The foaling rollercoaster of 2024 season. Ruth pt 1.

I don't know about you, but last season was tough.

DISCLAIMER: The following posts will be about the loss of foals or mares. This will be difficult for many, but it is a fact of breeding. Not everything goes to plan. I want to share them as a way for myself to understand what went wrong, what I could have done diffrently to prevent or improve the outcome, if and when this happens again.

On farm, we had an expetionally large number of difficult foalings and bad outcomes. Not one of them I dealt with, was within my control and ability to solve. Nature had her hand in that.

This is a 2 for 1 tale of sadness.

It does have a happy ending.

The first was a stillborn colt.

He was cute as a button, but he never even took a breath.

What happened?

She was within her expected due date. Around the 337 days.

Stage 1 labour in mares is a gradual process. You see her starting to get uncomfortable and it builds up over a period of 45 minutes to a little over an hour. that depends on her maiden status, or if she is a nervous type, or experienced and knows whats goign on.

This lovely lady has had a few kids and her last pregnancy and labour had been normal and what you ecpect.

This time, it came on strong, and quick! Quick, I think it was under 30 minutes from the first signs of labour to stage 2 of her breaking waters. That was a little unusual, but nothing jumped out at me.

So intro the area where I foal down at night, did a check for the 2 toes and a nose. Yep, but upsidedown. Trie as I might in 5 minutes, I could not get it to turn, so I called for back up and Boss came out.

While waiting, I was walking her to slow the labour as our standard procedure untill further help arrive.

Boss had a bit more luck and when she got down again, we both had to help. This colt was a big one!

Total time from waters breaking to delivery was around 20 minuts, may be pushing 25, but it was within acceptable limits to expect a live foal.

But he wasnt. he didnt even take a breath.

WTF!

No redbag.

Normal delivery time.

What could have happened?

When our resident vet arrived later, the main conclusion was that the colt was already dead and that triggered labout. What they refer to a late-term abortion. Most likely ther was enough placental seperation that caused hypoxic injury and sdeath, but not enough seperation to be a redbag delivery.

The next loss, was a mare, the folloing week. She unfortunatly sustained a severe injury during foaling that she was loosing life to slow internal hemoraging that cold not be stopped and she was euthinased . Her little girl was fine. We called her Ruth ( her big brother we call Bruce, that where we got her name from).

Next post is how Ruth met her mum.