A Night in the Yards

As of last night, I am, what I would call anyway, an amateur foaling specialist. 

Our riding teacher is adjisting her horses on our property and among the mob are six rescue brumbies. One of these, a poor, emaciated mare, scarsely out of fillyhood was pregnant even though she was far to young to be in foal.

Last night as Jenny was coming up for a shower at our place (she is also camping on the property while searching for a home), she rushed in and asked us for a bottle with warm soapy water she could use as an enema for Princess, the mare in foal, who was down with colic. Colic can be very serious and Jenny was in a hurry to get back down and save the mare. She gathered what she needed and ran off again, taking Tom and Josh with her.

Not too long after, the boys came back again saying that it was no colic, a filly had just made it’s appearance.

That’s all good and well but the stress was not over yet. Heaven-Lea Eastward, as she has been christened, was what is called a red-sack foal. (I think!) This means that the placenta was delivered before the foal which means that the foal’s oxygen supply was cut off before she came out and she also inhaled some birthing fluids. 

With a bit of a struggle, Jenny managed to convince Princess to walk over to the stockyards not too far away and there we commenced the ‘Save Eastward’ campaign.

Princess was in shock. The foal, aprox two months overdue, was big for such a small horse and in her undernourished state, she had given everything she had to the foal and the birthing process was just too much for her. This brings us to another point. Because of her condition, Princess had very very, precious little milk for the foal. This meant we have to feed her by hand until we can teach her to suck and thus hopefully draw down the milk from Princess. Also, she is missing out on Colostrum, the rich milk that is given straight after birth which passes down the immunities from mother to baby.

Poor Eastward has allot of odds against her but she had one thing going for her: Jenny was there, and as an experienced foaling specialist, Jenny knew what to do.

A few times when Jenny was holding the filly, Eastward tried to go to sleep and Jenny knew that if she went to sleep, she would stop breathing. Indeed, she did stop breathing a few times and Jenny thumped her and yelled at her until the faint heartbeat came back.

Thankfully we had some mammal baby formula left over from when we hand reared a wallaby and we could use this to feed Eastward.

When the milk first got there, Eastward was too week to suck, to even swallow, but Jenny forced some of the warm liquid down her throat with a syringe (we had no bottle teat) and even from the tiniest bit of nutrient, her strength began to grow until she began to suck. Her breathing became more regular and her little heart beat with renewed energy and from then on, she was alive.

Mum and I had taken down the milk and I had helped hold the torch and milk and syringe for Jenny for a little while. Once the immediate danger was past, Jenny left me and Daniel there to babysit while she went up to have a shower and get something to eat from our place. 

I was scared! What if something happened? But she trusted me so I rose to the occasion and took the soft little head in my lap. She was allowed to sleep now that she was breathing with strength but we still had to feed her every ten minutes or so.

By the time Jenny came back, she had started to try to get up. She was still unsuccessful but the more she tried, the more strength would flow into her legs.

Eastward is what we call a neurological foal - a foal with special needs. Because of this, she is far behind in a ‘normal’ foal’s normal order of doing things. A ‘normal’ foal should be standing up with in about half and hour of birth (I think!). It has now been sixteen hours since she was born and although we have helped her stand up a few times, her legs are still to weak to prop her up.

About nine thirty, Jenny went to bed. Daniel and I were to have first watch.

The moon was bright and shone down on us, making the use of torches unnecessary. We sat there, and we sat there. We diligently fed her every ten or fifteen minutes. We helped her stand up when she was trying. We kept her away from the fence when she gravitated towards it - we didn’t want her to knock herself out by falling on it in one of her attempts to rise. We experienced the joy of having an un-handled brumby come up and sniff you and fall asleep in front of you. We yawned, we chatted, we were silent. We complained of hunger, sore backs and cold limbs. About 2am, the roosters started crowing. We growled at them.

And then it was 2:30 and I went and woke Jenny up. Poor thing, she was so sleepy. But she was pretty easy to wake up and she came straight out. We gave a report and then went off to catch a few hours. Ah, how lovely my swag felt!

When I woke up this morning, Jenny was trying to get the foal to suck from Princess’ udder. Because there was very little milk and because a maiden teat is very small to start with, it was a bit hard. I helped by holding Princess for her.
Princess has been so good through all of it! I’m proud of her!

By the time I got up it was 8:30 and Jenny had to go to town for some reason. She left Eastward in our care. I stayed for a while and then Daniel, who had been up and had breaky, came down and I was relieved. 

And here I am now, writing this. I think I have given a pretty full account of all that I know.

I do know that even though she is alive now, she still isn’t out of danger. We have to wait a few days and see her on her feet and drinking from Princess before we can take a deep breath and let it out again.