This is Jules Monet Albina of Horsefeathers Farm, and we call her “Bina.”

Her prior owner called her Monty (the owner between us and original breeder).  Her original name was simply “Jules Monet.”  We believe in preserving the original breeder’s farm prefix for all acquired horses, and we really do not like to see horses renamed without that original breeder’s prefix.  It’s a mark of pride for many breeders with the products they produce to have that name attached to their horses.  We’re not opposed to adding epithets and/or suffixes to the names of horses that we’ve picked up, dusted off, and registered for the first time, though, especially for horses that we intend on keeping around for many years.  Albina is a suburb of Portland, Oregon, and is also the name of a song from one of our favorite bands from the Pacific Northwest (a band named Horse Feathers which was a secondary inspiration for the name of our farm).  The original breeder of Bina is in Oregon.  The root meaning of Albina is related to the word albino, and Bina is nearly all white.  I also really like the name Monet, because I believe she’s as beautiful as any piece of artwork created by Claude Monet.  It all fit together like puzzle pieces to complete her, in our opinion (and it’s also at the GVHS limit for the number of characters in a registered horse’s name (spaces and punctuation count), too).

In the summer of 2023, I was seriously considering expanding our operation quite a bit.  I had a set of criteria for horses that I would look for to do that expansion.  As the summer wore on, though, I focused a lot more effort on birthing foals, training the foals, advertising foals, sharpening the focus on our farm goals, and advertising of adult horses.  I always have a list of horses that I would like to purchase even if only 1% of them are ones that I pursue.  This mare really caught my eye, and she was only a few hours away from us in Alabama.  All my other schemes for expansion didn’t really go anywhere last summer, because of the previously mentioned distractions and lack of progress on needed infrastructure updates to support current concerns much less any potential expansion.

Bina is a silver dapple sabino mare like her dam, Darby Rose.  Darby Rose must have something special in her whitening genes, though, since she passed down her nearly all-white appearance to Bina. 

 There are only a few black freckles here and there on Bina and only on the skin beneath her coat.  Her coat is completely snow white.  She has a nice mustache, too, but she’s always snuffling in the mud with it for stray grains of feed that have dropped out of the feeding buckets, so her mustache is usually brown.

One of the things that really sold us on Bina was getting a referral on Darby Rose’s temperament from someone whose opinion we really respect who was a prior owner of Darby Rose.  Darby Rose sounded perfect, and we were pleasantly satisfied that the same personality seemed to have come down to Bina.

Bina quickly acclimated to our farm.  Within a month, she had been quarantined, integrated into Mason’s herd (even if those other mares didn’t like her much at first, Mr. Romance-O, Mason, loved her immediately...though, I think he had ulterior motives), DNA-tested, fully GVHS registered, and was positively tested as in foal.  She should have our last foal of the summer this year in late July.

My original intention with Bina was to breed her with our chestnut sabino stallion, Nazareth, who had been away on breed lease for a month by the time we acquired her (one of my “chase” horses that I’d like to make instead of purchase is a max white homozygous sabino).  Denny and Zake weren’t old enough yet, and we didn’t have our final stallion (coming up soon as our number 26 introduction) yet at that time.  She couldn’t be bred to that stallion anyway (much like Apple cannot be bred to him).  Mason benefited from being the only eligible bachelor around on the farm this past August.  He’s kind of full of himself because of being the only stallion on the premises right now even if he was still a perfect angel for the farrier the Friday before last (every second Friday is farrier day here).  It’s all about the swagger…a very sweet, chunky swagger.

Bina has really filled out nicely as a maiden mare.  She’s growing her mane out quickly also (we believe there must have been a mane chewer at her prior home).  Bina and Lacey (our silver dapple tobiano mare that we sold) didn’t really like each other a ton (both fighting to not be bottom mare), but that’s settled out now that Lacey has found greener pastures in Florida.  Mason’s still Bina’s best friend in the paddock.  Bridget was the boss mare (Bridget mostly only likes her foals), and Princess and Mia are best friends right now.  That just leaves Bina and Mason to be pals (I'll post their "necking" video separate from this post from the second day they were together).

We did just swap Jewel and Bridget, though.  Both are the top mares in their respective pastures, and both are in foal.  They’re pretty much in the same spot in the hierarchy in their new pastures with Bridget in the “pumpkin patch” now with the younglings, and Jewel hanging out in Mason’s pasture for a few months.  Jewel also doesn’t like any horse other than her foals (and her husband horse, Nazareth).  It’s like a soap opera sometimes.

Bina is happy where she is right now, though, and we’re ecstatic to have her as part of Horsefeathers Farm.  Attached pictures in chronological order (some with comments on timeline).