New baby, need help

[Laura]

[SIZE=12pt]Long story shorter (or shorter). We found a foal alone in the pasture, with our dogs guarding it, a few hours ago. Our dogs were in the house all night, so we know THEY didn't keep the mare from her foal. We figured out WHO's foal it was by obvious signs of foaling (although I checked everyone's coochie just to make SURE). All the mares went nuts over the baby, except for the EXPERIENCED broodmare he belongs to! She's definitely rejected him for some reason, maybe the other mares chased her off, who knows. She's also one of only 2 mares I have that I can't just walk up and catch. She's caught, but it took a while. [/SIZE]

I have them up together. She's not agressive with him, but she doesn't want any part of him nursing and shows no concern about him at all. She has very little bag and almost no milk. Steve is on his way back from the vet's with colostrum supplement, donated mare's milk (not colostrum) and Domperidone. I'll dose her and feed him, then wait a few hours (while continuing to feed him) and trank her to see if she's more willing. I was only able to get 5 cc's out of her. He perked up more and shows a suck reflex now, just with that tiny amount. Heck, I want to give him my milk, but I know that's not a good idea. Zac would happily share

:

He's weak, but alert. He can't stand on his own, but is trying when stimulated and I think really just needs some calories to get him going a bit. He's got a blanket on and is warmer now. We are being honest with ourselves about the possible outcome, but will hope for the best.

His Dam foaled May 4 at our other farm last year and was not bred back (I didn't think), until she came here. I didn't even have stallions here until the end of JUNE, so I really expected her to foal no earlier than the beginning of June (I introduced the stallion to the mare herd June 20th) and most of the mares cycled at LEAST twice. She must have backed up to fence at the other farm :new_shocked:

He's a lovely bay pinto by the way, tiny bodied with long, long legs. He has a nice haircoat and mane. He's obviously a bit early, but not EARLY. His Dam is a former National Halter Champion and a reliable broodmare....sigh, I hope he makes it and his Mommy gets with the program and accepts him...

Does anyone have the info again on how much milk per hour by body weight?

 

[Ashley]

Why does she need to be druged to let him nurse????

When I had that problem I back the mare into a corner and held her while the foal nursed. AFter a day of doing so she was just fine with him and didnt want anybody or anything near her and him.

 

[jlh]

Laura, the only thing I could find quickly was 1/2 pint every hour for full size foals.

comparing that to our foals at nursing, whatever he will take every 15 minutes can't be bad.

 

[CharmedMinis]

I think it's 60 cc per hour, but I'm not positive!

Try some corn syrup to give him a boost.

If the milk bar doesn't work soon, use a combo of goat milk and kefir to feed him. That's what we did last year with my one foal, Mom had a prolapsed uterus and took over 2 weeks to get enough milk. The foal drank kefir and goat milk plus Mom's milk for her first month.

 

[Mona]

Good Luck with your new little one...I hope that he makes it.

 

[Laura]

Why does she need to be druged to let him nurse????

When I had that problem I back the mare into a corner and held her while the foal nursed. AFter a day of doing so she was just fine with him and didnt want anybody or anything near her and him.

[SIZE=12pt]She's kicking and I really don't want to be kicked in the head here alone with Zac. I realize that tranked horses can lash out, but if she's just a little more relaxed I think it will help. I won't try it until she (hopefully) has more milk. I swear, if her bum wasn't a bloody mess, I'd swear this baby wasn't hers. Everyone else is accounted for and no one else has any signs of having foaled.[/SIZE]

Steve got here with the meds & milk. The baby got the colostrum supplement and took almost an ounce of milk before he decided he needed a nap. He was P I S S E D about the whole procedure and pinned his ears when I wasn't actually feeding him. He is trying to suck and ate pretty eagerly.

 

[LisaB Ozark]

Laura - the foal that we had that the mare rejected (we never knew the reason) never would take the colt. She kicked really bad and would try to hurt the colt if he came near. She also had had several foals previously. I wish I would have had drugs. What we ended up doing was hobbling her rear legs so she could not be as aggressive with the colt and us. When we milked her we hobbled both front and back - she had plenty of milk. We milked her for the first 3 days then switched to foal lac becuase she started drying up and the vet did not think the milk would have the quality the foal needed. We gave him as much as he would eat. We started every 30 minutes then stretched to every hour then went every two hours.

