In the corner of a quiet paddock on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula, just out of Geelong, a plain, albeit plump mare gets her head down on the last of the spring grass.
As a slow standardbred, she didn’t rate a mention during an inglorious racing career. These days, most wouldn’t give her a second glance if they walked past her in the paddock.
She’s hardly the sort of horse that the trained eyes of the thoroughbred bloodstock game look for to find future racetrack champions.
But to Brooke Barker, the mare is the queen of her special farm.
Her name is Meg and, to Barker and a select few that know her story, there is much more than meets the eye.
Meg is the foster mare of Caulfield and Melbourne Cup hero Half Yours.
“She’s just a lovely mare,” Barker said.
“She is probably wider than she is tall.
“She was a very slow racehorse but she did quite well as a broodmare and produced three winners.
“Since then, she’s done nine fosters.
“She always needs the bigger foals because she’s such a big producer and I think she’s almost half Jersey Cow.
“We do get requests for Meg quite a bit so she’s sought after.”
In Barker’s line of work, Meg is the gold standard – pardon the pun.
Along with her husband Jai, she operates the Mums4Bubs program, which provides lactating foster mares for orphaned foals.
Each spring, her program saves the lives of bluebloods and hardy homebreds alike, not just in racing but in the broader horse community.
The program blends old-school horsemanship with new-age medical advancement and brings dry mares into milk via medical intervention.
Thoroughbred breeders are her main clients and so it was in late November 2020 that she received word from the late Colin McKenna’s Halo Racing operation that a two-week old St Jean colt had lost his mother, a Desert King mare named La Gazelle.
Meg was enlisted immediately as Barker thought she’d be the perfect match for the hulking foal.
“He (Half Yours) was a big boy, that’s what I remember most,” she said.
“He stayed here for about 12 days and then both of them headed back home.
“From memory, they had Meg for about six months before he was weaned.
“The rest is history.”
The Mums4Bubs program is based around the practice of induced lactation.
Pioneered by vets and still run in consultation with those same reproductive specialists, Mums4Bubs boasts a perfect strike rate with foals under six weeks.
While some breeders prefer the more traditional method of matching an orphaned foal with a mare that has lost her own foal, Barker said it’s not always a viable option.
On the contrary, her curated team of standardbred mares have not yet failed. Barker trusts the science and it’s a record she’s proud of.
“I think the data shows that about 30% of mares will take another foal, so it’s quite a low success rate but if you’re lucky enough for it to work, that’s absolutely the way to go,” she said.
“It’s good for the mare that lost the foal and it’s good for the foal that lost its mum so happy days.
“We encourage that and tell people to use us as a plan b because we know that we’re 100%.
“I use standardbreds and standardbreds only.
“Their milk quality is superior, their temperament is predictable and the same all year round, they’re very easy to deal with but they’re athletic as well and can keep up with a thoroughbred foal.
“We’ve found in the past that the foster foals have actually surpassed the natural foals on their actual mothers in growth rate and bone strength.
“We bring them in and put them on a course of medication so they start producing milk.
“This time of year, it can be as quick as four days but we tell people to allow seven to 10 days if we have to bring them in from scratch.
“I’ll start milking them to get more milk supply.
“In the meantime, we’re feeding the foal supplement or real mare milk or a combination of the two.
“Once we think the mare’s milk is up to scratch and she’s producing what the foal is drinking, we do a procedure where she actually thinks that she’s gone through labour and birth.
“We call it the joining process and it’s to help ensure that, in her mind, she’s actually given birth and that’s her foal.
Barker takes satisfaction in her work but admits she hadn’t been keeping tabs on Half Yours’ deeds until Halo’s farm manager Sophie Negre alerted her to his status as Caulfield Cup favourite in mid-October.
She said she is proud in the knowledge that her program – and Meg – were pivotal in one of racing’s great fairytales.
“Sophie alerted me to the fact that he was running in the Caulfield Cup,” she said.
“It was a funny feeling watching him win the Cups.
“I was proud, even though he’s not mine but just proud of my girls (mares).
“It feels like my girls are validated in what they do.
“They’re not milk bars, they’re mothers.
“There’s still a stigma around orphan foals and we’ve had a lot of people doubt induced lactation.
“We are a confidential business so we can’t often shout it from the roof tops.
“But for a small family-run business like ours, it was pretty cool.”
