Wet mare not doing well

[victoria]

We have a broodmare who seems to be really getting dragged down by her foal this year. She is very light, on good pasture 24/7, fed 2x daily each feeding is a 1 cup of broodmare, 1 cup of Economix, half a cup of promita, 2 cups of beet pulp, 1 cup of chaff hage, 2 cups of soaked alfa alfa cups. and then they get a 4 flakes of meadow hay at night. she seems really light and Im not sure what else to do for her. Her foal is only just 3 months old now. I would love to wean him for her sake but to me 3 months is too young. What would you do..

 

[KrisP]

I'd have the vet check her teeth to see if there is a problem. Also I don't know if you can get a product similiar to calf manna but thats something that I've used to give a bit of a boost to thin mares that are nursing.

krisp

 

[AJ]

Wean. Assuming that the foal is healthy and robust.

 

[rabbitsfizz]

Is the foal already getting feed??

If so, I would wean, assuming it is strong and healthy.

I would not "cold turkey" wean a foal of this age, and I would not wean a foal of this age that is not already eating, but if all else is right, Yes, it would be OK.

 

[mizbeth]

Some mares will start pulling down like this with that age of foal. If you want to keep them "up" you will need to feed them more, lots more. I don't recognize the names of what you are feeding tho., so cannot recommend which of those you should increase, or which ones I would increase if she were my mare that is.

She may need to be fed by herself and not with group of mares.

You can wean the foal at this age or at least give him his own bowl of feed and he won't be nursing so much that way. Did you worm the mare when she foaled? Teeth is another concern as well.

Good luck...............

Beth

 

[Minimor]

Alfalfa. That's what our nursing mares get, and it is definitely what I would add to the diet of a mare that's down in weight while nursing a foal--You're giving the 2 cups of soaked alfalfa cubes, but that isn't a lot; I'd give her 2 litres (measured dry of course, then soak it) of alfalfa cubes two times a day unless you can add some good alfalfa hay (or do you call it lucerne there? I always forget if that's the same as our alfalfa

: )

I'd also second the suggestion of calf manna, or milk plus pellets which is our horse-version of calf manna. I'm not sure if something along that line is available there. We have one hard-keeper mare & a couple years ago we weren't able to get much for alfalfa hay so we were giving her the soaked cubes, plus I was adding milk replacer powder to her grain. I happened to have it on hand at the time & needed to use it up so I decided to try it, & it did help her.

 

[lyn_j]

[SIZE=14pt]She needs lots more concentrates and fats if you cant wean the foal. Alfalfa will give her more milk for the baby but not increase her body mass.[/SIZE]

Lyn

 

[Stacy Score]

I ditto what Michelle said, but I would also try to get at least 1/2 cup of corn oil into her 2 X a day - corn oil is pure fat and her body will use it first and then go after what ever else it needs. I also use Calf Manna religiously, again 1/2 cup morning & night - and your foal will do well on it also. Your baby is old enough to wean if he is fat and healthy and eating on his own - just try to make sure that he has other buddies to play with all the time and maybe put him in a stall next to mom so that they can talk to each other while you build her back up. It is surprising how quickly the mares can go down - seems like in barely a week they can go from "just great" to "skinny" - and it is really hard to put weight on them while they are nursing a thriving foal.

Good luck VIctoria - I am sure she will do just fine.

Stacy

 

[Joyce]

If she was my mare, I would have my Vet check her out and I'd wean the baby at 3 months old to help her. Joyce

 

[victoria]

Thanks the foal does eat on his own if allowed. However this mare is not all that big on sharing so he goes off and shares with one of the other mares and foals.

She did always does get a little dragged down at about this time every year but not as much as this year. She has a dentist appointment coming up as last appointment she was in and the dentist wont touch infoal mares. Yes we worm our mare right after foaling... Well we sent the mare up to the foaling centre with paste so she should have been done. then she has been slotted in with our herd worming since being home. We have had a cold snap too so wondered if the weather had effected her.

Economix is 14% protein and 10% Fat, Promita is a balancer. We did have her on Copra for a while which is very high fat (I think about 33%) but I didn't think it showed very good results on any of our mares. Her foal is definately chubby and well fed... We are only waiting on him to wean all our foals. We don't like day weaning them first as we found its harder on both the mothers and the babies so if it can be avoided we'd perfer it as this mare runs the fence or box at weaning and if she were doing it every day I think that would be worse for her.

The other thing is this mare always has edema on the underline of her belly.. All the vets have looked at it and don't know what it is. They say if its not worrying her then forget about it.. It started as a contact allergy thing but has not ever gone away any ideas....?

 

[CAM]

We have also used corn oil and rice bran to add weight and did have a mare last year that was really drawn down and had to wean the foal at 3 mos. Foal was robust and healthy, mom was not. We had the vet out first to check her teeth, run some bloodwork and check a stool sample and everything came back A-ok. The vet said to go ahead and wean baby. They did suprisingly well and that foal was the least stressed of them all at weaning. Not what I had expected considering her age.