I am sure you have done this before - good luck. If you need hobbles let me know.

Lisa - Ozark

 

[Filipowicz Farm]

We had a colt last year that the madien mare would not have anything to do with. Tried many different ways to have it nurse but nothing worked. Taught the foal to drink from a dish and feed him every hour for the first 12 hours. Milked the mare but not much milk even after giving her a shot. Got milk replacement and the colt is almost a year old and doing fine.Just had to make many trips to the barn and make sure it was drinking milk replacement.

 

[palsminihorses]

Wow! That must have been quite a shock to find the little guy! Good luck with the little feller!

Pam C.

 

[mini_wonderful_things]

I had a mare that rejected her little colt. I milked her through endless days and fed the little thing. Then when I was too tired to do that anymore. I held the mare into the corner until it nursed then I would keep doing that. Then finally she gave in tired of being pushed into a corner. :bgrin

 

[Floridachick]

I hope you can get the mare to accept him :no: But if not try to get him to drink from a bucket instead of nurse a bottle, it will be a life saver for you if you end up being mommy. Someone had directions for a cooler converted into a milker for overnight feedings. hmmmm I will try to find it. goodluck

 

[Miniv]

Number One - is to make sure he gets the colostrum he needs......one way or another! Highly advise having the vet give him an IgG test in about 24 hours. He may end up needing a plasma transfer.

Once that's covered, it sounds like you have a bottle baby on your hands........With our orphan, we found a small bottle at our local Farm Supply store with a nipple designed for Racoons and small monkeys, which he accepted. Everything else we tried, he rejected. (We were syringe feeding him until we found just the nipple he liked.)

Our little guy did really well on Foal Lac. We fed him once an hour initially and then gradually went to every 2 hours. He would take at least 2 ounces per feeding at first and increased to 4 ounces as he got older. By the time he was about 4 or 5 weeks old he was also eating Foal Lac pellets out of a dish, plus nibbling on a little grain and hay.

Basically once you are out of the woods with the colostrum, and he's nice and strong, you shouldn't have a problem.........It's just exhausting, that's all!

MA

 

[Just Us N Texas]

Laura, put the mare into a corner crosswise, make a small stall with a gate or plywood or whatever. Make a hole in the restraint at the mare's bag large enough for the foal to get his head through comfortably. Work with him to get him to nurse the mare. She will be behind a "stock" and he can be loose in the stall with no worries about her kicking or hurting the foal or you. You may have to tie her head for a few hours at a time. If he hasn't nursed and she hasn't accepted him in a couple of days, you're stuck with the bottle. Oh, and put some vicks in her nose so she can't smell him. She's already smelled him and has the scent, so she may not accept his smell now. This is how a lot of nurse mare people make a mare take a foal that isn't theirs. Sure hope it works for you if you try it.

 

[Matt73]

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[Robin1]

We had a mare reject her foal last year. She would grab her and throw her across the stall unless we were standing right there.

When the vet came out she snubbed her head to the post in the stall, braided her tail and tied it into a loop then tied her tail off to one side so the mare was plastered up against the wall. It got to the point that I had to hobble her rear legs as she would still try to kick the baby.

I did this for 5 days and she wasn't getting any better with her. When we had a mare lose a VERY large foal late at night. Both my vet and her husband had to work to get the foal out. I was really worried that I was going to lose the mare.

When the vet was cleaning up, I mentioned the fact that we had a baby that wanted a mommy and a mommy that was going to want her baby. She told me to go get her, we brought out the filly and rubbed her down with the placenta, the filly looked at us like we were really gross people, then took "her" baby and presented her to the mare. The poor mare was sooo exhuasted but did show some interest in the baby. We never let her see her own foal. The mare took on the baby and everything went well, you could see the confusion on her face about the fact that she was doing things a newborn wouldn't be doing but just ended up kind of shrugging her shoulders.

My vets husband said it best, "some things are just meant to be."

