So there’s something defiantly different about the foal being mine. I didn’t think it would make as much of a difference as it did. I mean I loved the three foals that were born last year, and watched out for them, and tried to train them as best I knew how, but I never actually worried about them the way I did about this foal.
When both mares waxed up and we came in Tuesday morning to find Maggie’s foal, I had this feeling that Nezi might go overnight, even though it didn’t look like she was going to go. Both Wednesday and Thursday morning I drove to work berating myself for not having spent the night, thinking that I would come in to find my foal had been strangled by his own umbilical cord, or been unable to get out of the placenta, or something else had happened where if I had just stayed all night I would’ve been able to save him.
But it ended up that she didn’t give birth those two nights. And during the day on Thursday Nezi has very soft behind and was dripping milk around time for afternoon chores, she got an odd lump in her stomach that Kate said was probably the baby moving. So that night Deb came to check on Nezi around 9:45. At 11:15 I showed up, prepared to spend the night with a baby monitor next to my head, only to stick my head into the stall to see a large amount of white butt in the dark.
I called Deb and went into the stall to begin to rub down the baby, though I was too scared/flustered to do anything else. The foal managed to get to his feet by the time Deb and Morgan showed up. Deb turned on the light and I saw that the baby was actually chestnut colored with a white blanket that covered his entire butt, down his back legs, and all the way up his back. All four legs had lightning marks up most of them. He also had a huge blaze that went down around the left side of his face.
Deb was the one who checked to see that it was a boy. She and Morgan then began praising how nice he looked, his legs and neck and heart-girth. I was, of course, taken mostly by the amazing amount of color and being happy about the unique facial marking.
I put the stuff on his umbilical stump and waited around until he had taken his first sips and Nezi passed the placenta, I cleaned out the stall and put in hay and headed home around 2am, which is a lot better than I thought. And still I worried on my way to work the next day that maybe the baby hadn’t drank enough milk to stay alive, or that it would be dead for other reasons. At yet he was there being all nice and happy when I arrived.
I had to do chores, and by the time the vets came it was getting cold. Nick passed all the tests except that his snap test was only average, and with the Strangles scare, I decided to go ahead and give him plasma to help boost his immunities.
Part of me is glad that he is a colt. If he had been a mare, I would have been extremely tempted to keep him for myself and my future broodmare band. Right now I’m probably going to talk to Deb about even gelding him. If I plan to sell him as a yearling then it might raise his worth to be a stallion if he turns out as nice as Deb might think. Also, if I sell him for a decent amount, I may be able to Choose Your Spots Nezi again next spring for another baby that may end up being a mare. If not, then that may be when I breed Tori.
