Hammerdown Farm

05/09/2026

Sadie (aka Silent Saturday aka Sadie Mae) Such a pretty girl - and check out that motor!!! 💜💜💜

04/22/2026

Happy 3rd birthday to Sadie aka Silent Saturday 💜💜💜

04/22/2026

Happy 3rd birthday to Sadie aka Silent Saturday 💜💜💜

04/21/2026

Happy 19th birthday to Zoey aka “Perfect Suspect” Broodmare extraordinaire - has given us four lovely foals over the years - two thoroughbreds and two warmbloods - and then became a nursemare last year for a filly in need 💜💜💜💜 And that’s after competing at the retired racehorse project in Kentucky, and also at the Royal Winter Fair for a few years too!!! She’s a rockstar!!! Hard to believe she’s 19 years old now 😘

04/18/2026

The story of Tough as Flint is now in a podcast - check it out here - also Hammerdown Farm is now using this Stallion App - it is a great addition where we can keep all of our mare details in one place :)

Here is the link to this podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/tillys-story-an-unexplained-abortion-with-breeder/id1883545015?i=1000762147203

New Podcast Episode!

Tilly's Story: An Unexplained Abortion

In this episode, we speak with Candice Sirianni about a traumatic experience involving her newly acquired mare, Tilly. Abortion in mares is a difficult topic, but it’s an important part of breeding and one that deserves open discussion—so we’re talking about it.

Candice Sirianni works with a variety of horse breeds at Hammerdown Farm.

Check them out at https://hammerdownfarm.com and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hammerdownfarm

This podcast is brought to you by Stallion App, breeding software designed for on-farm use to help you stay on top of every stage of the breeding process—from managing mare populations to tracking breedings, stallion collections, and foal watch. Stallion App is free for small breeders with fewer than three mares and is affordably priced for larger operations.

Visit www.stallion-app.com, and use code SPRING26 to receive 50% off your annual subscription. You can also follow us on Facebook to learn more: https://www.facebook.com/StallionApp

04/16/2026

(Time for a much happier post now!)

This is a shout out to a good friend, who also knows a thing or two about thoroughbred pedigrees and bloodlines and all 😉 , who has been helping us make more informed decisions on our thoroughbred breeding aspirations.

Ericka Rusnak helped us decide to take the plunge on purchasing Tough as Flint (aka Tilly) through the CTHS winter mixed sale last November. Sadly, none of us knew what the outcome of that was going to be, but that is the way it is with horses. Every day is a gamble with them. Regardless, this mare was a great buy at the time, with a really nice pedigree 🙂 And for that we will always be so thankful that we had the opportunity ❤

And here we are again now, with another fantastic filly, Silent Saturday (aka Sadie) much in part to Ericka's "SNAP HER UP" message when I asked what she thought about her LOL ❤ ❤ ❤ Because of that, we are now blessed with another pedigree-heavy gem in the barn ❤

That whole conversation between myself and Ericka the day this mare was listed on Southern Belle Thoroughbreds still makes me laugh literally out loud!! 😃 LOL

Thank you again Ericka Rusnak for everything - we really do appreciate all your help, suggestions, guidance, and friendship ❤

04/16/2026

The beginning of 2026 hasn't been overly kind....

(Warning, long read - sharing the full story here on our Hammerdown Farm page even though much of this has already been shared in bits and pieces on my personal page)

Early January 7th, around 5am I heard a bang - the sound of a horse hitting a wall. I grabbed my phone to check the cameras and make sure no one was cast, and that is when I saw it. Tilly had aborted her foal We ran out, she was up, placenta was hanging out and the lifeless body of an 8 month old c**t was lying in the middle of her stall. I went back on the cameras and she got uncomfortable about 3am - was up and down a lot, much like a colic. She actually aborted him just 15 min before I woke up. We spent the day trying to get the placenta out (praying it would come out in one piece). Finally at the end of the day, success. We started Tilly on antibiotics, started temperature checks twice a day and also monitored her hooves for any heat. We also took the fetus, placenta, etc to the vet hospital for a necropsy, and I cancelled my upcoming farrier appointment so that we could make sure not to spread anything, just in case it was EHV. Tilly had been vaccinated for it, and was actually due the coming weekend for her next shot. but better to be safe than sorry, especially for anyone with pregnant mares at home (which my farrier has).

