Wilde-R-Farm located in Corvallis, Montana specializing in training welsh cob ponies and offering them for sale.

Star and Stripe
2003 Welsh/TB X Geldings
Star (13.2 hands) Stripe (13.3 hands)

A story of love and triumph over almost impossible odds!!

From Gail Wilder

It was a typical June morning in Montana; sunny and still cool at 7 am. I wanted to get a jump on the irrigation so I could get 4 or 5 horses worked before the heat set in later in the afternoon. As I walked out to the northwestern hayfield I saw her. My big, beautiful mare standing near not one but two foals on the grass! Two foals, two placentas lying there waiting like a thick book open to chapter one, page one.

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My stomach lurched and I yelled to my husband in the next field. With earplugs firmly in place, he waved back. I jumped up and down, waving my arms. The funny guy, he did the same back. O.K., I can still sprint a with a little help from adrenaline, and soon the family was informed. The colts and mom were on their way to Dr. Shawn Gleason's.
I know about equine twinning. No breeder wants to experiwnce the scenario I walked into. Twins happen once in ten thousand births amoung horses and only one percent of twins make it to full term. The boys were 5 weeks early, but seemed fine enough to go home at the end of the first day. Stripe weighed 47 pounds and Star 45 pounds. I spent that first day in the stall with them at the clinic. Around 5 pm we took them home.
Luckily, we have a good barn. I took half a stall wall down between mom and boys so she could see her babes, but not step on either one, and put heat lamps up in their stall. Then came a couch, table, and chair and foam matteress for me. A sign let the many visitors know when visiting hours were. We called the bigger on Stripe and the smaller on Star because of their facial markings and because I was too tired to be creative. We put ski sweaters on the boys until they could regulate their own temperature. They looked like little Austrian Aliens. A few days later, Dr. Gleason put casts on their front legs up to the elbow in order to keep space between the carpal (knee) bones open for correct development. So began the month I like to call the "wading through the fog time." There is much I can't recall due to lack of sleep and exhaustion. I remember breaking down in tears while we had visitors on day. I also remember a friend staying until midnight several nights so that I could sleep a few more hours. I remember the television crews interviewing me at the farm and seeing us all on the news. There were a few visits to Dr. Gleason around 3 am with one or the other. They traveled on the back seat of my little car. Except one night Star kept falling onto the backseat floor, so I put him in the trunk for the rest of the way home. During the day, my daughter Leah and her friend Hannah cradled them on their laps and we would go visiting Dr. Gleason and all the drive-up windows at the banks and fast food places. The boys loved to ride in the car with the windows down and the radio on. They walked like little tin soldiers with those casts on. They got around amazingly well without bending their knees!
For the first two weeks, the twins were fed every 2 hours. At first, I would carry them into Mahina, broodmare extraordinaire, stand them up and they would nurse. After several days of this, Mahina was more than ready to leave her stall for the good grass and June weather, so out she went. To my great fortune, this mare is a copious milker. She was so easy to hand milk; I'd get a quart in no time and go back in to the boys. Star took a bottle and Stripe the bucket. At two months, feedings spaced out to four hours apart. Halleluiah! Eventually the casts became smaller splintsand the boys moved outside into a large grassy pen we set up for them. Mahina had the run of the farm and stayed right outside the pen. This mare put up with a lot; always with grace and generosity. At four months I turned the boys over to Mahina. The sight of the three of them finally running together in the pasture was a moment I'll never forget or take for granted. I left them together for the winter and weaned them from Mahina the next spring. Then the boys came in for what I call ABC school, but they had had so much handling already, it was more a formalization of what they already knew. This spring, of their three-year-old year, I seperated them from each other for training, which went very well. They are now back together and are well broke on the trail and in the arena. It would be great to keep them paired, but they will do very well on their own, too. The hard work is done; now they are ready to start their careers with someone who will appreciate them and love them. They are wonderful ponies, these Glory Boys, Star and Stripe. The miracle twins that made it through with a little help from those who believed they could.