Rural Heritage December 2025/January 2026

type material likes to hide. It is a good place to clean a mare even if she isn’t foaling as part of a good hygiene regimen. Some mares are a little touchy there, so use caution. This mare was fine with me checking her out. I squeezed each teat to make sure her milk was coming in. Everything seemed just about perfect. A good mental guide to follow when a mare has foaled is called the 1-2-3 Rule. At one hour, the foal should stand. After two hours, the foal should nurse. By hour three, the mare should “clean,” or pass the placenta. I like to see the mare clean sooner than three hours, and most do. I will say, however, if the mare has not cleaned in three hours, she may be headed for real trouble, and the veterinarian needs to be on the way. Infection and founder are lurking -- just waiting for a chance to ruin a good horse. If the placenta is hanging out of the mare, do not pull on it. The best thing is to wait for a vet. He will give oxytocin and may even hang a small weight (8 ounces) on the placenta, but every vet is different. The main thing is you do not want even a very small piece of the placenta to be retained. Back to the colt laying on the straw, he made several tries to get up, but his back legs didn’t want to cooperate. This sight is not uncommon after a foal being all balled up inside mom for almost a year, but they usually shake that off quickly and figure out how to stand. We have had foals trying to get up even before their back legs are out of the mare. So, in this case, I was starting to get concerned. We were two hours into his birth, and he simply couldn’t get up. I went and got a plastic water bottle and a 60 ML syringe. I cut the top off of the bottle and used it like a small milk pail. I milked the life-giving colostrum out of mom and sucked it into the syringe. I put the syringe into the foal’s mouth, and he started to suck. He sucked so hard he pulled the plunger down. I gave him 240 mls (four syringes full) every 60 to 90 minutes for the next eight hours. I knew things were looking bleak. At hour number 10 since birth, my son helped me get the foal up on his feet. The two of us lifted him and got him to stand. We put a little maple syrup on our fingers as well as some on mom’s teats. We got the foal to suck our fingers, while slowly encouraging him to get ever closer to mom’s lunch spigots. It worked like a charm. He nursed with gusto. Once a

foal “latches on” they usually have it all figured out, and he sure did! He stayed up, walked around on shaky legs and nursed often. The mare began to pay him a little more attention. Up until this point, she had been almost aloof, not wanting to have anything to do with her baby. (This can be a telltale sign, the mares seem to know that something is wrong and will simply walk away from the newly born foal if there is some unseen issue.) I, on the other hand, was convinced that if I could keep helping him up, he kept eating, standing and walking, he would get stronger and all would be fine. The colt would stay up for hours, once we got him up, but when he laid down, that was it. He could not get up by himself. Early in the morning of day two, from flopping around, he had knocked his umbilical open and was bleeding. I got some strong jute twine and tied it off. I sprayed his navel again with iodine, a task to stay diligent on to stave off infection and get the navel to dry up. (There are more modern sprays than iodine available now,

On day three, the colt is nursing without issue.

December 2025/January 2026

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