We get through almost a full week, no spiking temps, no hot feet, Tilly is still eating, everything seems okay. The necropsy results come in - Leptospirosis. HOWEVER, it is the Hardjo strain - not a common strain in horses, and the main host is cattle. Cattle, sheep, and goats. This strain does not come from the usual hosts; raccoons, skunks, rats, mice, etc. So how did we end up with this strain? I don't have any of those animals here. And where Tilly came from, I don't believe they had any cattle or sheep, however there was a goat. But lots of people have cattle and horses together, and also so many horse farms have goats wondering around.... so how did this happen to her? As we continued to scratch our heads over the results, we pulled blood and did urine tests on both Tilly and Moon (because Moon is turned out with Tilly and now there is the concern of which mare is shedding it, and of course it is also contagious when they are actively shedding through the urine). And then I notice Tilly's temperature starts to rise a bit. Remember, she was already on antibiotics.

My vet comes out, we do a full ultrasound inside and she looks great. Cervix is closed, everything looks normal, we do a flush and everything is coming out nice and clear. So we start another antibiotic, now for the presumed Lepto. Because if her fetus had it, she must have it.... right?

Wednesday, so exactly a week after aborting, Tilly's temperature starts to get higher still. By Thursday night she has a temp of 104.3 - she is still eating kind of, and drinking, and acting normal, but very quiet. However, all of a sudden she has a huge back leg - like cellulitis. It is also hot and painful. We assume this is all from the Lepto, as she must have it in order for the fetus to have had it. We weren't thinking anything else at this point, but just a very sick mare with Lepto. Friday morning the temp is 103.5, and same around Friday lunch time. Vet is back and says all the tests are pointing to a bacterial sickness versus a viral sickness, so we stay on the same path.

Friday at 4:15pm Tilly collapses in her stall. Vet is on his way back. I take her temp and now it is 98.6 - so did the fever break, or is she now in shock? I go back on the cameras and find that before she went down, she was doing slow circles to the left in her stall. Not eating. She did stop and have some water a few times during the day. When she first went down she went head first, with her front end on the ground, and her butt in the air, and stayed that way for almost three minutes. In fact at one point she almost did a head stand as her butt started to fall forward. It was horrible to watch. She was able to get to her feet briefly and we were able to kind of pin her to the wall, but that didn't last long and down she went again. We put in an IV in and started fluids. As well as more meds, banamine, steroids, etc. Hoping that maybe the Lepto is just really kicking her butt and she just needs some time to fight it. (I also hadn't watched the camera replay fully at that time, so I didn't realize things like how she went down face first and had no control, until after the fact).

We spent the night administering fluids, flipping her to her other side when we could, keeping her covered in blankets and when she would sit sternal, we'd shove bags of shavings against her to try and keep her that way.

Saturday morning I reached out to a local rescue and asked if we could borrow their sling / horse lift. The rescue was truly wonderful - even met us in town with the sling. Thank you thank you thank you At this point I am now thinking this is not just Lepto, and we are dealing with something else - something else like EHV / EHM. People offered to come help but I said they best not, as we don't know what this is. And it could be contagious.

Bless my vet - he and his girlfriend came out and we spent pretty much all of Saturday trying to save Tilly. We worked hard to get her into this sling, and get the sling hung in the stall. It was not an easy feat at all, and many times quite dangerous. Sadly, after she had been down for 21 hours, and our sling situation was not working as well as we had truly hoped, we made the decision to let her go. I am still struggling so hard with this decision, even today, months later - I feel like I should have given her more time. Maybe she could have come around. But she was also battered and bruised herself, eyes swollen etc from trying to rise and falling into the walls, it was so dreadful, not something I'd wish on my worst enemy. And all of it - all of it sure sounds a lot like EVH/EHM!

