This story has a happy ending.
Jul. 15th, 2018 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickLast year I bred my mare Nick (age 20) to an appropriate stallion in the hopes of getting a baby. Wednesday, July 11, she looked like this:
This story has a happy ending. Let me just put that out there at the front end. There are some scary parts, but it ends happily.
Thursday she was fine at 1 PM for the tooth guy but didn’t come up to the barn for evening chow (a scant handful of grain as she was huge and we didn’t want a Monster Baby) at 7 PM. My friend Trys went out looking and located mare at bottom of a fairly steep hill. She was like, “Mare, come on, chow time, let’s go.” Mare was “AHEM. Regardeth thou the shrubbery. There Is A Problem Here.” Trys regarded the shrubbery. It moved in a flaily-thrashy way.
Apparently mare had baby near the top of the hill and it ass-over-tin-cupped down the hill to land in a shrubbery and be unable to get out of it. Well, shit. Trys retrieved the baby from the shrubbery only to determine that it could not stand up or walk so she carried the flailing, thrashing thing up the hill to the barn with the mare following along in a concerned but not violent fashion.
At the barn, Trys called me to get over there because the baby could not stand or drink but Wasn’t Dead Yet. I got over there. Lifting the baby to stand and supporting it so that it could nurse didn’t work even with two people because the baby was too tired to latch on and balance and suck. She was a floppy dishrag of a baby, with skin tenting on pinch, which meant she was dehydrated to boot. We don’t know how long she was at the bottom of the hill thrashing in the shrubbery, but apparently it was long enough to dehydrate. Oh, and her front feet knuckled over, so she was trying to stand on her fetlock joints. No bueno.
At about ten PM, after numerous near-useless attempts at getting some milk into the baby, I finally had the good sense to ask Trys if she had a bottle anywhere. She went to look and, lo, there was a leftover bottle from when her kid was little. (He’s 5 now.) It, helpfully, had oz markings on the side. The internet said that the neonate foal should drink about two to three ounces every half hour or so, good to know.
Throughout all of this, the mare, who at the best of times is something of an ass, stood like a trooper to have her floppy baby held up to her udder, carefully did not walk on the baby, and generally was as helpful as she could be. She also stood rock-still to be milked. The bottle, which could be adjusted to where the baby was, was way easier for her to drink from than the mare. After two “make the hole in the nipple bigger” adjustments, at 10:40, baby sucked down six ounces of milk in about two minutes and then fell asleep before I could get up to rinse the bottle out.
From 10:40 PM to 5:30 AM, I got up every half hour, milked three ounces of milk out of the mare, and fed it to the baby. I flexed the little feet into more-normal positions with my hands, over and over. At around 2 AM, I started making the baby stand up for the feedings instead of chest-sitting. She didn’t quite get up on her own, but if I heaved her up and straightened her front legs out to where they looked right, she could stand on them. Once she was standing and swaying like a reed in the breeze, we had baby poop. Yay!
By 4 AM, if I woke her up (she never woke up on her own, poor thing was exhausted but still needed fluids during the important colostrum window) with mare-bitey hand pinches on the withers and back, she could flail upright on her own and take some tottery steps. Drinking from bottle was at this point her Best Skill. Front legs were still weird, but looking slightly better, I thought. I was very tired, so maybe I was wishful thinking.
By the 5:30 AM feeding, baby was tottering towards the mare and seeking the udder. She kinda got there but her latch on wasn’t great and she didn’t get more than a few swallows even though she tried a couple of times. I stripped the mare (four ounces) and fed the baby, who drank all of it and then peed (!! WE HAVE THROUGHPUT !! SYSTEM ONLINE!!) and promptly fell asleep. I had to go to work so I turned baby duty over to Trys, who had gotten some sleep in the interim.
When I called her, she was all, “I didn’t think you’d stay the whole night.” (Uhm. If I hadn’t, this would be the narrative of my dead horse baby instead of the narrative of my joyful and happy horse baby who had a regrettably rough start.) After the Big Meal at 5:30, baby woke quite refreshed at 6:15 and stood up and tottered toward mare. Trys moved mare closer to baby, whereupon baby latched on and sucked. There was no more bottle after that.
By noon on Friday, baby could get up and locate mare udder on her own, even if it meant tottering after the mare. (They were in a double-sized box stall sort of a thing.) SELF-FEEDING!! Yay!! Front legs stopped being knuckled-over at this point though they were still slightly tippy-toed and wonky.
Friday evening she looked like this:
I started to think about names.
Saturday she spent the day with mom in the double box stall under the big box fan until it cooled off in the evening around 7 PM. I put a halter on the mare (who normally is on full-time turnout and was getting a bit pissy about having to be in a stall all the time) and led her out. After a few false starts, baby came out, too. Outside time included trotting (!) and cantering (!!) and also a “Damn, mare slipped her halter and left with baby by her side halfway down the long field” incident which included more outside time than we had planned on. Oops. We recovered mare by way of sweet feed in a bucket which she hadn’t seen in a month because she was hugely pregnant and we were worried that the baby would get too big. She’d been on a “pasture only” diet and so the sweet feed was a big draw, lucky for us.
We put mare and baby in for the night but today (Sunday) we are doing small-paddock outside time in the morning and if that works, she and the baby will be in the big field tonight just like nothing was ever wrong.
