Saturday, June 30, 2007

It's a Girl!

Maggie foaled tonight at 7:30 p.m. The girls were running down the driveway as I was running up it (having seen her on the mare-cam). In just a couple of minutes, the little girl was born.
She is strong and doing well but stubbornly refuses to nurse, thus I get a new learning experience and because it would just be too easy for everything to go right. One vet says that I have only four hours to get the foal to nurse or I could lose her. In this scenario, I need at the third hour after birth to call the vet and get colostrum from a local farm delivered here.
Vet number two says I have twelve hours, not four, and that the best thing for this foal is to get it's own mom's colostrum. (BTW, Vet #1 and Vet #2 are in the same practice.) In scenario two, I milk the mom and feed it by bottle or dropper to the baby.
What to do, what to do? I don't know anything about this, except that my former La Leche League training makes me lean towards giving the foal colostrum from it's own mom and with a dropper, not a bottle. Who would have thought I would have gone from teaching women to breastfeed to teaching horses to? I've also never milked a horse, but it is easy. Right now, this is what we are doing, and it looks to be a long night.
Now, here is the actual birth! (Note: graphic birth of foal. Squeamish people should exit now.)


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3 comments:

camflock said...

Wow! That is just amazing! Thank you for sharing this! The miracle of life is so cool to watch!

lisa-chan said...

"that was really gross!"

i agree. still really cool to see though.

thank you for sharing. and thank you for your compliment earlier.

Jenn Jilks said...

What an amazing lesson. You have applied the lessons you have learned working with people to your horse. Just amazing.

I am trying to give lessons to parents, too. I am sending out a message to for those parents wondering what to do about protecting their children.
We have had a terrible time here in Ontario. Here is some info to help you protect your children while in the computer or gaming. I hope it helps someone. We have a Barrie boy who has disappeared. I fear for his safety.

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