boies remembers Sunday's marked by church school and the weekly sermon, followed by an afternoon of Pitch or Twenty-one with red, white, and blue poker chips stacked neatly in front of her. When it came to culture it was sublime opera in the house and Hank Williams in the green Chevy pick-up truck. Boies found herself in Steptoe Valley north of Ely, Nevada, at age seventeen. For the past 28 years Boies has lived 45 miles north of Wells, Nevada, at the Vineyard Unit of Boies Ranches with her husband Steve. There they raised three children, Teema, Nathan, and Samuel. Teema enters Gonzaga University this fall to pursue a graduate degree. Nathan is back in college when not at the ranch after a service engagement in the 101st Airborne, and Samuel graduated from high school last year and has been in New Zealand since September 2005. While tending to the needs of the ranch Boise works to understand and tell the stories of contemporary ranching culture through writing and videography.
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