The Rehoboth
Reporter
May 2013 Volume 25, no. 5
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Serving the Residents of Rehoboth, Seekonk and Surrounding Communities Since 1989
Summer Fun Guide see page 58...
Prom & Wedding 2013
Spring Brings Bumper Crop of Foals To Rehoboth’s Briar Hill Horse Farm
by Leslie Patterson What beautiful babies! As of mid-April, eight foals had been born already at Briar Hill Farm, with fourteen more on the way. A visitor to this thoroughbred horse farm on Hillside Avenue could see these baby animals frolicking on their spindly legs with their mothers, enjoying the spring sunshine. Briar Hill Farm is the largest thoroughbred farm in Massachusetts, in number of horses there. It is not quite the largest in terms of acreage. “I wish my great-great grandfather had bought a bigger farm,” chuckled George Brown of Briar Hill. The farm has been in his family since 1850, though before George and his wife Arlene started a horse farm in the 1970’s, it had been a dairy farm. Last year 25 foals were born at the farm and 16 the year before that. The farm employs four full-time staff, two exercise riders, and three young women (two of them Brown granddaughters) as overnight foal-watchers whose job it is to alert George and Arlene when a mare is about to give birth in the middle of the night. Mares have a gestation period of a little over 11 months. Arlene says that when a birth is easy, a foal can be born in a half hour. However, when they have a difficult birth, it can take hours. Arlene says that Briar Hill has the highest success rate with births in the state, thanks mainly to the overnight observers who are constantly alert to any signs of trouble with the pregnant mares. continued on page 4...
see page 87...
Special Town Meeting Monday, May 13th @7pm Memorial Day Parade
Monday May 27th at 10 am More info on page 7 Stallion Lycius looks over fence Briarfor Hill Seekonk children gathered around the Oldthe Grist Millat Pond a Farm. day of fishing and fun.