Transcript:

[0:04]

[Music] It’s three in the morning. Crickets singing their chorus, frogs croaking in a nearby wallow, and then there’s a sliver of a crescent moon. And Tar finds a shallow in the pasture in a corner away from all the other mares, under a tall willow oak tree.

[0:24]

The branches reach out around her, almost giving her protection and welcoming her. And in the distance, she can hear coyotes, and she knows she needs to be quiet. Her insides are painful — the contractions do bother her — but she’s stoic, she’s quiet. Little grunts. She knows she has to be quiet for her own safety, but also that of her impending foal.

[0:47]

As she scrapes the ground and tries to nip at her sides because they are so painful, her water breaks. She feels another contraction as her sides squeeze tight to push that foal through the birth canal. She finally lays down and, as she labors through for the next 15–20 minutes, she breathes deeply and sighs — but again, quietly.

[1:33]

The contractions keep increasing in intensity and intensity and intensity, her hind legs straining with the effort of getting that foal out of her. Finally, with one final push — whoosh — and out she comes. Prairie Rose, whose first breaths are labored, but quickly she gets sternal on her chest, her eyes bright. Welcome to the new world. And she whinnies, and Tar, who had been on her side, sits back up, reaches back with her nose, and gives a soft whinny back.

[2:24]

Back in Secretariat being led… he is number one. The horse — and the horse is the best thing in the world, isn’t it? Besides people, I’ve always loved them, really, ever since I was a little girl.

[2:37]

Everybody’s in line, and they’re off! Secretariat away very well, has good position… the love — I never thought owning a horse could mean so much to me. Now Secretariat taking the lead — the madness — what kind of a horse is that? I’ve never seen a horse like that! The lead is tightening now… he is moving like a tremendous machine…

[3:02]

Their story — Mustangs were more involved in the early development of this breed than I thought they were. But there were… Secretariat has opened a 22-length lead! He is going to be the Triple Crown winner!

[3:16]

[Music] Horses. Hello, I’m Dr. Chris Mortensen. I’ve been an equine educator, scientist, and researcher for over 20 years, and a reproductive physiologist. And in this episode of Mad About Horses we’re going to talk about the most exciting part, I believe, in the horse industry. This is the one I’ve argued with my colleagues for decades — that is the most exciting part of doing research in equids — and that’s reproduction.

[3:50]

That’s the whole process of combining the largest cell in the body, which we call the oocyte, and the smallest cell produced by the body, which we call the sperm cell. They come together and fuse, and then within 11 months you have this gorgeous young horse welcomed to the world. That entire process — how these babies are made — has always blown me away.

[4:21]

It’s something I’ve studied hard for in my career and focused my research on, because it is a big part of the horse industry: breeding horses, improving horses, understanding it, and making it a process where we don’t lose as many horses as we used to back in the day.

[4:45]

Now, I opened with Tar giving birth to Prairie Rose in her pasture, and in this episode I’m going to talk about why that isn’t ideal. You really don’t want our mares to give birth out on pasture without us observing them. Now, it does happen periodically — we don’t catch the signs, or a mare foals early — and they do give birth out on pasture. But you are putting that foal and mare at risk if there are any issues or problems, and we’re going to talk about that today: what those issues are, why they arise, and what you can do.

[5:21]

If you imagine the horses out in the wild — the wild horses in the west of America, or the Shackleford horses, or Przewalski’s horses out on the plains of Asia, the wild horses of Australia — those mares are finding those little quiet spots to sit down, isolate themselves away from the herd to give birth. And they do it so quietly. They are stoic. That is one of those things that just always amazes me about these mares — how quiet they are.

[6:00]

Just to kind of lay out this episode — we left the mare pregnant. I’m going to talk about that process of pregnancy through the horse to the birth of the foal, and then what those foal’s first minutes, hours, and then days are like for it. How do we go from these little simple cells to this multicellular organism that becomes a Samson — the giant Shire horse that stood over 21 hands, 3,300 pounds, or 1,500 kilograms. Massive horse! He too started as just a tiny little cell that, a couple hundred years ago, developed into this monster of a horse.

[6:42]

So we’re going to talk about that — the birthing process, parturition, or leading up to parturition, signs to look for in the mare, and then the foal. It’s just, again, fascinating how that happens throughout the year.

[7:02]

In the last episode we left Tar pregnant — she was heavily pregnant — and there are changes going on in her body leading up to parturition. The biology is driving her behavior. Our biology drives our behavior, we just don’t know it. Same thing with these horses. They are a lot more complex than we give them credit for. Right? Like, we would say “instinct,” right? It’s not — it is biology, and biology is driving their behavior.

