by Dan Rosenberg

Stallions get all the press and all the glory, but on the farm we work with many more mares than stallions. Partly because of more time spent with them and partly because of their different natures, we often have closer relationships with the mares. There are quite a few who stand out in my memory, for better or worse.

Martinetta was the best mare at Glade Valley Farms. By Martins Rullah out of Gracefield, she already had produced multiple stakes winner Rollicking and went on to produce stakes winners Gala Harry, Double Reefed, Smartie Cat, and Martie's Double.

I was pretty much in awe of her, partly because of the way she was revered by everyone on the farm. When I reported for work one morning, owner Dr. Robert Leonard met me in the barn to tell me that Martinetta had been walking the stall and dripping milk all night.

I was to leave her in the stall, keep a very close eye on her, and call him the moment she did anything, so I turned out the other mares and started cleaning stalls. I stopped every ten minutes and walk down to check on her, but each time, she was standing quietly eating hay.

Ten minutes later, there was a foal in the stall, fully delivered. I was trembling when I called Doc, certain he would never believe I had been checking her so closely. He did not fire me, but to this day I don't know if he believed me. It was a good lesson for me, though, because I know that, while rare, a mare can foal that quickly.

Shuvee

When I came to Kentucky and started working at Clovelly Farm, I was walking through the barn looking at the names on the stall cards to familiarize myself with them when I came across Shuvee.

I was stunned! I had been reading about Shuvee for the past several years. She not only had won the filly Triple Tiara and twice had been champion older female, but she also had twice defeated males in the Jockey Club Gold Cup.

Here I was, in the presence of one of the greatest fillies who ever lived. To have her in my barn, to be cleaning up after her and grooming her was unbelievable. But I was astonished to see that she was a very plain and ordinary mare.

I thought great racehorses had perfect, classic conformation; I thought they should look different. And here she was. If not for the name on her halter, you would have walked right by and never given her a second look.

Unlike many great racemares who are tough, I remember Shuvee as a kind mare, easy to work with. She produced her first foal that year, a Tom Rolfe colt named Tom Swift who was a minor stakes winner. But on the whole, Shuvee's career as a broodmare largely was disappointing.

Calumet mares

Several mares at Calumet Farm are memorable to me. Twosy was already 36 years old when I came to Calumet. Long since retired, she was by the great Bull Lea and had won more than $100,000 in a time when that was an enormous amount for a filly to win. She also was a full sister to both Two Lea (major stakes winner and dam of Tim Tam and On-and-On) and Miz Clementine (major stakes winner and grandam of Best Turn).

With a shaggy coat and sunken eyes, Twosy was the sweetest mare I have ever known. Although retired, she received the same care as all the other mares. She was always at the gate ready to come in, glad to have her oats, and glad to go out again. It was a sad privilege to bury her in the Calumet cemetery with the other great horses of her generation that had preceded her.

Twosy, Two Lea, and Miz Clementine all had poor reproductive success. Miz Clementine's daughter Sweet Clementine, whose first foal was stakes winner Best Turn, produced only three more foals, all fillies. She was barren at least ten years, and her 1974 foal died.

I kept asking Calumet Farm Manager Melvin Cinnamon why he did not retire her. He said he wanted to get a filly, which was all she produced after Best Turn. One was Honeysuckle Vine, the dam of Grade 3 winner Miss Tokyo and the producer of a fairly prolific family. Sweet Clementine's other two fillies were Reminder and Reason Enough, who produced only one foal each. If that doesn't prove that infertility runs in families, I don't know what does.

Sweet Tooth

I never will forget Sweet Tooth. When I came to Calumet, she had just foaled a Raise a Native colt who later would be named Alydar. She had retained her placenta and foundered, so Alydar was raised on a nurse mare.

But Sweet Tooth recovered well and, at least as long as I was around her, she never had trouble with her feet again. Sweet Tooth was the worst cribber I have ever seen. She cribbed constantly. Calumet had huge fields, some of them 100 acres. Sweet Tooth was never with the other mares, but finding her was easy. All you had to do was follow the fence.

Her 1977 Key to the Mint filly, Sugar and Spice, was cribbing long before she was weaned. She was the only foal I have ever seen cribbing at that age. So much for those who won't have a cribber. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for lop-eared mares. I think they are beautiful and smart and kind. Sweet Tooth was all of that and more.

Another Calumet mare I can never forget is Fair and Bold. She was a kicking machine. You could not get near her without her pinning her ears and blasting at you with both barrels. And when she had a foal, she was even worse.

To catch her in the morning, you had to stand at her stall door with a cup of oats in your hand and the door open just a crack. It would take 20 minutes of her threatening you with her back side turned to the door and ears pinned before she would slowly begin to come around and finally take a mouthful of oats and allow you to snap on a shank. This went on every single day. One day she kicked her groom hard enough that the stall door went flying up from the rollers and he came flying out under it with two broken arms.

The stalls at Calumet all had ceilings and hay racks in the corner. Regularly, I would go through each barn stall by stall checking the contents of the hay racks to make sure old, moldy hay had not been left in them.

I was doing this one day, going from stall to stall with my mind preoccupied with other things, when I found myself in the corner of Fair and Bold's stall. Her ears were pinned, her rear end was pointed toward me, and her hind feet were dancing. I have never been more scared in my life, and I have never moved so slowly in my life as I melted against the stall wall and talked to her quietly. Slowly, very slowly, I slid around to the door while staring at her hindquarters and made my escape.

NEXT: More memorable mares and one fine teaser.

Dan Rosenberg, owner of Rosenberg Thoroughbred Consulting, is a consultant to "Farm Management News" 
and a regular columnist