Question
baby
hi..we have a 3yr old mare,first baby...she had the baby in the morning while we were gone, when we got home bout 1pm, the foal was laying down. We got him up but he was weak, and would not nurse. she was squirting milk out she was so full...he was pretty thin..i can only compare him to our 2month foal.. but i could not get him to suck on the mare of even my finger for that matter. Vets were all unavailable for the next 4-5 hours, bought colustrum but couldnt get it in him, he passed the hard feces several times during this process, but he died with us waiting on the vet....what causes a foal not to nurse? and is that normal to lose one in a matter of hours from that or was there something else and not nursing was a by-product? the mother was fine with him. sorry so long...thanks very much, this was horrible
AnswerHi Amy,
First, let me express my condolences on losing your foal. I know how hard that can be.
No, it would not be normal for a foal to die within a matter of hours from lack of nursing. It does sound as though there was something wrong with this foal from birth that caused it to be weak and not have a suckle reflex.
There are so many things that could have been the cause for the foal being weak upon birth. Since no one was present for the foaling, you do not know whether it was a difficult birth or the foal had a difficult time breaking out of the sack, and maybe there was a prolonged period of lack of oxygen.
The foal could have been ill with something already also. From the picture, it is hard to tell whether he was abnormally thin for a newborn. Most of them do look pretty boney when they're born.
There is no way to tell what caused your foal's death, (unless you had your vet do a necropsy) but I do not believe it was the fact that he didn't nurse right away. There was another underlying factor that caused him to be too weak to nurse from the beginning.
Again, sorry for your loss.
Sandy
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