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Mares and foaling

From: Darci

Dear Jessica, please help me and my husband. We are waiting for a mare to foal and we are so nervous we can hardly sleep. We're starting to yell at each other a lot, just out of tension.

This mare is one of three mares that we own that were all in foal this spring. Two of the mares already had their foals and it was a complete disaster. The first mare foaled when we were away from home, we weren't expecting her to foal so soon and we hadn't put her in the foaling stall yet. She foaled in her regular stall, on sawdust. The foaling stall had straw bedding, of course, but straw is expensive and messy so we just use it for the foaling stall, not for the regular stalls. Anyway I guess the baby smothered in the sawdust, it was dead when we came out in the morning to feed. You can just imagine how sad we were. The vet said that it would probably have been okay if it had been born on straw. We were just sick about it, and we put the other mares on straw right away.

Then ten days later the second mare foaled and she had terrible problems foaling. We were there for that one, but we couldn't reach our vet in time, he was out on a colic call. He got the message and came out to the barn but the foal was dead and the mare was just thrashing around. It was a really big foal and his shoulders got stuck in the mare, she kept trying to push and he would come out a little more and then slide back a little. We thought about helping it out but we didn't know what to do or even where there's a safe place to grab a foal when it's still in the sack. I guess there's a way to help a foal get born, the vet said he could have "pulled" it if he'd been there, and we said maybe we should have tried to pull the foal out, but he said if we had tried we might have hurt the mare because you have to pull down instead of out (I'm not sure what this means).

Anyway that foal was dead and the mare almost died too, and the vet said we shouldn't breed her again this year and maybe not even next year. Okay, so that was two out of our three mares. Now the last one is going to be due in about two weeks and we are just frantic. We put her in the foaling stall already, so the sawdust won't be a problem, but I am really worried that she will have a big foal that gets stuck. They were all bred to the same stallion and he is about one and a half or two hands taller than the mares. I'm worried and so is my husband, we were supposed to be breeding these foals to make money, and now that's pretty much hopeless. And when we're worried we fight, which is stupid I know, but its how we both react.

Anyway, is there anything you can tell us that would help us if the foal gets stuck or anything like that? Please help! And how usual or unusual is it for a foal to get stuck like that? Don't mares usually just foal normally all on their own and then the foals get up and run with them? I know that happens with wild horses. Why do we have to help the domestic foals get born and put iodine on their navels and all that, since wild horses do just fine without any of it? Are domestic mares just not as healthy? I'm sorry to have so many questions but I'm just so worried.

Darci


Hi Darci! I'm sorry for your troubles, but let's hope that this mare will foal easily and uneventfully, and that the foal will be a good one. First of all, relax, you aren't going to do yourself or your mare or your marriage any good by staying in a tizzy until this mare foals.

You need to have a good long session with your vet, so that you can learn what to watch for and what to do. Don't worry, you don't have to be the world's greatest expert, but as you've already learned, you DO need to make proper preparations for a foal, and you also need to get the vet out sooner rather than later. I know that vets can have an annoying way of being elsewhere helping someone else's emergency when we call them with our emergency, but you can prepare for that eventuality too.

Talk to your vet about the foaling, and find out whom your vet would recommend as a backup vet, and as a second backup vet. Then keep all those names and numbers handy, because you won't want to be racing around trying to figure out whom else to call when the mare is in the process of foaling, especially if she's a typical mare and foals in the wee small hours of the morning. ;-)

Learn what to watch for, so that you'll know which behaviours are normal and which aren't, and you'll have a better idea of when to worry. Learn how long each stage of foaling should take, what you should see, and what you should do. It IS possible to help a mare when an extra-large foal becomes stuck at the shoulders, and it's possible to make other adjustments too, but you'll need to know exactly what you're doing. If a mare is having problems because of a malpresentation, and you DON'T know how to help, it's better to get your vet or SOME vet on the way, and meanwhile, get the mare up and walk her around, which may allow the foal to drop back into (you hope) a better position from which it can be born normally.

Even a normal foaling wants a little preparation, so in addition to the foaling stall and straw bedding, and in addition to the telephone and the numbers of ALL the relevant vets, you'll want to put together a foaling kit, which is just a handful of useful items in a bucket with a lid.

A foaling kit willl let you be prepared for some of the simpler issues. You'll want iodine and a small, wide-mouthed plastic jar so that you can saturate (not just wipe or spray) the navel stump. When a foal is born and the cord breaks, that stump is a raw wound, and it's a major conduit for harmful bacteria. THAT's why we use iodine -- and that's why we saturate the stump.

