Caring for the Newborn

In This Chapter

• Making sure that your foal and mare are healthy after delivery
• Caring for and feeding your foal
• Training your foal

Joy of joys, your baby horse is here! And man, is she cute!

If you can stop staring at her long enough to read this chapter, you’ll find that we give you a great start in figuring out how to care for your new infant equine. You find out how to make sure that she’s healthy, how to keep from panicking as you watch her try to stand up, and how to examine Mom to make sure that everything is hunky-dory. You also discover how to provide healthcare and good nutrition to the baby and how to get that baby started in her basic training.

Monitoring Mom and Baby after Delivery

Out on the open range, mares have their babies in the grass, away from the safety of the herd. Their offspring stand quickly, nurse on their own, and eventually make their way back to the other horses. So why do humans need to get so involved with newborn baby horses? Can’t they make it on their own without human intervention?

Well, chances are, they can. But out on the open range, not every foal makes it because no one is there to help in case of a problem. And because you definitely want your foal to survive, you need to get involved to make sure that she has the best chance possible. You also want to keep an eye on Mom to make sure that she’s in good shape, too.

Watching the baby

As soon as your baby is born, you need to check her to make sure that she’s healthy and doesn’t need veterinary intervention. In Chapter Breeding Your Horse, we describe several problems that can occur at the moment of birth. Review these conditions to make certain that your foal has made it this far without a problem.

After the baby has been born, she should be bright and alert to her surroundings. She should try to get up within 30 minutes after birth. Seeing your foal trying to get her legs under her for the first time will make you want to laugh and cry at the same time. It can be a big struggle for one so small and weak to get those long, spindly legs in order. But a healthy foal tries to make it happen within only half an hour of birth.

Remember

You may feel the urge to jump in and help your baby learn to stand and walk, but try not to intercede. Your foal needs to do this on her own, and as long as she has plenty of room in the stall — and plenty of soft bedding beneath her feet — to stumble and fall over without getting hurt, she’ll be fine (see Figure 16-1). Have no fear while you watch — she’ll eventually figure it out.

Figure 16-1: This stall gives the mare and foal plenty of room while the foal is learning to stand. (Bob Langrish)

When foals stand to nurse, they’re very adept at finding the udder. Again, resist the urge to interfere and help. The mare and foal need to have time to bond and adjust to one another without you being in the middle of it.

Tip

If your baby stands, but seems to be completely unable to find the udder after about 10 minutes of searching, you can assist at this point by gently guiding her to the udder location — put your arms around her neck at chest level and around her buttocks as you help her walk in the direction she needs to go, as shown in Figure 16-2. (If she struggles a lot and seems more interested in fighting you than in looking for the teat, back off and let her find it on her own.)

If, despite your efforts to help and a lot of searching, the baby still can’t find the udder, she may have a problem. Call your veterinarian.

Warning!

If your foal doesn’t stand and nurse at all within two hours, call your veterinarian. The foal may be weak and need medical attention. Foals need to receive colostrum (the mare’s first milk, which is high in protective antibodies) within 8 to 12 hours of birth, when their intestines are able to absorb it. Colostrum provides the foal with passive immunity to prevent disease and provide protection until her own immune system develops. If the baby is too weak to nurse, you may have to milk the mare and give the foal milk and colostrum through a stomach tube.

Figure 16-2: If the baby is having a hard time finding the nipple, you can gently guide her to it. (Bob Langrish)

Foals should pass a sticky, dark stool called meconium — which forms in their intestines before birth — within the first 12 hours, after eating a meal or two. If your foal doesn’t pass meconium, she needs an enema. Ask your vet to show you how to do this procedure before your foal is born so that you’re ready to perform this task if needed. (If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of giving your new baby an enema, be prepared to call your veterinarian to come out and do it for you.)

Examining the mare

Let your mare rest for about an hour after she gives birth. She’s tired and needs a break. During this time, she bonds with her foal. (You’ll know the two are bonding because the mare will lick the foal and clean her up, nuzzle her, and maybe even nicker to her.)

After your mare rests for an hour, start taking her temperature every eight hours. If her temperature goes much above normal — 101 degrees Fahrenheit — call the vet. (See Chapter Sizing Up a Healthy Horse for details on how to take a horse’s temperature.)

