Silver Fern Rangiola and her adopted mom Cara Mira handled by Michael Bragdell at the 2019 IAR Oldenburg inspection at Hilltop Farm, where the filly had the top score. Credit; Jim Barnes.
Sometimes, our best horses come to us from unusual places. For Mary Ann Luke of Earleville, MD, fate intervened at many points along the way to bring her a very special mare that would produce three premium foals.
Back in 2001, while scanning the Internet Luke came across a site called Foalquest. To produce pregnant mare urine (PMU) for use in hormone replacement therapy drugs, mares are repeatedly bred and foals taken from them at an early age. The foals that are a byproduct of the process generally end up at auction where there is a good chance they will be purchased for slaughter. At that time, Foalquest was encouraging farmers to breed better foals so that more would have a better chance of selling to a private buyer instead of the slaughterhouse. They also were arranging adoptions of foals before they went to auction.
Luke saw one foal pictured on a list of foals for adoption that piqued her interest.
“I came across Aurora’s photo. For some reason I never happened to have a gray before, and I thought this one was kind of cute,” she said.
At the time, Luke was not interested in adopting a foal. She was planning to breed her mare, and even had a vet check scheduled for the next day, but through some error, the vet never arrived for the appointment.
“That made me think, maybe I’m supposed to adopt this foal instead of breeding this mare, and that’s what I did,” Luke said.
All Luke knew about the foal’s background was that her sire was a Percheron. The photo online showed only a portion of the dam’s hip. She was black and looked like she was probably a Quarter Horse.
Odd connections continued to happen. Adopted foals were shipped from Alberta to various drop-off points across the United States. Organizing the shipping took time, but while she was waiting Luke saw photos of the foal and took time to think about a name.
“My old show horse, his name was Northern Prince. She’s from Canada, she’s a filly, maybe I’ll name her Aurora, but I won’t really know until she gets here,” Luke remembered.
After picking up the filly in Annapolis, they headed for the Fair Hill area, where Luke lived at the time, and the name took on meaning. “We’re just about home and they’re talking on the radio about how you’re going to be able to see the northern lights that night,” she said.
Following the theme of light, Lumineir became Aurora’s show name. “I didn’t really expect much out of her, just to have a pleasure horse,” Luke said. “I took her and got her inspected and registered as American Warmblood as a 2-year-old.”
Aurora went on to fill many roles for Luke. “I love draft crosses as pleasure horses. She was a lovely mare, great character, the type you trust to do anything with anybody. She was better at dressage than jumping - she liked jumping, but she was heavy,” she said. “She would do pretty much any venue you wanted to do.”
Luke purchased Silver Fern Farm in Earleville in 2012, where she trains and teaches hunters, jumping, eventing, and dressage. Soon she began thinking of breeding Aurora. She had worked at Hilltop Farm while in college and had always wanted to breed to their stallion Riverman.
“I’d always loved Riverman since he was imported. Always in the back of my head I thought I’d like to breed to him, but I wouldn’t do it ‘till I had my own place.” Luke said. “I hemmed and hawed about it because she’s an undocumented mare.” Luke intended to keep the foal and hoped she could get into the ISR Oldenberg registry. “Providing the mare passed the mare inspection, you can get the foal registered.”
Aurora was inspected with her first foal at her side. Her scores put her in the middle of the pack for her inspection, with better scores than some of the warmbloods, and no score under a 6.
Breeding to a draft cross with unknown parentage is not something Luke would recommend. “The educated guess worked out really well, but I would not suggest it to most people,” she said. “I figured (the foal) would be suitable for something, I wanted to increase her jump and add a refining stallion.”
Bred three times to Riverman, Aurora produced SF Rama in 2015, and Premium foal Silver Fern Rakaia in 2017.
For the first foal, Luke stayed with the theme of light for a name. Her husband is from New Zealand, so she chose the name Rama, the Maori word for light, which also used the initial R for Riverman.
Tragedy Strikes
Aurora’s third filly was to be her last. Silver Fern Rangiora, known at the farm as Ora, was born April 1, 2019. Aurora died suddenly three months later with an advanced torsion.
“It was super quick. The mare’s never been lame, never been sick, she was 18,” Luke recalls. “I saw her run out of the shed, throw herself on the ground and roll. She was thrashing herself on the ground, I couldn’t keep her up. It was just so painful she wouldn’t stay up.
“There was also a giant lightning storm which was kind of poetic.”
Oldenberg mare Cara Mia had been acting as an auntie to Ora since her birth. After Aurora’s death, even though she had not had a foal this year, within three days her bag filled and she took over nursing the filly as a foster mother, “Cara stepped in on her own accord. There was nothing chemical about it,” Luke said. “The filly was super depressed. Even though she had a new mother, she was not herself for a long time.”
Luke worried that Ora’s attitude would affect her performance at the upcoming Oldenberg inspection, but the filly responded well when she went in the ring.
“One of those characteristics (Aurora’s foals) all share, when they get in the ring they act like River. They’re all showoffs,” Luke said.
As it turned out, Ora ended the day as Filly Champion, with a score that beat all of the colts.
Even with their high scores, none of Aurora’s three fillies can move up in the registry. “Their scores are based on their own worth, but they can only be in the bottom mare book. You can never point up because of a lack of blood. They can never be registered Oldenberg, they can only be ISR Oldenberg.” Luke explained.
Looking toward the future, Silver Fern Rakaia is sold to an event rider who may target her for the Young Event Horses Championships. Luke plans to keep both Rama and Ora and is taking her time with them.
Luke admits that taking a chance on a PMU foal was a risk, and the results she got were totally unexpected. “Three foals, all premium quality out of a PMU foal, that doesn’t make sense,” she said.