So stressful. Anyway. Welcome to the world, Patapsco. Sorry it was a rough start, but hopefully things will go better from here on out.
This story has a happy ending. Let me just put that out there at the front end. There are some scary parts, but it ends happily.
Thursday she was fine at 1 PM for the tooth guy but didn’t come up to the barn for evening chow (a scant handful of grain as she was huge and we didn’t want a Monster Baby) at 7 PM. My friend Trys went out looking and located mare at bottom of a fairly steep hill. She was like, “Mare, come on, chow time, let’s go.” Mare was “AHEM. Regardeth thou the shrubbery. There Is A Problem Here.” Trys regarded the shrubbery. It moved in a flaily-thrashy way.
Apparently mare had baby near the top of the hill and it ass-over-tin-cupped down the hill to land in a shrubbery and be unable to get out of it. Well, shit. Trys retrieved the baby from the shrubbery only to determine that it could not stand up or walk so she carried the flailing, thrashing thing up the hill to the barn with the mare following along in a concerned but not violent fashion.
At the barn, Trys called me to get over there because the baby could not stand or drink but Wasn’t Dead Yet. I got over there. Lifting the baby to stand and supporting it so that it could nurse didn’t work even with two people because the baby was too tired to latch on and balance and suck. She was a floppy dishrag of a baby, with skin tenting on pinch, which meant she was dehydrated to boot. We don’t know how long she was at the bottom of the hill thrashing in the shrubbery, but apparently it was long enough to dehydrate. Oh, and her front feet knuckled over, so she was trying to stand on her fetlock joints. No bueno.
At about ten PM, after numerous near-useless attempts at getting some milk into the baby, I finally had the good sense to ask Trys if she had a bottle anywhere. She went to look and, lo, there was a leftover bottle from when her kid was little. (He’s 5 now.) It, helpfully, had oz markings on the side. The internet said that the neonate foal should drink about two to three ounces every half hour or so, good to know.
Throughout all of this, the mare, who at the best of times is something of an ass, stood like a trooper to have her floppy baby held up to her udder, carefully did not walk on the baby, and generally was as helpful as she could be. She also stood rock-still to be milked. The bottle, which could be adjusted to where the baby was, was way easier for her to drink from than the mare. After two “make the hole in the nipple bigger” adjustments, at 10:40, baby sucked down six ounces of milk in about two minutes and then fell asleep before I could get up to rinse the bottle out.
From 10:40 PM to 5:30 AM, I got up every half hour, milked three ounces of milk out of the mare, and fed it to the baby. I flexed the little feet into more-normal positions with my hands, over and over. At around 2 AM, I started making the baby stand up for the feedings instead of chest-sitting. She didn’t quite get up on her own, but if I heaved her up and straightened her front legs out to where they looked right, she could stand on them. Once she was standing and swaying like a reed in the breeze, we had baby poop. Yay!
By 4 AM, if I woke her up (she never woke up on her own, poor thing was exhausted but still needed fluids during the important colostrum window) with mare-bitey hand pinches on the withers and back, she could flail upright on her own and take some tottery steps. Drinking from bottle was at this point her Best Skill. Front legs were still weird, but looking slightly better, I thought. I was very tired, so maybe I was wishful thinking.
By the 5:30 AM feeding, baby was tottering towards the mare and seeking the udder. She kinda got there but her latch on wasn’t great and she didn’t get more than a few swallows even though she tried a couple of times. I stripped the mare (four ounces) and fed the baby, who drank all of it and then peed (!! WE HAVE THROUGHPUT !! SYSTEM ONLINE!!) and promptly fell asleep. I had to go to work so I turned baby duty over to Trys, who had gotten some sleep in the interim.
When I called her, she was all, “I didn’t think you’d stay the whole night.” (Uhm. If I hadn’t, this would be the narrative of my dead horse baby instead of the narrative of my joyful and happy horse baby who had a regrettably rough start.) After the Big Meal at 5:30, baby woke quite refreshed at 6:15 and stood up and tottered toward mare. Trys moved mare closer to baby, whereupon baby latched on and sucked. There was no more bottle after that.
By noon on Friday, baby could get up and locate mare udder on her own, even if it meant tottering after the mare. (They were in a double-sized box stall sort of a thing.) SELF-FEEDING!! Yay!! Front legs stopped being knuckled-over at this point though they were still slightly tippy-toed and wonky.
Friday evening she looked like this:
I started to think about names.
Saturday she spent the day with mom in the double box stall under the big box fan until it cooled off in the evening around 7 PM. I put a halter on the mare (who normally is on full-time turnout and was getting a bit pissy about having to be in a stall all the time) and led her out. After a few false starts, baby came out, too. Outside time included trotting (!) and cantering (!!) and also a “Damn, mare slipped her halter and left with baby by her side halfway down the long field” incident which included more outside time than we had planned on. Oops. We recovered mare by way of sweet feed in a bucket which she hadn’t seen in a month because she was hugely pregnant and we were worried that the baby would get too big. She’d been on a “pasture only” diet and so the sweet feed was a big draw, lucky for us.
We put mare and baby in for the night but today (Sunday) we are doing small-paddock outside time in the morning and if that works, she and the baby will be in the big field tonight just like nothing was ever wrong.
So stressful. Anyway. Welcome to the world, Patapsco. Sorry it was a rough start, but hopefully things will go better from here on out.
