| The
mare of my heart foaled last night and gave me an unexpected
present--TWINS! And it was a present, too, because they are both
doing well. I have never been so stunned in my life.
Thankfully, she
did wait for me to return from the Rancho Murieta CDI (which went
well, I might add--Susan won all of her classes, including scoring
65+ in the FEI Junior Team Test from "O" Judges Zang,
Verbeek and Valentin on her stallion, Facet--I'm now admitting that
she's stolen him permanently from me), because I would have flipped
had she had the twins without me.
The delivery of
the first one was difficult, only because Quila chose to have it
against the stall door. It took 3 of us to extract the baby without
it being crushed (how DO these mares manage to have these foals in
the wild?), and that done, I looked at Quila's hind legs only to see
a dark bloody mass that I thought was perhaps the early delivery of
her placenta, but then it nickered! I nearly fainted!
Both foals are
smallish, but virtually the same size, and quite well-formed. She
made it to 327 days gestation, so their lungs are mature, and the
only problems we have are that they are thin, a bit weak and in need
of some support for a few days in the form of supplemental
feeding--so I was up every 1 1/2 hours last night milking the mare
and feeding them via nasogastric tube, down to every 2 hours today,
and then every 3 hours tonight. By this afternoon, the larger foal
can stand, run and buck unassisted but needs some direction in
figuring out where to nurse. The smaller has the nursing thing down
pat, but needs a tiny boost to rise to a standing position (she can
then buck and run with her sister without difficulty). My vet tells
me they should be independent and indistinguishable from any other
foal within a few days. April
20 Update |
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