From: Gordon
Hello Jessica,
Not too long ago I signed onto the List and am quite enjoying lurking and reading the posts. There has been some excellent info in a wide variety of subject matter with questions, answers, and suggestions and I want to pass along my appreciation for being able to participate.
My question relates to an orphaned foal that we came heir to, and I will provide a bit of background as it is has been a wonderful experience so far but we do have some concerns now.
Due to serious time contraints prohibiting the proper care, and fair chance at life, a friend asked if we would be willing to try and raise this foal.
We got her when she was just 6 or 7 hours old and had been completely abandoned by the mare. She was still wet and uncleaned.
Fortunately we were able to find some frozen colostrum and fed her quite a bit in the next 10 hours or so. She has been blood-tested for immuno-globin levels and showed extremely high.
We tried bottle feeding her but were unsuccessful and resorted to making a pail of milk-replacer that we fed by dipping our hands in and letting her suck off of our fingers until she got accustomed to the pail.
At this point she will be six weeks old tomorrow and is doing terrific. We were actually grateful that she went for the bucket rather than a bottle although we still were getting up every 1 1/2 hours to feed her for the first while. I think this was harder on us than the foal ;-)
She had been on an experimental milk replacer from Farnam which was excellent, although since we live in Canada our supply was limited and has now run out. We have a local producer and she is now being weaned from the milk replacer and is on a special feed that is almost like a sweet feed that is dusted with milk-replacer flakes so as to make the change more comfortable in that the new food will smell the same and taste very similar.
Forgive my long-windedness to get to the real question which relates to introducing the foal to other horses. We have a three mares with foals right now that are all a bit older than the abandoned foal, as well as a few other mares and a gelding.
At present the orphan is totally separate although we have recently tried to bring up a mare and foal to run with her under supervision. With such a lack of equine contact inconjunction with an excessive human contact it's almost as if the orphan thinks she's a puppy and I am rather concerned about long-term negative effects on the orphan and that we'll have great difficulty in her later life.
What is confusing is getting such a wide variety of views on when to introduce the orphan to the herd, with some suggestions as short as 8 weeks and all the way to 4 months minimum. I think at 4 months some of her habits will be so ingrained that we will have an even harder task to have her be a horse than we did nursing her along to health in the first place.
Any thoughts, or questions, are most welcome and appreciated.
regards,
gord
Hi Gordon! Your concern is justified -- the most obnoxious horses in the world are usually those that have been bottle-raised by humans. These horses never have a chance to learn how to be horses in a group, they never learn horse discipline and horse manners or even real horse language, and it's a terrible handicap to them, and to their owners, later.
HOWEVER, before you panic, let me say that you've done everything right so far! The ideal situation would be one in which you could let her run with the group of mares and foals, but that won't be possible until after all the foals have been weaned.
It does sound as though you'll have some options. The filly DOES need horse contact, preferably in a herd. At four months, if you're anticipating weaning the others that early, you'll be able to put all the weanlings together in a field, along with a kind "babysitter" or "uncle" gelding. Or you could put them out with the "dry" mares, if your experience with them tells you that they are good babysitters. As soon as NOBODY has a mother alongside, and when the milk bar is closed, the playing field, so to speak, will be level, and the little ones will have to entertain one another.
In the meantime, you might try allowing her fenceline contact, at least, with the other foals and their dams, as well as with the other horses with which she may be turned out later. The important thing is that she not be a stranger to any of the other horses!
If the fenceline contact is uneventful, you might do quite well turning her out with the others; most mares are tolerant of other foals unless those foals try to suck, and since your filly never had a dam to nurse, she's very unlikely to try that. And since the other foals are a bit older, they'll be at a similar stage of independence. It's important for horses to BE horses, and your filly, like the other horses in the field, will get the occasional scrape or nip. It's all part of normal life.
I suggest that you consult with your veterinarian about this. He knows you, your horses, and this foal and her history -- and he knows your fields and fences. He'll be able to suggest the most sensible way of integrating the filly into the herd.
Good luck, and do let me know how it all works out!
Jessica
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