[7:32]

So most mares are going to want to give birth away from the herd, quietly, find somewhere safe where they can lay down, not worried about being preyed upon or that foal getting snatched right away. And then once the foal is ready to go — which happens within a few hours — that’s where, at the end of this podcast, we’re going to talk about how incredibly fast these foals are ready to get up and run with the herd. It’s for survival.

[8:04]

And so, a lot of evolution over the 50 million years has driven horses to this behavior. But the ones that are quiet — like I said, stoic — that aren’t making a lot of noise, they’re not drawing a lot of attention to themselves. There is some whinnying and nickering, which is the cutest thing on earth after giving birth, but they’re still relatively quiet. Mom and foal bond, and then within a few hours they’re up, moving around. And then within a few days that foal is keeping up with the herd as it runs away — say, from wolves or other predators out on the plains of Asia and North America before they were domesticated.

[8:44]

As I mentioned in the last podcast, most of this foal growth is going on in the last three months of gestation. So, horse pregnancy is 11 months. Month 8, 9, 10, and going into month 11, you see this dramatic growth in the foal. Now at birth, that foal is going to be about 10% of the mare’s weight. So, let’s say if Tar weighed 1,100 pounds, or 500 kilograms, that foal should roughly be about 110 pounds at birth, or 50 kilograms.

[9:16]

Tar herself is going to put on a little bit more weight because you have the placenta, which has weight, and then you have fluid which develops in the neonate — that bathes the fetus as it grows. So Tar, if she’s 1,100 pounds, at the end of pregnancy she’s going to put on about 15% more weight, so she’s going to be 1,230 up to 1,250 pounds during pregnancy. Then after she gives birth, obviously she’s going to lose that weight with the foal, which is — they’re big!

[9:51]

And that’s the thing that makes it just so exciting and fascinating, is when you see a heavily pregnant mare and then within a couple hours — or depending on when you catch her — there’s this foal with all these legs. They’re so gangly, but they have such long legs, and you’re like, “That was inside her?”

[10:11]

It’s such an amazing experience. And if you have not ever seen a mare give birth, try to volunteer somewhere or help a friend do foal watch — watch these mares give birth. It is just one of those fascinating experiences that you’re just like, “Wow,” and it gives you, again, that deeper appreciation for these horses and what they do. It’s just an incredible, incredible thing. That’s why I get so excited about it, and that’s why I study it and talk about it — like in this podcast.

[10:52]

So leading up to parturition — or Tar’s water breaking and then her giving birth — what is happening? What is driving her to go, “Hmm, something feels different inside me… oh, okay, there’s some pain, there’s some contractions…” Or even go back a couple weeks before she gives birth, before she even goes into labor — what is going on through not only her brain, but what is going on through her body?

[11:18]

And what starts a lot of this is fetal stress. When I say fetal stress, it’s not to alarm you — it is a natural biological process that is going on. The fetus does get a tad stressed in there, and that starts to trigger some hormonal changes that are going to lead to parturition.

[11:48]

What happens is, as Prairie Rose gets bigger and bigger inside Tar’s uterus, stretching out that one uterine horn that she grows in, and in the uterine body, she starts to run out of room. And Tar, as much blood as she’s pumping to her placenta that’s passed on to Prairie Rose, there’s only so much oxygen and nutrients she can give that fetus. It’s got a carrying capacity, right?

[12:21]

What happens is Prairie Rose is getting a little less oxygen and a little less nutrients as she’s getting so big, and she starts to get stressed. And so she starts releasing stress hormones that are then picked up by Tar. And so it starts to convert certain hormones to prepare Tar’s body — and this is, again, why biology is so incredible and fun to study. It’s all a biological process.

[12:58]

Those hormones start to change — so progesterone starts to change to estradiol, to estrogen. And estrogen starts to loosen up the cervix. Estrogen also starts to cause some uterine contractions. And then there’s another hormone called relaxin that does what it says — it relaxes the mare’s connective tissue. And if you can imagine, the birth canal is through the hips of the mare — she has to pass this 110–120 lb foal through that birth canal, and her hips have to stretch to let that happen.

[13:39]

And so this hormone called relaxin starts relaxing those joints and other tissues so they can stretch to pass this foal through the birth canal. It is one of the most fun things — and I used to teach this to my students — to test the tension strength of a horse’s tail as she’s led up to parturition.

