After our family visited Grant's Farm last summer, we fell in love with the Budweiser Clydesdales. My husband tried to surprise us with a stop at Warm Springs Ranch one weekend as we puttered east back to Kansas City after a writing conference in St. Louis, but alas, it was a no-go.

Warm Springs Ranch is where the magic begins: Clydesdale foals. Unfortunately for us that day, the gates were locked. You have to make an appointment to get a tour, which we didn't know. But now we do, and so do you. And we got invited to go! So here are all my pictures.

Sorry, folks, park's closed. Moose out in front should've told you.

This time, the park was not closed. BABY CLYDESDALES FOR EVERYONE!

I learned some things about Clydesdale birth. Mares are pregnant for eleven months and give birth in 5-25 minutes.

(!)

Because the labor happens so fast, the man in charge (John Soto) has an alarm that goes off when the foal's hooves break open a special device installed in the mare's birth canal. Once it starts, it goes fast because the foals weigh about 150 pounds and gravity exists.

Look closely. There's 150 pounds of foal in there that will be born within six days.

Once the mares get within thirty days of their due dates, they get beautiful, huge stalls in the special foaling area and are only taken outside to the exercise paddocks instead of the full pastures. Everything from breeding to foaling happens in this big, red barn in Boonville, Missouri.

I don't know how much time you've spent in barns, but most of them do not look like this.

One of the foals we saw was less than twelve hours old. When they are first born, the staff shave part of their bodies because the foals can't regulate their own body temperature very well at first.

This little guy is brand-new. I stared at his hooves, which have never touched dirt. Wow.

The mares kept trying to give us the 2,000-pound paparazzi block, but this little one wanted to play kissy-face with the little angel.

I'm a sucker for all horses, but the sheer size of these beauties is really something to behold up close.

SWOON.

The end.