he foaling season is well underway at both Kiltinan and Watership Down with a total of eighteen foals on the ground to date and a sizeable number of exciting maiden mares to note. Two homebred mares foaled in January, Shimmering (Lope De Vega) herself a winning miler at two, had a wonderful filly foal by Tweenhills’ record breaking classic winner, Kameko. Just four days later, the Ed Walker-trained, dual group winning mare, Royal Intervention (Exceed And Excel) foaled a quality chesnut colt by one of the world’s leading sires, Lope De Vega. Both have been wonderful mothers.
We were treated to a foal born on Valentine’s day, by Too Darn Hot out of the Galileo mare, Sub Rose. She has produced group performers Subway Dancer (Shamardal) and Secret Advisor (Dubawi) and a total of four individual winners. This colts’ Grandam Amazing Kirsken produced high class mare, Astonishing, who subsequently bred a quality Too Darn Hot filly foal, who sold at Tattersalls foal sale in November to Stroud Coleman Bloodstock for 270,000gns.
The five-year-old mare, Motion (Invincible Spirit) daughter of the Floor’s flagship mare, Attraction foaled a cracking first foal by the champion Frankel. The same day, a daughter of Darley’s Night Of Thunder was born, out of consistent Group performing mare, Look Around (Kingman). The Andrew Balding-trained mare was placed four times at Group level from her twelve starts, including two further wins.
This month marks the beginning of Too Darn Hot’s third season in Newmarket and he has another stellar line up of mares. The February sale saw Too Darn Hot stamp his name in the top ten list again when Moment of Silence, a mare by Slade Power was sold to Forenaughts Stud in foal to Too Darn Hot for 95,000gns. The family is sprinkled with Group performers including Darley’s Champion older European horse, Ghaiyyath and G1 winner Zhukova. We can’t wait to see the first crop of yearlings later in 2022.
It is a busy time on the studs alongside foaling, the weanlings are in for some handling, and they have also started their gro-trac reports which helps determine their growth rate and weight in comparison to averages accordingly. It’s a very useful tool when catering for individual feeding regimes.
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Photo of SHIMMERING with her filly foal by Kameko.