[14:00]

One of the things we teach, and we want to look at when we’re seeing if a mare is getting ready to give birth, is just check her tail strength and tail tension. So if you go to any horse — go to your horse today when you’re grooming them — and just try to raise their tail a little bit, they’re going to fight you a little bit. They have muscular control, there’s some tension there, and they’re not going to just let you readily move it around.

[14:26]

With this hormone relaxin, as they get closer and closer to parturition, that tail is like a rubber hose. And you’ve got to be careful — you don’t want to break their tail, obviously — so do this with caution. But lift that tail up a little bit, and you’ll realize there’s no fighting, there’s no tension, it’s rubbery. And that’s relaxin. Relaxin is getting her body ready to pass this foal.

[14:49]

So there is a lot of biological signaling going on to tell Tar, “Hey, your baby’s coming, so let’s get ready.” And then with management, we’re able to recognize those cues, and then we’re going to pull them into foaling stalls or paddocks, or an area where we can watch them — which we call foal watch, which I want to talk about here in a little bit and why that’s so important.

[15:21]

Now, the old saying goes — and I learned this early on in my career — when it comes to parturition, or giving birth: the foal determines the day, the mare determines the hour. We know the foal is stressed, which is triggering these hormonal changes. It’s going to get to the point where the mare is physically ready to pass the foal — but the time’s not right.

[15:53]

Let’s put ourselves in Tar’s hooves again. We’ll be the wild horses out in the American West — you’ve got predators like mountain lions, you’ve got predators like bears, there are wolves. So you have all these predators wanting an easy meal. And what’s easier than a mare laying down trying to pass a foal? Or if that mare could get up and get away — there’s a foal right there — that’s a free, easy meal for a predator.

[16:22]

So the horses that, over time, were able to give birth when it’s a lot harder for predators to see and find them — and then things like smell and sound — so mares like to go and find little wallows or places where they’re kind of away from the wind, like under trees or in bushes. And that’s why they’re so stoic and quiet, because they don’t want to alert any predators out there.

[16:50]

That’s where it comes where the mare can — we kind of describe it as — clenching down on her uterus, like, “No, not yet. We’re going to go later tonight. We’re going to go later tonight. Baby’s coming today, but we’re going to wait until night.”

[17:02]

The data shows that — in a wonderful study by Pete McCue and Ferris that was published in the Equine Veterinary Journal a little over 10 years ago — and it was parturition, dystocia, and foal survival. And this was a study on 1,047 births — very, very large dataset — used to say 70% of all mares will give birth at night because they can just clench down, wait until the time’s right.

[17:32]

Now, domestication — we haven’t selected mares for that, so over time that’s probably lessened. But from their study, 73% of the mares gave birth between 8 o’clock at night and 6 in the morning. So the data shows that most of them are wanting to give birth during the hours of darkness. Now, if you looked at the data, most of that is falling around midnight. Very few mares gave birth during the day — from this study, only 134 of the thousand, so 13.4%, that they observed were born during daylight hours.

[18:07]

So most of the mares are giving birth at night, and that’s what happens when you do this — and I have foaled out hundreds of mares — they’re always giving birth at night. And it makes sense because it’s safety for her and safety for the foal.

[18:18]

And that leads into long nights during foal watch. Now today, we have cameras in the stalls, and we have other technologies to aid us, to let us know when a mare’s water breaks so we can be there to watch, because we want to make sure the foal’s delivered safely.

[18:32]

Now, how do we know when to bring them into a foaling stall or into a paddock, or bring them up out of pasture at night? There are a lot of signs that we look at in the mare that clue us in. And if you want to read more on this, there’s a really good article at madbarn.com — you can just go to the Learn tab: “11 Signs of Foaling in Horses: Preparation for Labor.”

[19:03]

Some of the things that we look at — I talked about the tail change. That tail gets rubbery — that is a sign that she’s getting close. Everything’s relaxing. Now, her udder is going to fill out. Now, mares — if you’re not aware — have two udders, and they’re in the hind end of the horse, like a cow. So, imagine we have cows — two big udders in the back. The mare has two udders, each with a nipple or teat, and that is going to fill out as she gets closer. So we call it “bagging up.” Is the mare bagging up? Is her hind end starting to loosen up? And what’s her behavior like?

[19:46]

Now we see these changes the couple weeks leading up to parturition, and then within one to two days — these are when you’re really clued in. Now, I’m going to preface all of this and say this can happen rapidly in some horses within a day or two, because you do have those surprise births — you wake up in the morning, you go out to pasture, and you have a mare and a foal, and you’re like, “What the heck? She gave birth in the night, and we were watching her and doing all our tests…” This can happen really rapidly.

