Morning/afternoon Cassie. Yes, heavy breathing is quite normal for most mares during the last few weeks of being preggers. We have a slight slope up from what we call our maternity field to the barn we used to foal in, and poor Mummy mare always had to take several 'rest' periods each evening as she made her way up and into the barn for the night!
Dont forget that not only is the foal now at its full size, but the bag of fluid surrounding it is now a bit like a full tight balloon because of the size of the foal inside it. So all this not only pushes on other organs, it does restrict the lung expansion.
It also restricts the stomach size whch is why Suzie is often unable to finish her food in one go. I still say that you need to cut down on the amount of food given - when I see her first eating, it looks as though her hook on bowl is pretty full. A mare needs a small amount of concentrated food rather than a load of bulky food. Ad lib grass during the day and ad lib hay over night is essential in my opinion, because a mare will graze steadily on these, and her digestion copes easily with the steady trickle of food passing through. All horses, being horses, like their 'main' feeds, so they tuck in at a great rate, with no thought that they might be overfilling their stomachs! A mare at this late stage in pregnancy has nowhere near the 'space' in her stomach as she thinks she does, and can therefore overfill herself (making herself feel very uncomfortable/even in pain) rather than leave any food behind. A few, like Suzie, will in the end leave some food as they realise they just cant stuff anymore into their full up stomachs, and return later to finish what is left. The rush to eat, say, breakfast, is made worse if they haven't had sufficient hay to eat overnight thus leaving them feeling 'peckish' come morning, whereupon the rush to eat their feed, which then rushes down to fill a stomach that just cannot cope with all that food suddenly arriving!
The above, of course, is a very general/simple explanation of a digestive system for a heavily pregnant mare, but I wanted to to realise why, a couple of weeks ago, I said that it might be a good idea if you cut down on the bulk in Suzie's food and got something that was more 'concentrated'. I think Suzie is showing you, by often leaving some food, that there is too much for her to manage in her bowl. A cupful of a good concentrate twice a day, plus a little soaked sugar beet will give her all her minerals and vitamins, she doesn't need any extra 'bulk' right now, but be sure to give enough hay so she can graze throughout the night, she wont over eat the hay and her system will feel a lot more comfortable with 'trickle' food passing through it - just as it would be if she lived as a 'natural' horse.
Again, all this is just my opinion, but after years of breeding big, fully fed, horses and then miniatures, I have found that to keep digestive systems as near to their 'natural' working ability, the less likely I am to have problems like colic etc.
Nancy, I am absolutely useless when it comes to colours, but I just have to say that I love your little chap, Momma too, he's a good looking cute little chap.
she was lovely and has done breeding for 20 so years!!
thankyou everyone for encouraging me to ring
