If you screw up the timing and your horse is born December 31? Bad luck. The next day, your horse is considered a yearling. And indeed, since the understanding of the effect of this kind of seasonal jet lag took hold in the s, the real birthdays of Kentucky Derby winner and especially of Triple Crown winners have fallen earlier and earlier in the year. But keeping all your mares in specifically lit barns has downsides.
Breeders pay higher electricity bills, sure, but many horses do better in pastures where they can walk and graze freely; confined to stalls, they can develop health issues and behavioral problems. The headpiece straps on like a fly mask and has a cup under one eye. Once the mask is activated, a short wavelength blue light in that cup lights up automatically each night.
Binge-watch Game of Thrones or fire off a few emails before tucking in and your brains dials down melatonin. Does that mean there are a lot of sleep-deprived mares stumbling all over Kentucky? Not really. The otherworldly effect of glowing barns is not totally lost, however. Stuart Brown, a vet and racehorse breeding consultant in Kentucky, was walking his dogs one night when he saw blue lights bobbing in the dark. Police lights on the public road behind his property? Nah, just cyborg horses: Brown had forgotten that he had put Equilume masks on his four broodmares.
Gamblers don't seem to care much about the horse hacking. So why do breeders spend so much time and money manipulating exactly when horses have their babies?
A 1-day-old 1-year-old won't have as much training and maturity and therefore won't compete as well against older horses that are considered the same age. As a result, horse buyers tend to shy away from horses born late in the year, which in turn means that horse breeders do everything they can to ensure their foals are born in the first half of the year. This has led to interventions like drugs and the use of artificial light to keep the reins tight over Thoroughbred reproduction.
This is pretty typical of the relationship with humans and Thoroughbred horses. Officials make a rule and the breed is adjusted to get the most benefit from it. It's nothing new; humans have had a hand in the reproduction of the Thoroughbred breed since its beginning, creating it through selective breeding in England just years ago.
In just three short centuries, the Thoroughbreds have become one of the most celebrated breeds of any animal, and the sport of modern horse racing has evolved symbiotically with it.
This has been both beneficial and costly for the Thoroughbred breed. While these horses love to race, are literally born for it, the centuries of selective breeding for faster, lighter horses has often led to tragedy on the race track.
In this article we'll look at this storied and beautiful breed and how humans have shaped it, racing Thoroughbreds and the controversy around how the breed has been handled in recent years. Sign up for our Newsletter! He retired from that role in after developing arthritis, and now visits primary and secondary schools around Victoria with the program, Subzero Goes To School. He would have been really well looked after, as all thoroughbreds are," Mr Nolan said.
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