Egg on our face.

It is never a good day when you discover (for the 2nd time as it turns out) that the young male you were hoping to represent your farm at a major national auction, in this case the Futurity sale, has a heart murmur. That we had originally identified said condition during his cria wellness exam, when he was only a few days old in December of 2013, yet hadn’t stayed on top of it to see whether or not he had outgrown the murmur (as some neonates do), just made yesterday’s news that much more embarrassing/humbling/humiliating. We messed up. Badly. There really is no way to sugarcoat this one: the short and dirty takeaway from this post is that instead of being sold as the potential frontline Herdsire that we had hoped he would one day be, CCNF Nativity was not only scratched from the auction but also instantly became one of the world’s best non-breeding fiber males. Thems are the breaks, as they say. Ugh.

The simple truth is that as Nativity developed into a striking young male over the past year, without any outward symptoms whatsoever of his heart murmur, we just flat out forgot that we had detected that condition in him as a newborn cria, as we were caught up in the excitement of the way he was developing and who/what he was. Though it is only a seemingly minor consolation at this moment, it is worth noting that Nativity’s dam, Ascension, has given birth to three other offspring, none of whom ever had any heart murmurs whatsoever. So what was for dinner last night at CCNF? A heaping helping of humble pie, that’s what. Sucking it up and moving forward. See ya’ll out there…

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