Warning!

Your mare should be producing milk for her foal. You can probably see the milk dripping from her udders. If not, give them a very gentle squeeze to see whether milk comes out. (Be careful when you do this — most mares are fine with it, but if this is your mare’s first foal or if she’s touchy about that area, she may kick out. Put a halter on her and have someone hold her while you squeeze the udder.) If no milk comes out, contact your vet immediately.

Without milk from her mother, the baby has nothing to eat. If your mare seems okay within these first 24 hours — that is, she’s alert and is eating, drinking, taking care of her foal, and passing urine and manure — she’s probably fine. If anything seems amiss, including signs of distress or lethargy, call your vet immediately.

The signs of a good equine mom You’d expect your mare to be delighted with her new baby, and most mares are. She should be curious but not aggressive toward her baby, and she should begin to nuzzle and lick her. First-time mothers may be frightened of their babies, however, and may even reject them. If your mare seems to be aggressive toward her foal, put a halter on the mare, remove the baby, and reintroduce the foal with the mare under control. Let her slowly get used to the foal and hope for her maternal instincts to kick in. If after a couple of hours the mare still doesn’t accept the foal, call your veterinarian. Your baby needs to nurse and get much-needed colostrums from the mare, and if the mare won’t let this happen, you may need to milk the mare and bottle feed the baby. Your veterinarian can help you with this task.

Make an appointment with your veterinarian to perform a thorough exam on mom and baby approximately 24 hours after the birth. The vet will check both for any possible complications (see the next section for details).

Tip

When your mare passes her placenta (also known as the afterbirth), save it all in a bucket so that your vet can examine it. Your vet needs to make sure that the mare passed the entire placenta because retained placenta can cause serious infection and laminitis.

Providing Healthcare and Good Nutrition for Mom and Baby

If you managed to get through the birthing process without having to call your vet, congratulations! Your job isn’t over, however. In the following sections, we explain how to offer the best healthcare and nutrition to your new equine friend and his mom.

Taking care of the first vet appointment after delivery

When your veterinarian comes 24 hours after the foal’s birth to check on the mare and foal, he or she examines the placenta that you saved in a bucket (see the earlier section “Examining the mare”) to ensure that the mare passed the entire thing.

Your vet also performs a complete exam of the foal to be certain that everything is progressing as it should. This is the perfect time to ask any additional questions that you may have about foal care, especially if this is your first foaling adventure. Your vet can also check your foal for good antibody protection if you request this test (and we recommend that you do). The foal should have acquired antibodies from the mare’s colostrum (see the earlier section “Watching the baby” for details). If not, the vet can administer plasma to the baby if necessary.

The vet then examines your mare to be certain that she isn’t having postpartum complications. If she’s having trouble letting down her first milk, the vet may give her an injection to encourage it. The vet may also want to deworm your mare at this time to further decrease possible transfer of parasites to the baby, even if you’ve kept up with a good deworming program all along (as we recommend in Chapter Getting Up to Speed on Routine Care).

Nursing and feeding

Your foal was born with the instinct to nurse and makes his way to the mare’s udders not too long after standing. Newborn foals suckle an average of four to six times per hour during the first week of life, drinking about 30 percent of their body weight daily. During this time, they grow very fast, gaining one to three pounds of weight each day!

Warning!

Watch your foal suckle. He should be vigorous, and you should see him swallowing. If you notice that milk comes out of his nose, or if feeding is accompanied by coughing, call your vet right away. These problems indicate a possible blockage in his esophagus.

Remember

As the foal ages, his nursing decreases to one to two times per hour. By the time he’s about three to four weeks old, he starts to show an interest in solid food. This stage is where managing his diet gets tricky. You don’t want your foal to eat too much of certain foods because he can get developmental orthopedic disease (DOD), which causes limb deformities. Grain and concentrated feed aren’t good for your baby and may make him grow too fast, which brings on DOD. (Some researches also believe feeding too many carbohydrates to a young horse can encourage the habit of cribbing — see Chapter Connecting Your Horse’s Behavior to Health for more information on this vice.) 

