There are over 100 million horses, donkeys and mules in the world today and owners of these animals can be found on almost every continent and in almost every society. The Horse Course will cover many unique aspects of equine ownership and touch upon the science behind many of today’s management practices.
Post Foaling Care
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From the course by University of Florida
The Horse Course: Introduction to Basic Care and Management
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From the lesson
Breeding Management
The topics this week will focus on equine reproduction. Breeding is an important component of the equine industry. We will start off this week with some basic anatomy, including what makes the equids unique. Then we will cover the estrous cycles of mares and jennies, followed by common breeding systems used throughout the world. After discussing unique aspects of equine pregnancy and parturition, we will finish out the week covering some management tips for taking care of the newborn foal.
Meet the Instructors
Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
All right, welcome to our last lecture.
Oh man this makes me sad.
So, we were just talking at the studio about how sad this makes me,
cuz it's the last one, and after four and a half months of doing this every week,
here we are, the last lecture and my favorite topic, the foals, the babies.
That's why we do this, that's why I do this, and
do my research is because I want more of those babies walking around this planet.
So for review, the three stages of Parturition, it's really something you
should know, and then we did start talking about this dystocia, and
some of the things you can do.
So, I wanted to put some slides together and
again, we're gonna jump into post foaling care here in a minute, but here's some.
That's why we're involved with the birthing process with horses, and we
don't let them try and do this unobserved, so if they do run into problems, and
one of the ones that you see, and again it's rare.
I've only seen this instance once.
So again, out of the hundred births that I've seen, I've ran into this one time,
and was pretty scary, and that's where it's called red bag and
this is where that placenta becomes completely detached in the uterus.
So you have this big balloon with the foal in there,
with nothing providing no oxygen.
Really, nutrients don't matter at this point,
it's the oxygen to the brain is the problem.
So that foal's drowning, and you need to get him out as fast as you can.
So that's why in a foaling kit, people always have a pocket knife or, a knife to
where they can cut open that layer and get that foal out as quickly as they can.
If you can't in time, which unfortunately happened in our situation,
where we didn't didn't get the foal out for 30 minutes.
The foal was what we call a dummy foal, it was brain dead and we had to euthanize it,
and it's one of the most tragic things you have to witness.
So again, if you see that red bag you want them out as fast as possible and
that is what you want to see the amnion, not this red presentation.
Now, what's a dystocia?
We kind of talked about that, the malposition of the foal.
Some of these you can fix on your own, especially with experience.
Others you're definitely going to need help with a veterinarian or it could end
up in cesarean section, where they have to get the foal out to save the mare's life.
Now one of the ones that you can do on your own is this posterior presentation.
So instead of, we talked about one sole followed by the next foot,
followed by the muzzle, and this is soles down.
This is if you look and the soles are up.
Then you know that baby's coming out backwards.
So, what you would need to do is deliver them as quickly as possible, because right
here they're showing you that kind of tight area, and that could pinch off some
of the umbilicus, and then that foal's not getting any oxygen to the brain.
So again it can lead to, what we call dummy foal, or brain dead foals,
which is not something you ever want to see.
Allright, and then some of these, with some experience, or
if you're really by yourself and you need to get this done.
You can try to reposition the foal, and that's where they have one leg back, and
when the mare is not pushing, you can try to push that foal back in the birth canal
and slowly work that leg forward, or same thing with the neck back.
You push them in, and try to work that head forward.
You know I would look online.
There's some good videos or some good advice out there especially if you
are going to be foaling mares by yourself, and
a veterinarian's not gonna be near you, to where you're gonna be depended upon.
But again, when in doubt, call somebody to get advice.
Now these are the more difficult ones that usually end up in caesarean section, and
foals tend not to survive these, with these
your really depending on trying to save the mare, but some foals do survive it.
Don't give up hope.
It's just to warn you, that could happen and
that's the breech or the back's coming out, or the feet and
it's just not something that you want to run into, and it's pretty rare.
The couple dystocia's I've dealt with were just really big foals, and
were shoulder lock, or I had to help move one leg forward.
So, it's not super common occurrence.
Now, once those guys are born,
this is a couple pictures I took as a graduate student.
Here's a foal standing for
the first time, and then here's a foal attempting to nurse for the first time.
So they should be doing some of these benchmarks that we're gonna talk about.