[20:13]

But for the majority of horses, you see this happen over a period of a couple weeks up to a couple days. And then you’re really — typically what happens is you’re on foal watch all night, and she doesn’t give birth, so you put her out in a small pasture or paddock with some hay and watch her all day, and then you put her back in at night, and you watch her again. Sleepless nights — and I’m sure some people are laughing as they’re listening to this podcast, going, “Yep, yep, yep, happened to me” — and it’s like five days later she finally gives birth, because she was showing all the signs, but again, that foal just wasn’t quite ready. That does happen.

[20:51]

But really, within one to two days — that hind end is super relaxed, that’s where that tail is really rubbery. Her vulva is going to get longer, okay, preparing again, hormonal changes, estrogen’s higher. Her abdomen is normally distended to a side, and that’s usually the side the foal is developing on. We describe it as like her belly drops, and it becomes more symmetrical. When looking at the mare from behind, you can generally see one side’s bulging out more than the other — and that’s the side, because remember the mare has two uterine horns — that’s the side the foal’s developing on. As she gets closer to parturition, that becomes more symmetrical because that foal is moving, is getting ready, is being nudged to get into the position to go into the birth canal properly. So you should see her belly drop, and then it becomes more symmetrical.

[21:49]

Big signs that we look for are her udder and teats — and there’s this phenomenon called “waxing of the teats,” or little beads of colostrum, which is the first milk the mare produces, at the tip of the teats. You’ll see this, and in some extreme examples, milk will be streaming — which is a whole other podcast again with colostrum, but the mare only produces so much colostrum that she needs to give the foal. But you do see a little dripping, or just a little bit of that beading at the tip, and that’s a clear sign that she’s getting close.

[22:31]

Now when we see those signs, you want to observe your mare, and you want to watch her behavior. And then at night, like I said, you want to bring her up to where you can quietly observe her, and check on her every hour — or if she’s getting really close, every 30 minutes.

[22:52]

When we do talk about parturition and mares and helping mares, I always say — resist the temptation to rush in there. You want to do a little bit just to make sure things are progressing normally, but you mostly want to be hands-off, because the mares do this, and they do it well. I have been through so many births with horses, and very rarely did I need to intervene. It’s one out of ten — or even like 5% — so five out of a hundred is really where you get into trouble and might need to be there.

[23:27]

But again, that one out of ten is why we’re watching them — because if they run into trouble, it can result in the death of the foal, or both the death of the foal and the death of the mare, which is just devastating. Again, I’ve seen that happen, and it’s heart-wrenching — absolutely heart-wrenching. So resist the temptation to help and pull and all of those things, but be ready to if you need to.

[24:01]

Now, when we look at the statistics based on that Peter McCue — Dr. McCue, wonderful reproductive physiologist, I’ve got to meet him a few times, have dinners, and talk about his research — in this study, when we looked at again over a thousand mares, 12 of the mares gave birth at less than 320 days. Remember we talked about the average — 330–340 days. Very few give birth early. I’ve seen one that early — foal was fine, it was just that mare, she always gave birth early, and this one was three weeks early.

[24:30]

But of the 12, 8% — or one of them — died. It was stillborn. The mare carried it through pregnancy, something went wrong, could have gotten an infection, foal died. But 11 out of the 12 went on to deliver a normal birth. Out of the 988 that gave birth between 320 and 360 days, only 1.3% gave birth to stillbirths — most went on to give birth to healthy foals. The ones that went longer than 360 days — and this was 41 out of the over thousand births they observed — 7.3% resulted in stillbirth. So, if it’s abnormal lengths, looks like a little bit higher risk of a stillbirth, but most went on to give birth to normal foals.

[25:28]

Now, when you looked at foal survival, some of the things that caused foals to pass away or have a hard labor for the mare — hard delivery — and that leads to the mortality statistics: mares that gave birth earlier than 320 days — 8% of the foals died. In that normal 320 to 360 range — only 3.6%, that’s about 35 to 36 foals, died after birth, and that happens with dystocias. Then greater than 360 — that bumped up, out of the 41, 4.8%, so that’s two or three that passed away. And what causes that? A lot of it is what we call dystocias — and that is…

[26:26]

…mis-presenting, here coming up in stage two of labor, when you would look for that. That is why, again — to reiterate — we want to watch these mares, to avoid those situations. But even then — and these were horses in a vet hospital under supervision, getting help — even then, the foals could pass away.