I really hope your mare will take on her baby.

Robin

 

[Frankie]

When Prints was born she received 60cc every hour, she weighed 17 pounds. When she got up to 25 pounds, she was switched to 90cc every 2 hours. She had no sucking reflex and that is all she got. Her first feeding in the morning, 6 a.m. and noon feeding, had 5 cc of karo syrup in it as well for energy.

Hope that helps and the best of luck to you all.

 

[Magic]

Laura, how is the little colt doing now? Sounds like you definitely have your hands full.

I don't have any advice, just sending prayers for him, and for all of you to be able to handle all that needs to be done for him. Good luck!

 

[Bess Kelly]

Sounds like she may have been separated from the foal at birth......maybe another mare rounded it up, who knows.....my ONLY thought is that she MAY, MIGHT, WORTH A TRY MAYBE, consider the foal if you can get the scent of her fluids on him. Is there ANY chance that there is enough on her coat/tail to use a warm wet cloth to rehydrate that dried fluid and then wipe it on the foal?

I wish you luck because the alternative is a good bottle right now.

:

 

[PaintedPromiseRanch]

This reminds me of a story I got through one of our donkey groups a while back, I saved it in case we ever had a rejected foal...

I can't get the picture here darn it, when i right click the command to copy into my photo album so i can get it into photobucket does not come up... i could e-mail it to someone if they could post it? But here is the story...

My Momma's an Igloo
by Brenda Short

Short ASSets Ranch

Early this fall, I got a frantic call from one of my friends. One of her jennets had a foal and just left it in the pasture. The baby was with their horse and "momma donkey" was no where to be found. Immediately they took the foal to the barn then found the jennet that had him and took her to the barn. She was a maiden jennet and wanted nothing to do with the foal plus she didn't have much milk.

The vet came out and checked out the foal and jennet and gave her Oxytocin and something to calm her down so the baby could nurse, however, it didn't work. I told her to milk the jennet and give the foal the milk. He needed the colostrum.

They milked her and gave the foal the colostrum and throughout the day and night, they would either milk the jennet or try to restrain her so the foal could nurse and "hopefully" she would accept him. No way Jose'. She didn't like the foal and continually tried to kick him so they were forced to take the foal out of the stall with his mother.

After about 3 days of bottle feeding the foal with milk replacer, my friend and her husband were just about to collapse from exhaustion. Between taking care of their other animals, feeding the foal, and both working, they were desperate for help.

I remembered a story that our farrier had shared with us and also another friend had used successfully. I immediately got on the internet and emailed it to my friend.

You get an Igloo cooler (or something like it) and remove the spigot. Get a piece of PVC pipe that will screw in where the spigot was. Use a lamb's nipple over the end of the PVC pipe and secure it with a ty-wrap or a hose clamp. Mix up your milk replacer and put it in the cooler and replace the lid. This not only will keep the milk warm but will also keep the flies out. You can hang it on the fence or on the inside of the stall. Then it's just teaching the foal to suck from it instead of the bottle.

It wasn't long until she emailed me back. The foal had latched on to Momma Igloo and was doing great. He would run and play and when he got hungry he would run over to Momma Igloo and fill his tummy and go back to playing. They were able to get some sleep and were doing much better too.

Don't forget this helpful story. You might need it someday if you have foal rejection, a jennet with no milk or a desperate friend.

 

[jdomep]

I hope you can get the mare to accept him :no: But if not try to get him to drink from a bucket instead of nurse a bottle, it will be a life saver for you if you end up being mommy. Someone had directions for a cooler converted into a milker for overnight feedings. hmmmm I will try to find it. goodluck

We had a rejected jack last May the mom had him in the pasture left him to go graze

: luckily I got there when he was still wet and wobbly - put them together but she would kick the whoowhoo out of him and us if we even tried to have him nurse - sedation didn't help her at all, but we did get some frozen clostrum and that icky brown fake colostrum. She had a small bag and not a lot of milk by day 2 we were mixing her milk (what we could get) mixed with goats milk and I got him to drink from a small bowl (best think I ever did LOL) He is now 9 months old and thriving

:

I wish you the best of luck!