If your mare is getting these kinds of foods and allowing the baby to share them, find another way to feed the foods to your mare so that your foal doesn’t have access to them. If your foal is still growing too fast, limit his access to hay too, particularly alfalfa. Discuss your foal’s diet with your veterinarian so that you know you’re feeding him right.

Your mare should remain on the same diet she was eating during the latter stages of her pregnancy. She can stay on this diet while she’s nursing her baby. Talk to your vet to make sure that the mare is getting the diet she needs.

Baby’s eating what? Be prepared for this one: Your cute little foal is probably going to horrify you by eating some of his dam’s manure. Although that sounds yucky, it’s actually normal and necessary behavior. Called coprophagy, this eating of stool allows the baby to get necessary bacteria into his gut and acquire other nutrients. Keep your foaling stall clean, especially of urine, but allow some normal feces from the mare to remain. Foals eat feces several times daily for the first week of life, and usually cease altogether by two to three months of age.

Recognizing and treating foal-specific health problems

Warning!

In the days after birth, foals can sometimes develop problems. Some of these include:

- Infection: Foals can sometimes develop bacterial or viral infections requiring immediate veterinary care.

- Parasites: Intestinal worms can make a foal sick.

- Gastroduodenal ulcers: Foals sometimes develop ulcers in their intestines. Symptoms include grinding teeth, pain after eating, and excessive salivation.

- Pneumonia: The cause of pneumonia can be bacterial, fungal, or viral. Foals may develop pneumonia from accidentally breathing in milk while nursing (if the baby was born with a cleft palate), or when nursing from a bucket or bottle. Lack of cleanliness of the stall can also cause this condition.

- Polyarticular septic arthritis: A septic arthritis and joint infection usually affects multiple joints. Foals with this condition have swollen and painful joints, depression, poor appetite, and fever. This condition is usually the result of a failure of passive antibody protection, uterine infection from the mare, or poor hygiene during foaling, allowing infectious agents to enter the foal’s body via the navel. This condition can have serious consequences and can lead to chronic lameness and death if not treated. Vets use aggressive supportive veterinary care and appropriate systemic antibiotics to treat septic arthritis.

When a young foal becomes sick, it’s serious business. Seriously ill foals usually require IV fluid therapy, plasma transfusion, and antibiotics. If a foal is having great difficulty breathing, the baby may need bronchodilators to open up his air passages, as well as oxygen therapy. The foal may also need tube feeding to keep his energy and protein intake at high levels.

When an older foal — anywhere from three to six months — gets sick, the young horse is more likely to exhibit the kinds of respiratory symptoms seen in adult horses, including coughing, raspy breathing, depression, fever, and loss of appetite. This is the time in the foal’s life when maternal antibodies are waning and the foal’s immune system is developing. During this period, limit a foal’s exposure to strange horses who have been at shows or in other places where large numbers of horses congregate. If you handle any horses like this yourself, wash your hands well before handling your foal.

Remember

Keep a close eye on your foal so that you can monitor his health. Don’t hesitate to call the vet if something isn’t right. If you see the following symptoms in your foal, the time to act is now!

• Lethargy
• Diarrhea
• Coughing
• Difficulty breathing
• Elevated temperature
• Refusal to nurse (check the mare’s udder; if you notice distention, it may mean that the foal isn’t nursing)
• Struggle to defecate
• Inability to urinate

Training Your Baby Horse Early On

It’ll be years before you (or someone else) start riding your new horse. But that doesn’t mean that you should wait several years before you start her training. Teaching your young horse should begin early in her life. Setting a strong foundation now makes your horse easier to train as she gets older.

Imprinting

Imprinting is a term used to describe a method of early training developed by Robert Miller, DVM. The principle behind imprinting is that you teach the foal that humans are part of her herd and that she’s subordinate to them. By imprinting the foal and making this strong first impression, the foal becomes easier to train in the future.

Imprinting has become a controversial subject in the horse world. Some people believe that imprinting creates a pushy horse who doesn’t respect humans. Others believe that it’s too invasive and interferes with the bond between a mare and her foal.

Other people find that, if done right, imprinting creates a calm, malleable horse who’s easy to train and handle. According to Dr. Miller, the key to successful imprinting is to do it right. Badly done imprinting is worse than none at all.