[26:50]

And I’ve seen it a few times, and again, it’s just heart-wrenching. But if we go to Prairie Rose, who did make it, and Tar — she wasn’t out in pasture, Tar was in a foaling stall in Texas — there’s three stages of labor.

[27:09]

In stage one — tricky — you’ve got to catch it. This is the one where you’ve got to have a trained eye, or know what you’re looking for, to see, “Yep, she’s in labor.” Because horses hide pain so well — I know many of you listening know it’s hard to diagnose lameness, it’s hard to know if your horse is unwell sometimes, because they do hide pain very, very well to survive, so they don’t show it to a predator out in the wild.

[27:39]

And one of the easiest ways to see if your mare is going into labor is — I describe it like colic. Colic is a critical topic that we’re going to have a podcast on very soon, because it is the number one killer of horses under the age of 20. It is abdominal pain — it is because of the way we manage them, how we feed them in many situations, and other things in their lives that cause them abdominal pain that can lead to death.

[28:06]

And I say this stage one of labor is like colic, but mares can colic before giving birth. I had a mare colic two days before she gave birth — so it can happen. That was one of the worst cases — you thought she was going into labor, bring her up, but she actually was colicking. Under veterinary care — and she survived, and the baby survived two days later fine. But it’s the horse — she’s in distress, she’s sweaty, she’s nipping at her side, so her tuft of hair along her belly will be lifted up where she’s been nipping because there’s pain there. The uterus is contracting, so it’s incredibly painful, and she’s restless. She might lay down and get up, and she pees every now and then, she poops a little bit. She’s sweaty — her girth, her flanks, her neck — all of those signs, it’s like, “Okay, the mare’s in labor.”

[29:11]

Now we want to watch her much more closely — instead of checking on her every hour, we’re going to quietly stand outside the stall, sit on a chair, and just listen until her water breaks. When her water breaks, that’s the end of stage one of labor.

[29:29]

Not to be confused with urination. I was woken up at 3 in the morning because my students were on foal watch. I’d got my coffee ready, threw on my boots, jumped in my truck — sipping my coffee halfway to the barn, students called back and said, “Sorry, Chris, she was urinating.” True story — just turned around, went home, and tried to get some sleep before I had to rush off to class. Life of a grad student. So that does happen.

[30:02]

And then another time I remember after class, students were checking horses. “Dr. Mortensen, can you look at this horse for me?” Walked up, looked at the mare, did an assessment — dripping milk. I said, “This mare is definitely going to foal tonight. Go home, get your sleeping bags, you’re on foal watch.” Jumped in my truck, I was halfway down the road, got a phone call — her water broke. And this was like 5:00 in the afternoon, in the evening. Turned my truck around, went back, wham-bam — foal out, did all the foal checks. I was home by 9:00.

[30:46]

That was a great night, because instead of 3:00 in the morning to 6:00–7:00 in the morning, I was there from 5:00 to about 8:30–9:00, was able to get dinner on the way home and get a good night’s sleep. Very unique, though — that was not typical. That was a mare that couldn’t clench down, a mare that couldn’t fight the urge to give birth, you know, because they want to give them at night.

[31:04]

Because my typical nights — of those last two stories — majority of my experience was students out on foal watch, sleeping at the barn. I’d get a call from midnight to 4:00 in the morning, somewhere in there, when a mare was about to give birth. And then I’d get there, and by the time I got to the barn — it would take me 15–20 minutes — the baby was on the ground.

[31:29]

So stage two of labor goes really quickly. Within 20 minutes that baby should be out of the mare. Talk about a superpower — their water breaks, and that baby’s out quick. We, in humans — that baby might not be out for two days after a mom’s water breaks, and that’s rare, but that does happen.

[31:53]

And it goes back to horses that were able to have their babies quietly, quickly, safely — those are the ones that survived, and they passed on those genetics. The wolves couldn’t find them or catch them, or the lions or all the other predators. Now, going back to Dr. McCue’s study — the average length of stage two labor in all those horses they looked at was 16.7 minutes. That was quick.

[32:18]

71 or 72% of the horses — so 720 of the 1,005 that they have in their dataset — were born in less than 20 minutes. When stage two went greater than 40 minutes, that’s where you saw a lot of foal mortality, which again I’m going to talk about here in a second because that’s the hard part of it. But most of it is — that foal is out, and then again, one of those moments when you think back on working with horses and it’s just grin-to-grin, smile from ear to ear, is when that mare and foal bond for the first time.

