A Good Day

Yesterday one of the mare's that I'm foaling out had a very handsome stud colt. He is one of Spider Oak' s colts so of course I'm going to think so. One problem, the mare had a "dummy foal" the first time she foales and it turns out this one was too. Tonight he latched on to his mama and nursed on his own. It is truly a good day! My wonderful boyfriend did most of the mare milking and feeding of this colt while I slept to go to my full time job. As if raising horses isn't! So after dealing with this I had to do a little research and found out he had a very mild form of neonatal maladjustment syndrome, that is the most common of the scientific names. All and all it still scares a person. I cannot stress enough about the importance of making sure the foal is truly nursing. We had someone check the mare thru the day because I was fairly certain she was going to foal. They heard him suck and his head was in the right spot, only it was the bag he was sucking on not the nipple. She had hickies on both sides of her bag. He also walked around with his tongue hanging out. Since we were able to teach him to suck and he took the bottle we were able to handle it here. The faster something is done, the better the foals chances are. We will still monitor him closely for the next week and I will take a picture when he reaches my comfort zone.