We made arrangements to get Tilly to the vet hospital for a necropsy. We NEEDED to know what happened, and what went wrong. How compromised are the rest of our horses now? We need to know what demon we are fighting here.

First result we receive - urine samples come back as negative for Lepto on both mares. Wait, what? How is Tilly not actively shedding Lepto, but her foal was aborted due to it? So many questions, and not enough answers.....

The Necropsy took a LONG time as they were testing everything they could. In fact they even reached out to other labs for different testing, in the hopes they could find an answer. Her brain showed signs of EHV/EHM, or even similar to rabies, however all of that was negative.

Here is the list of their findings:

1. Meningoencephalomyelitis
2. Pulmonary edema with perivascular inflammation
3. Interstitial nephritis

Essentially, they know what happened, but they don’t know the “why”.

But it looks like not knowing the “why” when it comes to Meningoencephalomyelitis is actually common.

At least my vet is saying we really did everything we could have, and even if I had gotten her to a hospital, the mortality rate is quite high and we likely would have still had the same outcome
I found an article that studied Meningoencephalomyelitis in 22 horses, and the mortality rate was 96.4% :(

We are still all very confused about where Lepto would fit in to all of this - since that is supposedly what caused her foal to abort just 10 days before we lost her. Yet, Tilly was testing negative for Lepto herself.

We are still so devastated by the loss of this lovely mare - she surely didn’t deserve this :(

So on Saturday January 17th we had to say goodbye to a lovely 5 year old mare that was supposed to have her whole life ahead of her. A mare that we had had here just 7 weeks in total. She aborted at 5 and a half weeks of being here (so before anyone decides to get all preachy about quarantine, she would have already been out of quarantine at that time). And then a week and a half after that, she is gone herself :(

Poor Tilly didn't deserve to die like this. I am still not over it. Not sure we could have stopped the end result, but of course we were all led down the bacterial Lepto path..... and were treating as such.....

Anyway, life really has a way of kicking you in the face sometimes. We were so excited to add this lovely mare to our herd, a lovely mare with a great pedigree - we thought wow we are finally able to have some nice blood and step up our game. And that all came crashing to a horrible demise. Losing the foal was one thing, and it sucked and it stung, but that is sometimes just how it goes. At least we still had Tilly. She was such a lovely and sweet mare. And good looking too. Well put together. I was already looking forward to hearing what Otto said about her when I would take her to the Westfalen inspection.

We tried so hard - we tried so hard to have a different outcome.
I am so sorry Tough as Flint. You didn't deserve this. We tried, we really did :(

Tough as Flint RIP March 20 2020 - January 17 2026

I just feel so numb. We have lost mares before. And we have lost foals before. We have had them die, and we have had to euthanize them. For whatever reason, this one has really affected me She wasn't here very long, but that doesn't matter. And I hope she knows that she meant so much to us. I would have done anything in my power to have a different outcome. To still have her here with us now.

RIP Tough as Flint

You’ll always hold a special place in our hearts

04/09/2026

By far the most frequently request for help in my FB group is managing weight for senior horses.

I was going to end this article with a caveat but I thought that I would put it here because two thirds of you will get about half way through and start objecting in the comments, so here goes...

There is not a doubt in my mind that some of you have achieved success using all kinds of concoctions, magic soup and stupendous supplements. Good for you! Great in fact!! I'm all about a happy and healthy horse however you do it.

What follows is the advice I received from equine PhDs along with seven years and hundreds of senior horses that have consistently thrived and benefited from the advice contained herein.

So if what you are doing works, great!! It may not work on every horse every time. This program probably will.

If, on the other hand, you have been struggling with maintaining weight on a senior horse read on as this may have your answers.

What we must understand as owners of senior horses is that horses were never designed to be healthy for as long as we are now able to keep them healthy. Because of this horses over the age of 20 offer some additional challenges to owners.

The horse evolved as part of the food chain by converting grass into calories for carnivores. They reach reproductive maturity early and produce one foal per year to keep the buffet full for predators.

