Jessa’s Story

It was 2018 and Kelly and I had only been dating for a few months when we went to a horse auction because it was a convenient place to meet up with a lady to swap one of our horses for training in exchange for breeding her mare to Steele. Which explains how we found ourselves at a horse auction with room in the trailer heading home.

So we did what anyone in our boots would do: we walked through the sale horses and noted a sweet looking bay mare with surprisingly nice papers standing quietly in her stall and happy to receive our attention.

This was a time in our lives when paying for the fuel for this trip what a challenge, but when that sweet little bay mare entered the sale ring and the only bidders were known kill buyers… well, we knew what we had to do. We bought her for a song, charging her to my credit card.

And so, on April 9, 2018, we brought Jessa Cash Remedy home – our first broodmare.

Jessa was born March 16, 2002 and we are her fourth (and final) documented home. She had her first baby in 2007 when she was five years old. The video below is her sale video from her second home in 2014 – when she was 12 years old.

When we met Jessa, she was 16 and we knew buying a broodmare at an auction with no information on her history was a gamble – but it was a gamble we would make a million times over if we had to, because she is one special horse.

We are first generation breeders and all of our knowledge has come from our own research, asking questions of the knowledgeable professionals in our lives (our vet and reproductive specialist are top notch), and learning things the hard way.

And Jessa. Jessa has taught us so much, it’s almost laughable.

Keep in mind, not only were we inexperienced but our stallion, Steele, was a 3 year old in 2018 with one breeding season under his cinch and we were prioritizing keeping his manners intact. Jessa could not have been a better first broodmare for all of us.

Her date with Steele resulted in a pregnancy, however, it wasn’t the healthiest looking pregnancy so Jessa was put on daily medication to give us the best chance of getting her to term. Which we can only speculate, but that may be why she was at the auction in the first place – the medication is expensive and tedious to administer for an entire pregnancy.

But it all paid off and in April of 2019, Jessa gave us the most beautiful filly who we named Trisha and decided to keep for ourselves.

Also in April of 2019, Steele (our stallion), gravely injured himself, cutting our breeding plans short for the year and leaving us wondering about the fate of both him and our budding program.

So we set out to find an outside stud to breed Jessa to for a “keeper foal” and we landed on Starlight Shiner. After thousands of dollars and multiple attempts to get her to settle, we had to end our attempts with a disappointing outcome of wintering Jessa open (not pregnant).

In Spring of 2020, we restarted our efforts with Starlight Shiner with the same disappointing outcome. Steele had healed by this time so we eventually decided to try breeding Jessa to him to see what happened – she took immediately and in May of 2021 gave us a beautiful bay dun filly – that we probably should have kept.

Jessa handled her pregnancy and delivery of Holly so well, we felt very comfortable trying to AI her to Starlight Shiner – and lo and behold, she took! We settled in to anxiously await this baby, keeping a close eye on Jessa along the way.

In her last 4-6 weeks of pregnancy, her body condition started deteriorating and her edema was worse than ever.

She foaled a beautiful stud colt (Johnny Cash, her 10th foal) for us in April of 2022 and although our vet said she tore a little bit but overall looked good, she was in obvious discomfort to the point where it was a struggle for her to mother up to the colt. We knew she was telling us she was ready to retire.

She’s comfortable now, happy to be a mama to Johnny and doing her usual awesome job of it. But Johnny was her last foal.

We may pursue embryo transfer with her in the future but for now we’re just grateful she’s happy & healthy.

Jessa would rather have your attention than just about anything else, even food. She is the first horse to cross a field to come see you, and you better watch your toes because she’s going to get so close to you that she’s liable to squish them if given half a chance. She’s friendly and patient, not a mean-spirited bone in her beautiful body.

Although her timing for us was perfect, I can’t help but wish we would have known her for far longer, especially in her younger years. I bet she was a spitfire with a heart of gold!

She’s earned the right to be turned out and loved on, and that’s just what she’ll get in her retirement.

We love you, Jessa!