Foaling Time Is A Sunset Away

As spring approaches, so comes foaling season. The reward for waiting 340 excruciating days is the safe, smooth delivery of a happy, healthy foal. When something goes wrong it can be devastating, and seemingly small problems can quickly become life threatening to both the mare and foal. Careful preparation and planning can go a long way to ensuring the safest possible foaling event, and can prevent potentially fatal complications.


Know Your Foaling Date

This seems simple, but unlike most other species, the gestation for a foal can vary quite a bit. The average gestation of a mare is 340 days, or roughly 11 months and 11 days. Unfortunately, in practice, healthy, normal gestation can be as little as 320 days, and as much as 370 days (longer than a year!). Foals born earlier than 320 days are considered premature and require special care, and often hospitalization. Foals born less than 300 days are extremely premature, and have almost no chance for survival.



Foaling, or parturition, is an explosive and rapid event, and in perfect situations requires no human involvement. However, when complications occur, immediate human intervention is necessary to avoid potentially fatal complications. In most cases, foaling should be an event closely monitored, with attendants ready to step in and offer assistance to the mare at the first sign of trouble.



Unfortunately, most horses foal at night, necessitating at least one, and usually quite a few all-night vigils to catch the blessed event. Knowing your foaling date will help you to plan your stable sleep-overs.



While it is hard to predict when in the due-date range your mare may foal, careful attention to detail may help to narrow the time down. Mares tend to foal around the same time of gestation yearly, so if you have a mare that has tended to foal at a certain amount of days in the past, chances are that she will follow that trend again. Maiden mares are the exception to this rule, and often maiden mares will follow a completely different schedule from their first foaling than any during any subsequent pregnancies.


Have a Foaling Kit Ready

A well-stocked foaling kit should be prepared at least a month before your mares due date. This kit includes items that you will use during foaling (disinfectants, etc) to items that you hope not to use, but stock anyway “just in case”. Make sure to keep your kit in a clean, waterproof box near your mare’s stall, readily accessible when the time is right.



The basic foaling kit should include:



* A flashlight with extra batteries
* Scissors
* Sterile string (such as umbilical tape) to tie off umbilical cord, and tie up placenta as it is being expelled from the mare
* Iodine (for the umbilical cord)
* Mild soap and a bucket (for washing the mares vulva and teats)
* Vetwrap and bandaging material (for tieing up the mares tail)
* Extra towels and gloves
* Enemas (for the foal after birth)



Other items that should be readily available for foaling include a halter and lead rope, twitch, a watch, paper and pen, surgical lube and a charged phone with good connectivity.


Plan Your Exit Strategy



The best preparation you can make for foaling is to be intimately familiar with the process, so that you are quickly able to determine when parturition isn’t proceeding normally, and can summon help. As foaling nears, talk to your veterinarian about possible scenarios, and make sure he or she will be available and on call for you if problems do occur during foaling. If necessary, talk to other vets in the area in advance of the foaling date, and ensure sure you have a support network in place when the time arrives.



If you have a truck and trailer, have them hooked up and fill the gas tank. If an emergency trip to the hospital becomes a necessity, having the trailer ready to go can save valuable minutes. If you do not own a trailer, talk to friends and try to come up with a plan so that if the worst scenario occurs, you are prepared. In some situations, it may be necessary to talk to commercial hauling companies to ensure that your mare and foal will have an emergency ride to the equine hospital if it becomes a necessity.



The old adage about getting things ready so you won’t need them never applied so well as it does to foaling. We hope and pray for the best case scenario, and a trouble-free foaling, but planning for the worst can to provide the best possible outcome if it actually happens. Your careful preparations can make the difference between life and death of both the mare and foal during parturition.


Interested in horses? Stop by our award winning horse forum at EquestrianHorseForum and lets talk some more about foaling and horse related topics.


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Stopping the Lead Rope Breaker

There are many horses that have found the best way to get out of working, is to sit back and break their rope, halter, bridle, reins, etc. They learn that if the break it, then they will be put back in their stall or out to pasture, while you go hunt down a spare or go buy a new one. How you handle this situation, however, will also be the start of new habits for your horse, either good or bad.

The key to this situation is finding out the core of the problem. Why does your horse rear back when he is tied? Many horses know that this is a way of getting out of work, while other horses may be reacting out of fear. When you tie your horse, you are taking away his ability of flight. Horses are innate fight or flight animals and the majority of them prefer to fly. Many people have used numerous tricks to keep their horses from breaking their equipment. From stronger lead ropes to bungee cords, people have tied their horses up and try to make them “get used to it.” Everything is more frightening to a horse when they are tied up, from sneezes to phone calls, just about anything will set these horses off. They are often usually leery of being tied up from bad experiences as colts or they may have never been taught to yield to pressure or how to tie properly.

Many horses that rear back have never really been halter broke and may have never really learned about responding to pressure properly. Many people will halter their colts and figure the colt is halter broke because they follow them around like puppies. This is not necessarily the case, the first time that colt feels pressure on his head, he is going to have a fit and rear back. You will first want to begin by teaching the horse to respond to light pressure from the halter. You want them to learn to follow a feel. You will begin by applying slight pressure to the halter from the lead rope, the instant the horse reacts you will give him slack. You don’t want to pull strongly on the halter as this will only result in a brace and lean from the horse. You just want the horse to learn to follow a feel and teach him that his reaction does not have to be dramatic.

The key is to teach your horse to be confident, work with him and apply pressure in a variety of ways. You may also want to begin teaching your horse to tie by standing still and not tied to anything at all. If you are afraid the horse is going to wonder off, just loop your lead rope around your fence pole once. This will supply enough pressure to keep him in one place, but if he feels the need to rear back he won’t meet any resistance. This will also keep you from having to buy a new halter.

As your horse gains confidence, you will start exposing him to new situations and activities, but always allow him to feel as if he can come and go as he pleases. This will allow him to approach things that he is curious about without having to commit. Soon, the horse will become used to a lot of new sounds and objects and very few things will excite him or scare him.


Thanks for taking the time to read my rant! I hope you will stop by our growing revamped equine network


Happy Trails and Training


Equineman