A weekend at the Stud

10/30/2022

I was just having a look at our last blog post and noted I said 'this weekend is a quiet one' I then chuckled, I am a comedian sometimes haha so here we go.

Starting Thursday after the usual parental activities of work, school pick up, swimming lessons and groceries it was time to feed out at home and check on everyone, where we noticed Charlie was waxing up!
Tonight, was the night, we moved her to her own somewhat drier paddock and now we wait. Matt hopped in bed to catch a few hours, personally I am better at staying up and sleeping later so I stayed up to do checks through-out the night, checking every 20 min (long enough to watch an episode of Modern Family haha) the first few checks, she was munching away happily, but as the checks progressed you could see she was getting uncomfortable, laying down, and looking at her belly. I gave Matt a call and we watched from the car together until we noticed her water break.
When the water breaks you can usually expect a foal around 15min later.

A white bag is always a good sign, here we can see Esther's feet starting to show during birth.

As stated in our previous blog post, mares this season all seem to be going over their due dates. Charlie was no exception, usually mares' foal around 345 days, Charlie was sitting at 370days! So the foal was going to be on the larger side as Charlie was pushing things weren't progressing as quickly as usual, so we helped her with every push she did we helped pull Esther out. 12:30am and she was here!!
Full of sass, she was trying to stand up nearly straight away!
With foaling there is a general 1-2-3 rule to use as a guideline of what things should be happening and by when.

By the first hour the foal should be up and standing
By the 2nd hour the foal should be nursing
3rd hour the mare should pass her placenta
All of these steps were being checked off successfully. After the placenta had been passed, we spread it out to check for any tears or evidence that the mare may have retained some of the placenta. We noticed that the left horn of the placenta was slightly shredded so we knew we would need to get a vet out to check on Charlie and give her a flush, if we were to leave her unseen, she would turn toxic and may die.

Snacks make everything better

Charlie looking.. impressed with the flushing

So, as we waited for the vet to arrive, Matt ducked off for the school drop off & I started to move the horses as that is what we had planned to do before another bout of rain hit, it never ends! so we moved all of the horses & foals around and I caught Prim & Peach as they were scheduled to head to Ballarat to help eat some of the belly high grass at my parent's property (I had planned to do that first thing, but Charlie & Esther changed those plans, all good!)

By this time our vet from Bendigo Equine arrived and we put Charlie into the crush and began her flush, as Charlie is such a big mare and a vet's arm is only so long, she wasn't able to get into all corners of the uterus, so we elected to take Charlie into the vets for further care and to have a sleep over. The overnight stay also meant that the vets could perform an IGG on Esther for us (an IGG test is a blood test that measures the number of antibodies in foals) Foals are born with no infection fighting antibodies, so foals must have colostrum to receive the antibodies that they need, foals have approx. 18hrs to consume as much colostrum via their intestinal lining before the shop shuts, also each hour the colostrum quality lessens. This is why at the 24hr mark we will perform a snap test/IGG test to check the foal got all of the goodies! If a foal does fail a plasma infusion can boost antibody levels.

Looking comfy in the float

Heading off

Once Matt returned from the vets, it was my turn for a road trip and I loaded Prim & Peach up & headed to Ballarat, Matt went the opposite way and headed to pick up Billie from school.
The girls unloaded at Ballarat and thought they were in heaven; I think 2 days later they still haven't lifted their heads! I checked Honey & Luna who were already there for a spell, they lifted their heads for a moment and carried on with their 'busy' schedule

The 2 girls

Luna & Honey

Head down, bum up

And then it was finally the end of Friday!
Saturday, Matt headed back to the vets and bought Charlie & Esther home after they were given the all clear, Esther was happy to be home and ran around testing out her long legs.
Charlie was all clean after one more flush in the morning at the vets, we were given some oxytocin which is used to help contract her uterus, just to help.
Thankfully the remainder of the weekend has been much more uneventful, with general work, like trying to mow in the mud before our friends arrived for their wedding rehearsal, getting our dining cart ready for its debut this coming weekend, working with the foals and doing some feet, a bit of Bush poetry listening at the Maldon Folk Festival. oh, and some more mowing!

As we near the end of this season with only 2 more foals due any day, it is time for Matt & I to sit down and go over our plans for the future and make any changes to our stud as we go forward. What goals do we want to achieve? What mares do we want to breed from this year? What plans do we have for the foals born this season? What plans do we have for the mares this season? Who is being bought into work? Who can start to be broken in? What shows do we want to go to? What plans do we have with our partners at Porcupine Village?
Things are constantly changing so we have to constantly review our plans.

Hopefully this week is a bit drier so we can have a successful weekend filled with a wedding and Clydesdale Adventures!

Until then