When you operate a breeding farm, there is always the outside chance of an accident, or unexplained death
of the breeding stock. When it happens, you are knocked off your feet! No matter how prepared you are, knowing that there
are always risks, the death of an animal always comes as a shock.
My first tragic experience with the death
of a mare, after giving birth, happened in March 2008. The mare, KRH Mariah Moniet, couldn't have looked or acted
healthier the days prior to her death. The foal was about 2-4 weeks early according to the mares milk bag. At 6 a.m.,
my husband came in and told me we had a foal on the ground, but the mare was dead. The words hung in the air. I was stunned!
It took me a few moments before I realized what those words meant, and that I needed to take action.
I ran out
to the barn in disbelief. There was my beautiful, young mare lying still, with a gorgeous little colt standing very wobbly in
the corner of the stall. This was her second foal. Her milk bag was huge, and I understood that her milk was like gold at
this moment. I went back to the house and got a container so I could milk that very important colostrum off the mare to
give to the new baby. What I didn't realize is that I probably could have milked her twice. I gave the
milk to the little foal and he "drank" it down. He really didn't know what to do at first, but then he got the
hang of it. First, we had to use an eye dropper to get him to taste the milk and know how good it was. Then he began
drinking better. I was so worried about keeping him alive, I couldn't grieve over my mare, so I still get teary eyed
when I talk about her.
The next thing was to get on the phone to my vet. (This is where it pays to have a real equine
vet. My vet was a horse vet by inheritance. By that I mean, he took over the practice from my old vet, who had retired. Mainly,
their practice takes care of small animals, but he would still make a farm visit to vaccinate my horses, and he did geld a
colt for me once. But horses were not his specialty.) I called the vet's number, but the office wasn't open. I called
the emergency number and talked to the vet on call. He said, " I don't know what to tell you. I don't know anything
about horses. You'll have to wait until the office opens to talk to Dr. _X_." The office wasn't going
to open for another hour. So what do horse people do when they need help? They call another horse person. I called
my friend who boards horses close to my farm. She gave me more information and help than my vet did when I finally got in
touch with him. His attitude was that the foal wouldn't survive. I was shocked! I knew better, for when I was a child,
my father had raised a foal on a bottle. Needless to say, I vowed to get a new vet and that's what I did - an equine vet,
(there is a difference). I called the breeder of the mare, who lives in Colorado, and told her the bad news. She gave
me lots of advice and sympathy since she had been through the same experience.
After finding a place
to supply foal milk, and making a call to the renderer, I had come down to earth enough to start enjoying my little orphan,
which took some of the sting out of losing my mare. He appeared to be healthy in all aspects, but seemed to be "a little
underbaked," (slightly premature, my mare had just started making a milk bag when he was born). He walked most of
the time on his hind hocks and not on the hooves, but that corrected itself with time. He had a good appetite and loved all
the attention he was getting from the whole neighborhood. We tried not to leave him alone too much and my dogs played babysitters.
It was fun to watch the different ways my male dog looked after the foal from the way my female dog looked after him. For
instance, my male dog, Leo, was always keeping him corraled, or confined, to a certain area and my female dog, Kate, was always
"cleaning" the foal just as she would have done for puppies. We began calling the foal the little Prince because
of all the attention he was getting from everyone.
By using the internet, going through my personal library, and
phoning horse owner friends, I gathered enough information to know what I should do for the foal - how often to feed
him and how much; where to get the foal-lac for the best price, to make sure I bought lamb's nipples and not calf
nipples, etc. My husband took care of the early morning feeding and I took care of the middle of the night feeding,
and we took turns with the daytime feedings. In the beginning, we had lots of help because everyone loves a baby and wants
to do things for it. So our little Prince got lots of attention and was photographed as much as my grandchildren.
At this writing, he will soon be five months old. I can finally leave home without smelling like my foal. We gradually decreased
his foal-lac intake from 8 feedings, to six, to 5, to 4, etc. He is on two feedings of foal-lac a day, one in the morning
and one in the evening. He is eating hay, grain, and grass very well and is drinking water from a bucket, which took him the
longest to learn. I still feed him his milk from a bottle, otherwise, if it were placed in a bucket, the cats and dogs would
drink it. He has shed off all his baby hair and is a beautiflul black, for the time being. He will be a gray horse as
he matures. His mane is growing, but is still unruly. He halters and leads quite well, and picks up his feet. I purposefully
have made direct eye contact with him so he knows that eye contact with a human is not an aggressive act. After he gets a
little more size on him, I will put him in with our pastured horses. I let him graze in the yard with our 17 year old
mare. She will be the one to teach him horse manners. His 2 year old full sister gets along well with him, as does another
2 year old filly. We have a couple of other horses that I am not sure how they will treat him. As for his sire, Thee
Bikr, they sniff each other over the fence, with Prince showing his submissive "clicking" of teeth and Bikr smelling
of his son but not showing any signs of aggression. As for me, I am beginning to get back on a regular sleeping schedule.
Once you prepare a bottle, make a trek out to the barn at 3 a.m., feed the foal, pet the foal, talk to all the other horses
in the barn to let them know they are special, too, and wash the horse smell off before going to bed, it's hard to
just plop into bed and fall asleep. And, there's not much on TV in the middle of the night. So as I try to get back
on a "normal" sleep schedule, I am enjoying not having to be on foal call every four hours. But he's probably
the most loved foal around.
Update 8/13/2008: Prince has been weaned at five months and he had his first shots.
He did very well for the veterinarian.
(To be continued as Prince goes through new stages of development.)
