Herd Information - 1dr Acres Farm

We keep 20-25 broodmares in a herd on pasture during the growing season, with their foals and a stallion.

We have weanling Fjords available every year. All foals will be ready to go to new homes at 6 months old and will be trained to be easily caught in pasture, led, stand tied quietly, lift feet, load in a trailer, enjoy grooming of all body parts, mane trimming, burdock removal, and overall love human attention. They are microchipped, are fully registered with NFHR, UTD on cares, and I pay for and complete NFHR transfers to new owners. I don’t restrict breeding rights on the weanlings we sell, and many have become very prolific additions to herds around the country. They learn excellent horse social skills in their first 6 months of life in a herd here, are handled daily since birth, and many have transitioned into a stall/turnout system in their new home without issues. A 25% deposit and signed contract holds them until they are ready to be transported. Please inquire for any available weanling in the list below.

View Available Fjords

We typically sell out of weanlings each year, so we don’t have yearlings or older horses available very often. Occasionally, we retire broodmares, with lots of useful, healthy life left to share with new owners. To my knowledge, none of the Fjords we’ve produced have developed cushings, in our herd or in other herds, and I think that is due to the natural, organic life they live here. We also don’t have frequent EMS, founder, colic, hypersensitivity, etc. that has been reported in Fjords that are managed differently than our herd is managed. Since our foals are reared on green, growing pasture for their first 4-6 months of life, and their dams are consuming the same when they are in utero, they receive natural vitamins E and A at the levels that wild horses are accustomed to consuming, so the synthetic versions of fat soluble vitamins aren’t as large a component of their bodies as horses raised on stored forages with supplements filling the gaps of a natural diet.

Our foals are handled daily from birth in the herd on pasture and thus see humans as part of their herd from the beginning.

Herd life. Safe sleeping, bellies full of natural, diverse, living forages, optimal conditions for growing foals and happy mares.

Stallions

We typically manage 4-6 stallions on our farm, for genetic diversity and to always be able to have a stallion we know first-hand for producing registered offspring in the NFHR, where inbreeding rules disallow any repeated horse in the first 3 levels of the pedigree (parents, grandparents, great-grandparents). We value the quality of life of our stallions, so we manage them as if they were any other horse; they live in herds, interact freely with other horses, pasture breed their mares, play with the foals each year, have free-choice food, live in bachelor herds when not with the mare herd, receive training to ride and drive, and can be handled easily without chains or rope halters. We do not offer outside stud service but produce breeding-quality colts annually and are happy to mentor the buyers of our colts in stallion rearing and management. Good-tempered Fjord colts are a breeze to raise and use for breeding, driving, riding, draft, pony parties, therapy, etc. We ride and drive our stallions once they’ve had their 30 days of each type of training. I don’t enjoy the show ring, so our personal breeding stock aren’t out competing, but many of the Fjords we’ve owned or produced have been great show horses for their owners. Many have also been great therapy horses, trail horses, breeding stock, and general pleasure horses.

I’m working on making pages for each stallion. Those with links below give you some insight into those boys.

1dr Mjolnir

Mares

We tend to keep 20-25 broodmares, which is what our small, adaptively-managed grazing system on our farm can sustainably support without needing supplemental feeding during the growing season (May 15-October 1). Our mares graze fresh and diverse forages 24-7 in the growing season, give birth to their foals on pasture in the herd, and are bred in the herd by the stallion of our choosing. All of our mares receive the same baby basics training that I give to all of the foals we sell, plus they get trained to drive around 1.5-2 years old and to ride around 4 years old. I send them off for 30 days for each of the advanced training periods, primarily to receive 3rd party feedback on the trainability of each mare. We don’t keep or breed mares that are difficult to handle or train because we want to produce foals that are easy for amateurs to enjoy. I’m not a horse training professional and I want to produce the kind of Fjord that I enjoy handling. We also don’t keep mares that need any kind of interventions to produce offspring; hardy, good-tempered and naturally-reproductive horses are what made this breed at its inception, and our herd keeps to those standards. Since I’ve been studying and breeding Fjords for over 3 decades (since 1991), I’ve had lots of opportunity to try out many pairings, bloodlines, management approaches, and apply the Breed Standard and functional conformation to my breeding choices.

Many of the mares below have multiple generations (3-7) of horses with which I’ve had first-hand experience and the fact that so many remain in the herd is a testament to their quality and ability to pass the good traits to the subsequent generations. Generational depth can be seen here.

We also have multiple sets of full siblings and half siblings due to the quality of those pairings.

I’m working on making pages for each mare. Those with links below are what I’ve produced so far.

Our current herd of mares:

1dr Koryn (Double C Gracelyn x 1dr Kjaman)

1dr Stenetta (1dr Koryn x SOS Rurik)

1dr Sejline (Ashwood Alma x D+ Elko)

1dr Vilde (Ashwood Alma x 1dr Kjaman)

Marilena (Fjosnisse x Wood’s Sven)

1dr Greta (Double C Nora x 1dr Ragnvald)

1dr Sunnev (1dr Greta x SOS Rurik)

1dr Moena (Double C Lilli x 1dr Ragnvald)

1dr Raisa (Double C Lucy x Kjor Jodas)