So, right after they're born they should be breathing, should look lively.
Now those first few breaths are gonna be a little bit labored, but
they should get through it.
Some people actually suggest putting some straw in the nose to kinda stimulate them
to breathe, but generally you leave them alone, they do it on their own.
They try to start standing within 30 minutes and
it's a good comedy show if you haven't seen it before.
They stumble everywhere, but within two hours they can stand, and
within a few more hours after that, they should be able to walk and run with mom.
So again, amazing to see these little guys do that.
And then nursing, they should nurse within three to four hours, and
this can be a little frustrating, but you have to be patient, and
they'll try to nurse everything but the udder.
I mean they will nurse mom's leg and mom's lips, and they'll just, until they find
it and, what's amazing these older mares, you watch these really seasoned mares and
this mare right here, she was actually pushing the foal back to her udder.
And they will push them back and
say hey dummy, right there, right there, until they latch on.
So you wanna make sure they're nursing, and then within four to six hours they
poop for the first time and it's called a meconium, and it's
kind of a plug that's in there, you don't wanna get it on your boots or your shoes.
It's really nasty, sticky, black tarry substance,
but you should watch them defecate.
Once they pass these milestones then you can go back to bed.
For me, it was usually six in the morning,
so I still had the rest of the day to go to school and all of that fun stuff.
All right, some other things that you would maybe want to add to your management
and highly suggest, is give them a tetanus vaccine right off the bat,
cuz tetanus is in the environment.
Again, it's something that we don't want them to get.
Make sure sure it's not a combo vaccine.
There's a lot of tetanus combination vaccines
that you don't want to give a foal.
So it needs to be tetanus only.
You want to check the mares colostrum,
we're gonna talk about that a little bit more.
You can give them an enema.
So if you want to help them pass that meconium,
you can either get a commercial product, or you can, warm soapy water.
But be very, very careful any time you enter the rectum on a horse that
you don't rip it, cuz if you do rip the rectum you can kill them.
So, they'll get infected and die.
So you don't want to do that.
So be very careful, use lubrication and don't fight, and get in there,
and stand away, because it can come right back out.
But it does tend to help them pass the meconium and
then check the foals IgG levels, which we're gonna talk about here in a second.
So once that foal's on the ground, you want to check mom's milk,
because foals are born with no immune system.
And if you remember going back to our genetics lecture,
severe combined amino deficiency, and these Arabian foals can live for
a few months and then, they die, because they don't have an immune system.
They never develop an immune system.
Well, the reason is, is foals get their immunity from mom, and
we get these immunoglobulins that the foal absorbs within the first 24 hours of life.
So that stomach lining is such, that these large molecules,
they're really large molecules, can be absorbed in the stomach lining.
Well after 12 hours and then by 24 hours they're closed, and so
they can't absorb anymore of those immunoglobulins.
So, they get that from colostrum, and they get that from mom's first milk.
So you wanna check that to make sure its good.
Now there's different products on the market.
There's this Gamma Check C, the colostrumeter here, and
then there's a commercial product called refractometer.
There's different ones you can use and basically you're checking their colostrum.
If you don't have good colostrum with the mom,
then you either call a veterinarian that has access to colostrum, or
on your farm you have a colostrum bank, and the veterinarian can come out and
pass a tube, a nasogastric tube to where they can pump colostrum into the stomach.
Doesn't matter which mare it's from, it just has to be good colostrum for them.
Now, after 24 hours we want to check the foal to make sure they actually did get
enough immunity, because if they don't they can get sick and die.
And again, we don't want that, and we've invested a lot of time and
money in them and we don't want them to get sick and die.
So what we do we assess passive transfer.
Again, different commercial kits on the market.
I've used a couple different ones of these.
The SNAP kits here in the states are relatively nice to use, and the only
problem is you need a blood sample from a foal, and the diameter of their jugular
veins' pretty small, and they don't like getting shots like little kids, so
it's a little bit of a rodeo when you're trying to get blood samples from them.
So, you may have a veterinary come out and do it if you're not comfortable doing it,
but basically what you're checking is to make sure that, that immunity's good, and
if not, if say mare's colostrum was good, but the foal didn't get it.
Then your other alternative is to do a much more expensive procedure,
a plasma transfer, where you transfer the plasma that has the immunity in it,
because it's really critical for, for their health the first few months.