Tip

If you choose to imprint your foal, study this method carefully long before your baby even hits the ground. Videotapes — available from equine catalogs and Web sites — give you detailed step-by-step advice on how to perform this training method.

Before you begin imprinting, allow the mare and foal to bond. After you get the sense that the two have made that connection, you can proceed with the imprinting. Bonding usually reveals itself by the baby and mother interacting with each other.

You should imprint over three separate sessions. Conduct each session as follows:

- Session one: Performed immediately after the foal is born, this step consists of placing a halter on the foal; bending the foal’s head and holding it to teach yielding; rubbing the foal all over with a towel; handling the foal’s legs and tapping the hooves; placing a finger in the foal’s ears, nostrils, mouth, and anus; and rubbing the foal with different objects, such as clippers, a white plastic bag, and a newspaper. These steps help to teach the foal to submit to human handling.

Remember

During the session, the foal may struggle in an effort to get away from the stimuli. The key to successful imprinting is to continue the stimuli until the foal relaxes. This crucial point is where many handlers go wrong. If you stop the stimuli while the foal is struggling, you teach her to resist you.

- Session two: This session takes place after the foal is standing and has nursed for the first time, and it lasts about 15 minutes. The objective is to desensitize the foal’s back where the saddle will sit, as well as the girth area. The foal also learns to be sensitized in certain areas of her body, like the flanks, and to back up in response to chest pressure, to move forward in response to butt pressure, and to turn on the forehand and hindquarters with pressure. The session also consists of follow-up desensitization of areas covered in the first session.

- Session three: Designed to further sensitize the foal in certain areas of her body, you perform this session when the foal is 12 to 36 hours old, depending on the foal. (The baby needs to be strong on her feet and well-coordinated for this session.) First, halter the foal and repeat all the desensitizing steps from sessions one and two. Then add a leading lesson (see the section “Lead training” for more information).

Remember

Now that you know the basics of imprinting, we want you to know that you can overdo imprinting and take it to the extreme. Coauthor Dr. Kate believes that mare and foal must have time alone together early on in order to form a strong bond. This period is especially critical for a maiden mare and her first baby, when foal rejection is a possibility. Don’t let imprinting interfere with your mare’s ability to bond with her foal. Keep sessions short and don’t keep your mare away from her baby.

Mom and baby: A real team Mother horses are among the most protective and doting of all domestic animal species. And baby horses are among the most devoted offspring. The two are deeply bonded. Keep this fact in mind when you’re handling them, and check out these pointers for dealing with mom and baby as a team:  - If you want the baby to move, you have to move mama first. The foal takes her cues from mom, and if mom isn’t going in that direction, neither is baby. - Mom won’t leave her baby, no matter what. She can be the best-trained horse in the world, but if the baby isn’t coming along, mom isn’t going either. (And no human is big or strong enough to make it happen.) - Mom has only one thing on her mind: Protecting and staying close to her baby. She has no qualms about risking her own life to save her foal. Remember this before doing anything with the baby that mom may perceive as threatening. If the baby acts scared or upset, mom may very well jump in to protect her. - Baby will always go to mom for comfort. In fact, if the baby gets scared or nervous, she runs to mom’s udder and puts her nose near it. The smell of the udder means safety and security to the baby. (You can help the baby feel more comfortable with you by adding this smell to your hands by handling your mare’s udders.)

Additional handling

Whether you choose to imprint your foal or not, it’s a good idea to continue to handle her a lot during her young weeks and months. Dr. Kate uses a specific method that works well for her foals.

At about a month of age, Dr. Kate brings her mares and foals in from pasture and puts them in stalls for four or five days so that the babies can get a refresher course on handling. The babies get lots of pats and scratches from people and get their feet picked up, their ears played with, and both sides of their bodies rubbed.

Dr. Kate starts putting halters on her babies at this stage, but she doesn’t leave them on for safety reasons. (The halter could get caught on something out in the pasture, including another foal; see the next section for more about halter training.)

Because Dr. Kate’s broodmares come to the edge of the pasture daily to get petted (they love attention), the babies come with them and get additional handling, too. They get their feet handled and their bodies and faces touched. At this point, she also starts teaching the babies how to give when light pressure is applied to their bodies — an important lesson for them to learn now so that they’re easier to train when they get older. Dr. Kate asks them to back up by putting pressure on the chest. She also asks them to sidepass (move sideways) by applying light pressure to their sides.