[33:04]

It is one of those moments in my career — again and again and again, every time I see it, every time I hear it, it makes my heart sing. Bottom line is, that foal–mare bonding begins right away.

[33:16]

Now, how do we get there to make sure that foal gets out safely? This is where you want a little bit of intervention. When her water breaks, you want to check the foal’s position. You want to make sure that foal is in the proper orientation to be able to be pushed out of the mare’s birth canal, out of her uterus, into the world.

[33:46]

Now, proper position is both legs and nose presented at the mare’s vulva when that mare’s either laying down — or you can see it visually, but probably laying down, because at first you’re not going to be able to see that nose. You want to put on some gloves and go lift her tail — do it carefully, obviously — but most mares during labor are pretty focused on that. Usually it’s a pretty safe situation. And you should feel both hooves, with their feet pointed down, and the nose right above it.

[34:22]

Now, if you’re driving, you can’t do this, but you can maybe do it if you hold your arms out — not straight like a mummy — and I’ll talk about that shoulder-lock position here in a second, because I did experience that with a mare. But your arms kind of up, like — you know how people prance around in plays like they’re a horse? Or, I don’t know why — a reindeer in a play — your arms are crooked back, okay? Do that. Your arms are crooked back, but your left arm is a little bit — like a hand length — in front of your right.

[35:04]

If you do that, look what your shoulders do. You can do the mummy position, which is arms straight out and your shoulders are square, but when you crook your arms like you’re holding them out like you’re prancing around a stage pretending to be a horse, and you push that left arm just a little bit forward of your right, you notice your shoulders shift. And that is what you should see — you see that left leg followed by that right leg, followed by a nose resting right on top. The foal’s muzzle should be resting right on top of those legs. That is proper position, and most horses are going to be there.

[35:40]

Now, you might see just two little hooves sticking out — that’s why you want to wear a glove, you want to just check the mare’s vulva, open it up a little bit — the nose and the nostril should be right there. My most difficult, personally, was I had a foal in shoulder-lock position, like a mummy, and this mare was struggling, struggling, struggling — standing up, getting down, standing up, getting down — because the mare’s trying to help that foal get in proper position, because the mare knew something wasn’t quite right.

[36:17]

And then, when she was down, I was trying to pull. Now again — this is probably a whole other podcast talking about the entire foaling process, insides and outs — but as an overview, if you’re ever pulling a foal, you want to grip them above their fetlock joint, and when the mare contracts — you’ll see it, her legs will tighten and you’ll see the contractions in her abdomen — you pull a little bit out, but down, because the foal is coming out with the curvature of its spine. So as that mare is pushing, that foal should be dropping towards the mare’s hocks. So you pull out and down when she contracts. When she stops, you stop — you don’t want to hurt her or the foal.

[36:59]

And I was doing this with the mare, and the foal was not coming, and it was in a shoulder-lock position, tight in her birth canal. So I had to realign and push back that right leg of the foal to get that shoulder to shift. Finally, me and a student — and I had the trailer ready, I said, “If we can’t get it this time, we’re going to put the mare in the trailer and get over to the vet hospital immediately.” Thankfully, at Texas A&M, the vet hospital was just across the campus, so I was very fortunate if we ran into more problems. But finally we pulled — had my foot against the rump of the mare — and pop, I felt the hips give way, and out came this monster foal. She must have weighed like 140 pounds — 60-something kilograms. She was massive.

[37:57]

Thankfully we got the foal out, everything was fine, mare was fine, foal was fine. That for me was just the worst dystocia I had to experience. But if you ever have any issues, you always speak with your veterinarian. If you’re ever concerned, time is of the essence — you want to call your veterinarian immediately. And your horse vets know this — this is what they do during breeding season, right? They’re running around doing calls, emergency calls, and dystocias and things like that. If you want to learn more, there’s a really good article at madbarn.com — go to the Learn tab: “Dystocia in Horses: Signs, Causes, and Treatments of Foaling Difficulties.” One of our veterinarians wrote that article, you can read about that.

[38:40]

And then the other thing you want to look for is — not as common — but if you ever see a red bag… and again, this is my most difficult story surrounding foaling, was a red bag birth. And what a red bag birth is — the mare’s water doesn’t break per se, but her entire placenta separates prematurely from her uterus. And you have the chorioallantois, which is the outer layer of the placenta, and then inside that is the amnion, the amniotic layer, and then the foal inside that.