Now some fun stuff, foal diarrhea.
That hind end, you're gonna see it a lot if you do a lot of foals, and
it's normal for them to have bouts of diarrhea, or what we call foal scowers
by around day ten, and the research isn't too clear what causes this.
Mom's starting to come into heat, so she's cycling her estrogen's a little bit high,
some people think there's a link with that, but
they haven't really identified it yet.
Basically, this is a normal thing.
You just want to make sure they're not gonna get dehydrated,
especially places like here in Florida.
Like today, really hot, and nasty and so, babies make sure they're getting enough
fluids, and you wanna clean their hind end and scrub them so, clean that off,
because it will burn the hair off their hind ends and but it's normal.
Now this patent urachus we talked about in the last lecture,
that if you rip that umbilical cord or
sometimes it happens on it's own, it gets cut too close to the umbilical stump.
They get this patent urachus, which the urachus is part of the umbilical
cord right here, and that's where they urinate while they're gestating.
So, and then after birth it closes.
Well, what happens is, is that doesn't close properly.
So you get urine dribbling out of that right there, and
so it can be highly irritating and then can get infected.
So you want a veterinarian to come and treat that to make sure that,
that isn't let go.
Now this last one, I debated not including this, but I think it's important
enough to include, is this thing called Neonatal Isoerythrolysis,
NI, and this is a pretty terrible thing that happens.
And basically what happens is during pregnancy there was some sort of tear and
a little bit of that foal blood circulated in mom.
So mom develops antibodies to that.
Foal's born, and then foal will consume
colostrum that has these antibodies that attacks it's own red blood cells.
That's what the immune system does, it recognizes something that's not self, and
it attacks, and so mom passes that in her colostrum.
So, it actually can result in the death of the foal and it's pretty tragic.
So you generally don't know if your mare has this until it's too late, but
the good news is if you have an NI mare, or you purchase an NI mare.
You just are aware of that, and the next time she has a foal,
you strip her colostrum, so you have to completely milk her out, and
put on a muzzle on the foal, don't let them nurse that mare's colostrum.
You want to tube them with another mare's colostrum, and after 24 hours,
you can start allowing that foal to nurse on that mom and they'll be fine.
It's just that colostrum, remember those first 12 to 24 hours
where that stomach lining absorbs those molecules.
So, it's something to be aware of and it's not fun to deal with, but
it is out there so, you should know about that.
Now if your foal does have it, or your jenny has it and
you find your foal really ill or listless.
Check those gums for color and if they're pale or yellow then you have this problem.
Get a veterinarian, try to get them some supportive care and
see if you can save that foal.
Now, I didn't want to end that lecture on that note, so
overall foals are born healthy and happy, and they are wonderful.
This is a baby on one of my projects and, we're working on mama there,
and they're the best.
They are just so fun.
I highly encourage any of you if you have an opportunity to watch a foal be born,
play with them, have fun with them, they're amazing.
It's just [SOUND], it's the best time of year for
the horse industry is when those babies start hitting the ground, and this is it.
So that's the end.
There's a picture of Secretariat in the winner circle, and if you made it this far
thank you, thank you for sticking with us, for this past six weeks.
I am really excited to be offering this class, and I really,
my goal at the beginning of this when I applied for this months ago to
do this course, was to make the world a better place for the equids, for
the horses and donkeys out there, and then in turn making their owners' lives better.
So I hope you've learned something that you can carry on in your day to day life.
So just some reminders.
Take Quiz 6 the end of the week.
Please finish your peer evals from last week,
and then if you can finish out the course surveys that would be a great help to us
the next time we offer this class.
We'll be able to change thing up possibly based on your recommendations, and
last but not least,
I have to thank my team that have helped me put this course together.
We've been working on this for going on five months now and
Angie Nicholson, who has been huge in developing this course.
She's the one really behind the scenes, putting this together, building
the website and all that stuff, and then Carson and Andrea who are behind there.
Recording every day, laughing at me, making me laugh,
and Joe and Greg who have been tremendous in putting together
the promotional videos, and then all the staff here at UF.
Just so you know it's not me by myself,
it's a huge team putting this together to bring you this information and
I appreciate their help and all their feedback.
So thank you.
I will hopefully run into some of you and let me know on the discussion board,
what you liked about the class, and the interactivity and stuff that we've done,
and good luck and take care of your animals.
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