Dr. Kate follows all early training with immediate praise. Soon, she has a very responsive, respectful, and eager group of babies.

Halter training

Foals get used to wearing a halter pretty quickly. At first they may react like a giant fly has landed on their faces. But in short order, they come to ignore the halter.

Breeders and trainers use different methods for teaching babies how to wear a halter. Some people put a special foal-sized web halter on the baby after she’s only a couple of hours old. Others wait a month or more to introduce this piece of equipment.

Coauthor Dr. Kate waits to halter break her babies until they’re weaned, which is at about five to six months of age. (We discuss weaning in more detail later in this chapter.) Working with the foals in a small pen, she puts a halter that’s loose enough to be comfortable but snug enough to prevent getting a foot caught in the webbing on each horse. She attaches a soft cotton lead rope long enough to trail on the ground for about 11⁄2 feet. (When the baby steps on the rope, she learns how to stop and give to pressure — an important lesson when you’re teaching her to accept a rider.)

Dr. Kate takes her babies into a pen several times each day and works with them. This exercise is where the foals’ early training with handling comes in. Because the babies aren’t afraid of pressure on their heads, she can gently restrain them with the lead rope. While she has the foal restrained, she picks up the foal’s feet, gives her injections, and deworms her. This lesson requires time, patience, and repetition.

You can begin halter training your foal at birth by putting a halter on her right after she’s born, or you can wait until the foal is anywhere from one week to four weeks old to get started. The sooner your start with your baby, the sooner your foal will know how to wear a halter.

Tip

If you’re new to horses and don’t have a lot of experience handling adult horses, get a trainer or experienced horse person to help you teach your foal her early lessons.

Lead training

Training a foal to lead is trickier than teaching her to wear a halter. The best age to start is when the baby is a couple of weeks old, after she’s already learned to wear a halter.

People use different methods to teach foals to lead. One of the more popular methods is using a butt rope and halter (see Figure 16-3). The butt rope attaches to the halter and goes around the baby’s rump, behind the back legs. This method works because it teaches the baby to give to the pressure of the rope instead of resisting it, as she would if you just pulled on her head.

Tip

The details on training a foal to lead are beyond the scope of this book, so we suggest that you check out the appendix for some of the books we suggest on foal training to get you started.

Figure 16-3: A butt rope works well when teaching a foal to lead. (Bob Langrish)

Weaning

Mares and their foals stay together at all times until the weaning process begins. A lot of different ideas exist as to when to wean a foal (in other words, when to permanently remove her from her mother). In nature, foals wean themselves at around five or six months of age. In domestic situations, they sometimes wean as early as three months. Some people believe that it’s easier on the mare to have the baby removed early. Others believe that it’s better to leave the foal with the mare until the baby is more mature.

Remember

Both of your authors believe that it’s better to wean a foal in its fifth or sixth month. By this time, the foal has become much more independent of her mom and is eating well on her own. The mare’s milk production begins to decrease gradually at about the third month, which encourages the baby to eat more solid food.

A number of different weaning methods exist. Some handlers wean foals gradually, slowly separating them at a farther and farther distance from their moms. On the other hand, some handlers take foals away cold turkey.

Remember

Although your individual situation determines what works best for you, the most important factor in your plan should be to minimize as much stress as possible for both mare and foal, to prevent injury to both, and to maintain adequate nutrition for the growth of the foal. See the appendix for resources that you can use to wean your foal.

Coauthor Dr. Kate’s method of weaning starts with putting the broodmares and foals all together in a group so that the babies make friends with each other. (This togetherness is also helpful because it teaches the babies how to behave properly around other horses.) At weaning time, the mares move into a pasture next door with a safe 5-foot no-climb woven fence between them. Although the mares and weanlings hang out at the fence for several days to be near each other, Dr. Kate doesn’t hear much whinnying or see signs of stress. The moms and babies can all see one another, but the babies can’t nurse. The mares’ milk quickly dries up, and the babies have friends to play with.

by Audrey Pavia with Kate Gentry-Running,DVM,CVA