Another useful item for the foaling kit is another, bigger wide-mouthed jar (plastic, not glass) and a small nursing bottle. That way you'll be prepared if you need to milk the mare and hand-feed a weak or exhausted baby the colostrum. It's also useful if you have a strong foal and a weak or dying mare -- again, you MUST get colostrum into the foal somehow, and when you're frantic and frightened is NOT the time to be looking for bottles, nipples, etc.  Mares can indeed foal outdoors in a clean, dry pasture, and if you can arrange this for your mare, she may do very well. Most people prefer to have their mares foal indoors where they can keep an eye on the process and on the mare and foal. A mare that foals in a clean, dry pasture isn't exposing the new foal to the same masses of bacteria that are present in a stall -- that's one key difference, and another good reason for having that iodine handy.

It's a good idea to keep a few pre-packaged enemas in that foaling kit, because the crucial time for the new foal is the first 24 hours after it's born. You can't stop watching, say "hurrah", and go off to breakfast once the foal is up and nursing -- you need to keep monitoring it until it has urinated and passed the meconium (black, foetal dung) and begun to pass normal baby dung (yellow and soft). If you don't see this happen, and if you notice that the foal is straining, you'll probably want to administer an enema -- and then you'll have to stay on "watch and wait" until you're sure that you've managed to jump-start his system.

In other words, birth may be the big event YOU've been waiting for, and you may think "Oh good, THAT's over, all's well", but for the foal, nothing is "over", things are just getting started. You'll need to keep watching that new foal until you've seen that ALL the systems are working, and when you know that it can get up and down, nurse, urinate, and defecate normally, THAT's when you can go and get breakfast. And if you're a typical horse-person, you'll be discussing all those things AT breakfast, so sit as far away from "normal" people as you possibly can. Civilians just don't understand why we discuss these matters in detail while we're eating...  ;-)

BTW, wild horses don't have quite the idyllic life that you may imagine. The mares may tend to foal more easily than domesticated mares, partly because they get lots of exercise on a daily basis and are more fit, but also partly because in the wild, with no help from owners or vets, mares that DON'T foal easily, and mares that could foal successfully IF they had help, simply won't survive to foal again. If a wild horse needs help, it doesn't get it, and nobody ever knows -- if small herds are being monitored or tracked, someone may notice, a few months down the road, that a certain mare is missing from a particular band of horses, but that would be the end of the story.

This sounds cruel, but it may be better for the long-term hardiness of horses in general. We humans tend to design our breeding programs with particular goals in mind: size, shape, colour, markings, speed, and others that mean a lot to US but mean little or nothing to Mother Nature. ;-) In nature, the species matters, the individual doesn't, and a horse is just nature's way of making another horse, so that the species as a whole can continue to survive. So for wild brood mares, an ability to foal quickly and easily would be a great thing, whereas the ability to produce very tall foals or foals with symmetrical markings would be completely irrelevant. For humans, it's usually the other way around -- when we breed horses, we breed for a black horse or a fast horse or a high-stepping horse or a horse with a blaze and socks, and our priority is NOT the horse's potential to reproduce itself easily. Many breeders don't even make soundness or disposition priorities in their breeding programs, but thank heaven for those who do. ;-)

One last thing: I don't know what your situation is, but it worries me that you and your husband obviously have had little or no experience with horse-breeding, and yet you were hoping to breed horses and sell them for a profit. This isn't an easy thing to do -- even for very good, experienced breeders with outstanding stock and good staff to help ensure that each foaling goes as well as it possibly can. Foals are delicate creatures, and -- when it comes to reproduction -- so are mares. Please talk to your vet about your ambitions, and do some research in the horse industry, before you breed your mares again. It's very, very easy to lose money with horses, and even easier to lose money if you're breeding them. In fact, one of the best books I ever read on the subject -- and with the most honest title -- was called "Losing Less Money Raising Horses." Before you take on the task of becoming horse-breeders, find out what your chances are of breaking even, let alone making a profit -- and then think about it several times before you take the plunge.

Here's some unsolicted advice. ;-) If you and your husband tend to fight when you are tense and worried, then the horse-breeding business is probably not the one you should go into. There's a lot of tension and a lot of worry, even for experienced breeders, and there's also a huge financial drain, as you're finding out. There's an old proverb that says "When poverty comes in the door, love flies out the window".... it's something to keep in mind. This is outside my usual area of expertise, but I DO know that tension, stress, worries, fights, and financial insecurity aren't particularly good for marriages. You might find that you enjoy your horses more if you just appreciate them for themselves without needing to look to them for income -- especially since they are VERY unlikely to provide it!

Jessica

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