Claiborne Chronicles: Big Freeze a Cold-Hard Fact

Photos courtesy Alexa Ravit
There is one word that can be used to describe the past two weeks in central Kentucky: cold.
Painfully cold might be more appropriate. I spent more than three years in upstate New York, a notoriously chilly and dreary place during the winter, so I figured that Kentucky would feel tropical by comparison. Yet, nothing could have prepared me for the -24 degrees Fahrenheit that displayed on my car’s dashboard at 5 a.m. ET on Friday, Feb. 20. Temperatures dipped even further that morning, bottoming out at -33 degrees Fahrenheit.
DASHBOARD THERMOMETER READING -24 DEGREES

The cold-hard fact (no pun intended) of working on a farm is that bad weather is not an excuse to stay home. Whether it is 80 degrees and sunny or -33 degrees and snowing, horses have to be cared for every day. At Claiborne Farm, and any other farm, it is the job of the staff to adjust accordingly to make sure that champions past, present, and future are happy and safe.
Since my internship began, but especially over the last two weeks, one of my most frequent tasks has been channeling my creative energy to figure out ways to break thick ice. It is always important for horses to have access to water, but the need is heightened in these frigid temperatures. At all of the barns, looking for and breaking frozen buckets is a recurrent activity. I am definitely not the only person on the farm who is looking forward to ice being a distant memory.
FIRST SAMURAI COLT

BLAME COLT

Although people love to complain about the bad weather, horses tolerate it pretty well. The Thoroughbreds at Claiborne have mostly been kept in their usual routines for going outside.
Only on the coldest days were newborns turned out later in the morning and mares brought inside earlier in the afternoon. People might not be well equipped to thrive outside in sub-freezing temperatures, but horses have millions of years of evolution on their side. We do leave hay in the fields since the grass is not growing yet, but we usually find half the herd fighting over one pile of hay … when there are five.
If there is any silver lining to the piles of snow covering the ground, it is that I get to watch the foals show off their athleticism. I have seen more than 30 newborns in my four weeks at Claiborne (with many more to come), but I continue to be in awe of their ability to traverse the snowy landscape.
ARCH COLT

BROKEN VOW COLT

Every day, I observe babies, most less than 12 hours old, galloping through snow halfway up to their knees. I get exhausted from merely walking through the paddocks, but the foals frolic through them like they were bred to run in the Iditarod. Admittedly, this is not very enjoyable to watch when I’m trying to catch foals and they prance in circles around me.
FIRST DEFENCE FILLY

GHOSTZAPPER FILLY

With these two weeks behind us, we are all hopeful that Kentucky is starting to thaw. The snow is melting to mud (which, while not ideal, is still much better than ice), the horses are starting to shed their fur in clumps and some of the stallions even got baths today (March 2).
As we get through March and near spring, it seems like there is at least one new foal in the barn when I come to Claiborne each morning. With more than 100 mares still to foal, I am looking forward to many more baby faces. Here’s hoping they walk on grass before snow.