Tag: horses

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.

While thinking about the foals that we have this year and the new ones on the way, I sometimes think about how humans have taken horses and bred them in a certain way in order to ‘better’ them. In most cases they want the resulting foals to, each generation, be considered more beautiful (set to breed standards) as well as more talented than their parents. And of course, over the years since the different horse breeds were created, we have successfully improved the look and talent of horses.

So sometimes I think about what the human race would be like if we’d done the same thing with ourselves. A horse with two parents who are talented jumpers will likely be a talented jumper. The same way that a child who has two musically gifted parents will likely follow in their footsteps, but in most cases this is just chance in humans. But what if, for the last hundred or so years (since humans have a much longer ‘generation’ than horses) we had taken talented musicians to breed better musicians, or people with high IQs to breed people with high IQs, or even just people with good eyesight, or people who were tall?

We, as a species, stumble around, creating children out of whatever random paring comes up, either through marriage or not. Just think about how amazing our race could be if we actually improved ourselves each generation with the purpose and planning that goes into creating World Champion horses.

So the most common time that a mare loses a foal is between 15 and 30 days. (It’s in general more common at the beginning.) Today was day 32 and the vets came to check her once again. The baby’s still there and I actually got to see her heart beating on the ultrasound. (Well it just looks like a tiny flutter at this point, but still!!!) Nezi still doesn’t have the bright CL, but the vets said that after day 45 the placenta starts developing and that takes over creating the progesterone, so there’s no way I’ll have to keep giving her meds through the whole pregnancy, which is a relief. I know Regimate isn’t cheap, I’m really lucky that Deb just had some around that she’s letting me use.

Vets came back for multiple things, but also checked Nezi while they were here. Baby is still there. YAY, but still no bright CL. I turned down a progesterone test since the Cl wasn’t bright, plan on getting that done at the 30 day check. Nezi is absolutely horrible about taking anything into her mouth (ie, the Regimate she’s been on.) but thankfully if we leave it in some food in her bucket for long enough she gets around to eating it. I don’t think I could have handled twitching her for a month, which is what we had to do the first couple days.

So usually when trying to get a mare pregnant, you check to see they’ve ovulated after you put in the sperm. With Nezi, the follicle we were planning on breeding on ovulated before the sperm arrived, but on the 14 day check, the vets found something that appeared to be a baby. They believe that the follicle that had only been a 28 ovulated a day or two later, and there was apparently still a swimmer around to fertilize it.
The vets then came back the next day saying that it was a baby, but that the CL was not as bright as they like, so Nezi will be on Regimate for a month so she doesn’t lose the baby due to a lack of hormones. And of course, Nezi hates to be given medicine, but hopefully my baby stays in there. I told her to keep it if it’s a colored filly, so hopefully she listened.

So I have entered into a deal with Deb, the owner of the barn where I work, with one of her mares, a golden palomino with a blanket called Nez Tea. I am going to pay for all of the breeding costs for getting Nezi pregnant, and the resulting baby will be mine to do with as I please. Then next year I’ll pay to breed Nezi again and the resulting baby will be Deb’s. This allows me to “lease” a mare to breed without having to pay all of the board and care costs of the mare since I don’t want to use my mare yet since I’m still using her to learn to ride.

Nezi was not under lights, so it was only about the beginning of last week that her uterus started waking up. The vets said we should check her again Monday (yesterday). Well Friday afternoon she was very clearly showing us that she was in heat. Unfortunately it was already too late to order semen that day and Char-o-lot doesn’t collect on weekends, so I prepared to miss her while we waited for Monday.

Monday morning came and the vets checked her to find three follicles on her left ovary, the largest of which was a 41. On their recommendation, I ordered semen and gave her a shot of HCG. The semen arrived today just after lunch. The busy vets were only able to get out to the farm by 3:30 and the 41 follicle was rather predictably gone.

The vets put in all of the semen we had received since Nezi had already ovulated hoping to catch the recently released egg or one of the still growing follicles will ovulate in the next 36 hours with the HCG shot.

In one way it’s nice because it saves me from having to pay the vets to come again tomorrow to put in a second dose and/or check for ovulation. On the other hand it makes me nervous that she just won’t get pregnant and we’ll have to try again. It really does make a difference knowing it’s my money that will have to pay for a recollection, but I really didn’t want to go much longer. I would certainly love to get her pregnant now as the beginning of March is a good time for babies to be born…you know. Right near/on my birthday.

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And yes, I didn’t really explain what the heck I’m talking about, but this is more of a record for me than anything. Though if anyone shows interest I’m more than happy to explain more about what goes on in trying to get a mare pregnant.

So we’ve had two foals born at the barn in the past month. The first was from Drifterella, who had her filly two and a half weeks early, though luckily she was just fine if not a might small. She’s a solid chestnut even though her mother is (minimally) colored. The second was out of She’s Cool Lukin, a rather colored mare, but ended up being another solid chestnut, though a colt. I should put up some pictures. Babies are cute.

We’re waiting on Diamond to foal hers in about two weeks. Hopefully she has a colored foal…

It was really cold today.

A horse at the barn where I worked, named Andy, had to be put down on Wednesday just due to old age. He had finally reached the end of his natural life and while I was sorry to see him go, I’m glad that he can now rest.