[39:23]

What happens in these situations — and they are very rare — but everything separates inside the mare, and so there is no placental attachment to mom. And the danger is that foal inside that placenta is not getting any oxygen to its brain, and it typically is born brain dead. So if you see just a red bag presentation, you want to slice that placenta open and get that foal out immediately.

[39:58]

And the story — I was in California, and it was a Hackney mare who was very flighty. And she exhibited all the signs of labor — she was out in pasture, and we tried to get her up. Me, my mentor, a couple other students — and she was just running circles around us. She’d lay down for a minute, we’d get close to her, she’d jump back up — and the whole time we saw this red bag…

[40:32]

By the time we got the colt out of her — she finally laid down and surrendered — it was brain dead. Its ears were to the side. We call them “dummy foals,” and he had to be euthanized the next day. Beautiful paint coat pattern colt — I remember him — and he just had enough to breathe. Wouldn’t nurse, wouldn’t stand, was just there, up sternal — meaning on his chest — and it was heartbreaking. It was an absolutely heartbreaking story that I lived through. And early, early in my career, it was just like, “Wow,” and there’s nothing we could do.

[41:07]

Now, this was two decades ago. We do have research now where we give them oxygen. There has been a lot of great research done in vet hospitals throughout the world, looking at ways to assist these foals, and they have been able to come back and get brain function again. So there is that out there — and maybe that’s something we talk about a different day in research. But again — you see a red bag, get that foal out quickly.

[41:30]

When we go back to Prairie Rose — everything proceeds normally. She’s out on the ground, she should struggle immediately. Those first few breaths of that foal — again, this is a point where you maybe want to go in and we call it “stripping the nose” if there’s any debris. But you can go and just use your two fingers and just kind of wipe down the nostrils, because those first few breaths are difficult for the foal, but they should be breathing normally relatively quickly.

[42:02]

They’re all legs, and they should whinny a little bit, neigh — and mom… oh, it’s the best. The best. She just — a lot of times — either they’ll stand up and start licking the foal and nuzzle the foal, or, if they’re really tired from a long labor, they’ll reach back with their noses and nuzzle the foal and neigh and nicker, and it’s just… it’s just magic. It is magic. It is one of those things everybody should experience.

[42:37]

Now this enters stage three — this is passage of the placenta. Baby’s out on the ground, we’ve got to get that placenta out of the uterus. Can take up to three hours. A lot of what we recommend is to tie up the placenta — so get some rope or string, tie up that placenta into a ball so it hangs around her hocks — and that will help pass that placenta, puts a little bit of weight on there. She’s still experiencing contractions, but 90% of the mares should pass their placentas no problem. If it goes beyond three hours — call your veterinarian. A retained placenta could put the mare’s life in danger if she got a bad uterine infection. Take it seriously, but the vet will come out and can either flush the mare, maybe give her some oxytocin treatment — again, something you’re going to deal with if you’ve been around the breeding shed enough or the foaling shed.

[43:42]

But there is a lot of research out there on how to deal with retained placenta or fetal membranes — we’ve got to get that out because if it’s left in there, it gets necrotic, it dies, and it will poison the mare. But most mares — it passes, and then your day isn’t over — your morning, your night — you’re not ready to go home yet. Baby’s out on the ground, great, mom and baby are talking, mom’s licking the baby, placenta comes out, great — get it out, check it, check to make sure there’s no remnants inside the mare.

[44:14]

But your day is not even begun, because you’ve got to make sure the baby can stand and nurse. And so Prairie Rose, thankfully, was one of the champions. She was quick. But I’ve had some foals that took hours to stand and nurse — they’re just a little bit slower starting life. But most foals should try to start standing within 30 minutes, and then after two hours they should be able to stand unassisted. Then you want to make sure they nurse within the first three to four hours.

[44:45]

Anybody who has been around foals — you will watch them nurse everything but her udder. Mom will help. Mom is incredible — she’ll maneuver so her udders are right in front of the foal’s face, she will encourage them with her nose, and that foal will stumble around and nurse her shoulder or chew on her tail or hang out at her hocks. But you should not leave that foal and mare until you watch that foal latch on for the first time.

[45:24]

And that’s because that foal needs mom’s milk to survive — it’s colostrum, it’s what all mammals produce. It is the first milk, and basically what it’s doing is giving that foal its immunity for its first few months of life. Again, this is a whole other podcast — very in-depth topic. Again, on Mad Barn, another great article — “Colostrum for Newborn Foals” — you can check it out there. But it gives that foal its immunity to this hostile world of microbes and bacteria and viruses and everything to fight off illness. We’re born with no immunity — we get it from mom’s milk — and that’s why colostrum is so important. So we want to make sure they nurse, and then we want to make sure they poop, which we call the meconium. It’s from their digestive system during gestation, where they swallow some of that amniotic fluid and things and digest it. But you want to make sure that they’re passing manure — so they usually will do that after nursing, and that can take upwards of six hours.