One common challenge with older horses is maintaining weight. Your easy keeper turns 27 and suddenly they aren't so easy to keep anymore.

In my experience there are three reasons for this happening in older horses...

Teeth, PPID and something worse, whatever it turns out to be.

The advice I offer is always the same, test for PPID (Cushing's) even if they are not overtly symptomatic because subtle weight loss is a symptom.

Next is to switch to a complete senior feed because it is highly likely that their teeth are expiring.

"When was the last time her teeth were floated and what did the dentist say?"

"About five months ago and the dentist said that her teeth are pretty good FOR HER AGE". "FOR HER AGE" is key here because it may mean anything from not bad to not great.

Molars play a critical role in equine nutrition because they grind the forage into tiny particles that are easily processed to extract nutrients and volatile fatty acids. The less thoroughly forage is ground the less nutritious it is.

If the horse is quidding balls of hay there's obviously a problem but simply because the horse is successfully swallowing its forage is no guarantee that it is being fully processed.

My 33 year old, Skippy has a full set of teeth. Not missing a molar. Eats gobs and gobs of hay and grass. Three years ago she began to shed a little weight. Nothing alarming but she dropped a full body condition score.

I introduced a complete feed to her diet and she immediately recovered her weight.

Other signs of poor dentition in older horses are Free F***l Water Syndrome, loose manure and lots of shreds of forage in their manure.

Just like us, horses experience degradation in their digestive system only it's worse because it is 120 feet long and does quite a bit of heavy lifting because processing forage into useful energy is not terribly easy.

My solution is always the introduction of a COMPLETE senior feed.

Industry terminology and definition of feeds can be confusing but a COMPLETE feed is a high fiber, low-ish fat feed designed to REPLACE SOME OR ALL FORAGE IN THE HORSES DIET.

Yes, complete feeds are purpose built to replace all the fiber a horse needs to be happy and healthy.

I find people frustrated because they are feeding soaked forage cubes or pellet as well as beet pulp, rice bran, vegetable oil, old gnus and turmeric yet the horse does not gain weight.

The reason is very simple, I stated it earlier but it's worth repeating...just because the horse swallows the forage is not a guarantee that they can process it.

A premium senior feed will contain a fiber source that has been preprocessed to ensure that the horse will receive the maximum nutritional benefits from the feed.

The conversion of fiber in most senior feeds means that a horse will do just fine on 1% of its bodyweight in feed. This is best spread out over three or more meals if possible but two will work.

It's always the same pushback.

"Isn't that too much grain?"

No, it's not grain, it's feed and it's feed designed specifically to replace forage.

"What about the four hour rule? How can my horse exist on two meals a day?"

Well, if the horse is able to successfully quid hay and is not at risk for choke let gramma chew her tabbakey. This will help with boredom and anxiety along with promoting the production of saliva which is the key to buffering stomach acid.

If the horse is a choke risk try spreading out feedings into more frequent meals.

Listen, the horse is old and many times we are called upon to make choices that may not be the "best" but are better than the alternative.

The other mistake I see made with older horses is loading them down with fat for weight gain.

Young, healthy horses are not great at processing fat for weight gain, they will adapt if they are in consistent work but horses have not evolved to process large volumes of concentrated fat.

Old horses struggle even more with it. A good source of highly digestible and fermentable fiber will benefit a senior horse much more than two cups of vegetable oil.

This leads me to my final observation, it is important to find a true COMPLETE FEED. Some clues on the feed tag are fat no higher than 8% and fiber 18% or higher. If the selenium is 0.3 PPM it's probably a complete feed.

This is tricky because so pretty big feed lines tout their PERFORMANCE senior feeds as COMPLETE but they aren't. Many are too high in fat and too low in fiber.

So there you have it.

Hug your seniors!!

04/08/2026

This time it was Zoey who moved the camera - I guess she wanted me to see that yes she is drinking water like a good girl 😆 Also, for anyone wondering, the board in the water trough is for the cats, or any other animal that might fall in.