Sjoukje fan de Groenbank

ACHIEVEMENTS

2015 - Awarded KFPS 2nd Premie at UK Inspections

Sjoukje is Femma’s fourth daughter, and the second daughter from the stallion Sake449. Ischka was the first one, who showed such promise as a youngster hence the reason for breeding Femma to Sake once again.

Unfortunately this breeding combination has not proved successful. We lost Ischka at the age of 5 to the hereditary condition of Aortopulmomary Fistulation which affects approximately 2% of the Friesian population.

Naturally the concern has always been that Sjoukje could suffer the same fate and due to this we chose not to start working her till she turned 5. As an early 6yo she was backed and took to the training really well. She was showing great promise in her schooling work until she went lame in late 2019 when she was found to have some arthritic changes in her front right foot.

After medication and over 6 months of rest and restricted movement there appeared little improvement and further investigations in late 2020 found a fracture to the extensor process in this foot. She remains on rest until Spring 2021 in the hope this will settle. Sadly there is no cure and it will now be a case of managing her comfort well enough to enable her to live a happy retirement out with the herd.

Going back to Sjoukjes birth, this in itself was traumatic. Femma suffered a uterine prolapse as she gave birth, a life threatening but rare problem. Fortunately, with the amazing help and dedication of our vet, Jess Gillon (from Frame, Swift & Partners), Femma pulled through and was able to be a great mum to Sjoukje.

Sjoukje spent most of her days in a field with her sisters Jolanda and Ineka, together with several other horses while she was growing. It soon became apparent Sjoukje was a cheeky filly, not afraid of anything and she was always the first to come up to you in the field, trying to chew your shoes or whatever else she could. She even has the nickname 'licky horse' and regularly soaks our poor farrier Chris with her kisses when he's doing her front feet!

When Sjoukje turned 2yrs old we took her to be graded by the KFPS inspectors, and she was awarded 2nd Premie but sadly she will never gain entry to the main studbook due to the problems with her feet.

The most frustrating thing for this lovely mare is that she is extremely intelligent and curious and would have loved to be involved in some of the activities our other horses take part in. She thrives on attention so is a great horse for visitors to spend time with due to her unconditional love of people.

Sjoukje will spend the rest of her days at the farm and we hope will be comfortable enough to live in the herd and get involved with our visitors wanting to spend time with and get to know more about the character of the Friesian horses.