[46:21]

Thankfully, Prairie Rose was quick, and we were leaving the barn within three to four hours. She stood up, stumbled around a bunch, she nursed, we checked Tar’s colostrum with a colostrometer — IgG levels were really good — and we ensured that foal got not only just the quality, had enough IgG in it, but the quickness — it had it within the first few hours, and it was nursing a lot.

[46:48]

The other thing you want to do is IgG tests — again, I’ll link these in my show notes, I will link some of these articles so they’re easy for you to access — but IgG testing in foals is another good article you can read at madbarn.com. It is one thing we want to do within 24 hours. SNAP test kit — readily available in the U.S. The only difficulty is you need to get a blood sample from the foal — that is not easy, that can be difficult — but once you have that blood sample, you do the SNAP test, you ensure they got enough IgG in their blood, and you’re not having to do a plasma transfer or something like that that can be quite pricey to ensure that that foal has the immunity it needs to survive.

[47:31]

And then within 24 hours, you can put them in a paddock the next day in the sunlight, bring them in at night, and then within a few days, once mare and foal are properly bonded, you can put them out with the herd — with the other mares and foals. And then this is where Tar enters that lactation cycle. But over the coming months, that mom and foal are just going to be inseparable. Prairie Rose — she’s nursing off Tar every 10 minutes. Then, by the end of the week, maybe every 30 minutes. By the end of the month, she’s nursing every hour or so, she’s nibbling some of mom’s food, maybe even some hay, maybe even some of mom’s poop. That’s important — Prairie Rose needs those gut microbes that mom has. So eating mom’s poop is normal — that’s a normal behavior, they should do that, she needs her gut microbes.

[48:23]

And then that bond’s going to carry on for about six months, or until it’s time for Prairie Rose to be weaned off mom and become part of a herd of yearlings. That’s a whole future podcast — oh my goodness, those kids — they’re always fun, but they just are rambunctious and fun to watch. But Tar’s getting ready, and hopefully she’s pregnant with her next foal, because that’s the life of a broodmare. And then Prairie Rose will either follow in her mom’s footsteps, or she’ll go on to be the incredible riding horse that she was destined to be.

[49:06]

The only thing Prairie Rose needs to remember — and I think we all need to remember — is the great start we got in life, thanks to our own mothers. And Prairie Rose got an excellent one off her incredible mother, Tar.

[49:24]

I love talking about foaling — and it brings back so many fun memories, and some hard ones. I mean, some really, really hard ones. That Hackney colt — like, I just… that mare, we couldn’t get her down, she was doing circles around us, and we tried to bring her up, and she just wouldn’t, and we lost the foal. And that was a significant investment to the farm — that foal was going to sell for at least $5,000. It was a Hackney horse, which is a rare breed. But it was the heartbreak — that was the worst. It wasn’t the money — it was the fact that we had to euthanize that baby. That was a tough one.

[50:07]

Thankfully, most — majority — of births that I did over the years, when I was a graduate student in Texas A&M, and then my time at Clemson, and then my time at the University of Florida when I was heavily involved in foaling out mares and research — those mares are just incredible, incredible, incredible. So, you know, I would always suggest if you can get on foal watch, or have a friend or breeding farm that you know of — if they need help — it’s just something you should experience if you love these animals.

[50:36]

And again — thank you for listening. Your time’s precious. As I put this podcast together, I’m trying to think, “What can I do to make it not just entertaining, but educational?” So thank you. And if you really enjoyed that episode, if you don’t mind sharing it on social media or with a friend, you are going to help me grow this podcast — I need your help, and that will help a lot.

[51:03]

And then if you haven’t — a quick five-star review on iTunes or Spotify is big. But those articles — I will link in the show notes. There’s plenty of articles on madbarn.com — free education, go check them out, easy to read. They really are — they’re really well done — DVMs, PhDs, nutrition experts, all the team putting those together day in and day out. Social media — TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X — all of it. Look for Mad Barn. And then you can always email me — quick shout out to Sue in Ontario, who emailed me the other day, and we’re having a nice conversation via email. But podcast@madbarn.com — stay tuned, more fun stuff coming your way. And again — thank you, thank you for listening, and thank you for caring about horses. Take care.