Te Akau Midweek Update

David writes:

We had a great day at the trials yesterday with seven horses winning their trials plus a lot of other nice runs.  Some horses that finished third or fourth will be in the winner's circle very quickly.  A lot of them will be ready to race between the middle of December and the middle of January when there is a lot of good racing programmed.

It has been a very busy day today.  We have fertiliser trucks putting on super phosphate and lime.  We are cutting ten paddocks of haylage and we estimate that there will be about 600 big ten bale equivalents of haylage.  We have got fencers working on the farm, we have got a painter painting the new guest house that we have built plus we are mustering all of the ewes in because tomorrow we start drafting our first lamb draft of the season.

With the better weather we are also doing a lot of hill training at the farm with the horses.  We have got some very nice horses training at the farm including Alert and Grandeur who is a half-brother to Darci Brahma by O'Reilly.  This is a pretty nice three year old that has just needed a little bit of time.  Alert was a very good horse that has had soundness issues.  He ran fifth in the New Zealand Derby in his year so we are giving him a really good slow build up on the farm with a lot of hill work to try and get this very good horse back to the track.

We have also started working Brer, our very good jumper from 18 months ago.  Brer won on both days of the Grand National Carnival in 2013 and he has had soundness problems that have kept him from away from the race course.

Brer is being ridden by Bree Griffiths who has been working for us for about six months and Grandeur is being ridden by Katy Flowers.  Katy is a very experienced horse woman from England who is now living at Te Akau Stud and is engaged to Jason Smith who is our equine manager here.  Alert is being ridden by Sinead Scott.  Sinead has also been working here for about six months and she has come from Otago where she was a keen show jumper rider at Wingatui.  All three ladies are doing a great job and we have got several other younger horses that are also hill training nicely.  Sinead has two of her own horses and last week she won a big One Day Event, the Gambler's Stakes at the Waingaro/Te Akau Sports Complex.

Tonight we have very good friends and owners coming to stay with us.  They have some really nice horses, mares and foals with us that they are coming to visit.  We will have a really fun night.  Tomorrow I am having my annual lunch with two of my very best buddies Collin Jillings and Peter Grieve in Auckland which will be a lot of fun.

This weekend we have my daughter Jo and her husband Leon Hewertson and their baby Ted who is about five weeks old coming to stay at Te Akau Stud for the first time.