Once your mare has carried out the delivery of your foal, first questions can quickly be answered with regards to the colour, markings and gender of the foal.
At this stage it’s worth running your fingers down the nasal passage to dispel any fluids that could restrict breathing and then step back to leave the mother and newborn be until one or the other moves, breaking the umbilical cord.
Spraying the umbilical stump with diluted iodine will help cauterise and minimise chances of infection getting in through this open site.
Overall Picture
It’s quite easy to spot some abnormalities with a foal while others may require closer and longer periods of observation. For example, a foal with an eye missing, an abnormally shaped head or a bad overbite may stand out to the observer quite quickly.
Leg Problems
Issues with regards to legs and especially tendons may not show until the foal is first standing and walking. Common problems involve lax or contracted tendons. These are often not worth panicking over, many times able to be fixed with supportive bandaging and a marked improvement can be seen within a couple of weeks.
The main problem is if this stops the foal from being able to stand, walk and get to the mare to nurse. In this case milking out the mare and bottle feeding to ascertain the foal gets a reasonable amount of colostrum may be required.
Generally lax tendons or a foal that is ‘down on its bumpers’ means that the flexor tendons at the back of the leg are slack and cause the foal to walk on its pastern and fetlock joint in bad cases.
A foal that has contracted tendons may in an extreme case be seen to ‘knuckle over’, walking on the front of the pastern joint due to the constriction of the flexor tendon. A less severe case would result in a foal that appears to be walking on the toes of its hooves.
With any of these issues, a vet’s opinion should be sought out and problems can often be remedied in a short time frame. Getting onto this quickly improves your chances due to the foal’s bones not having completely ossified (hardened) yet and being easier to manipulate through pressure bandaging.
Conformation issues with regards to legs shouldn’t be worried about too much at this stage as they can change a lot as the foal fills out and grows in the next few weeks. After this stage it’s worth considering if any corrective trimming or other work needs doing to help straighten things up.
The Foal’s Head
Check the mouth to make sure that the foal doesn’t have an overbite or under bite which may cause problems with nursing and later in life with eating. The eyes should also be looked at with entropian (inverted eyelids) in mind.
This involves the lower lid of the eye being turned in, causing the eye lashes to rub against the foal’s eyeball which can lead to an ulceration and if left, potentially blindness. If entropian is suspected, it’s possible to manually manipulate the lid, which may need to be done a few times a day. If not successful, the vet can stitch the eyelid so that it is in the correct position.
The breathing of the newborn should be listened to, noting any rasping, gurgling or when drinking if the milk appears to be coming out of the foal’s nostrils or is causing the foal to aspirate.
A cleft palate, a hole between nasal and oral cavity could be causing the foal to pass milk out of its nasal passage when nursing. If suspected, again seek your vet's advice. It’s possible that the newborn is still getting the hang of nursing or guzzling and ending up with milk everywhere.
The Inquisitive Foal
The foal should be bright and responsive to noise. Following the 1, 2, 3 rule, the healthy foal should be born within an hour of the mare’s waters breaking, up within two hours and nursing within three. This works as a good guideline to follow.
A foal that isn’t responsive to noise, doesn’t show interest in nursing or a sucking reflex or has problems with regards to standing should be assisted and looked at by the vet when possible.
The first three days of the foal’s life mark the neonatal stage and it is at this point that the owner should be particularly observant as the young horse’s system is naïve and prone to infection as it’s building up immunity. Colostrum helps with regards to this and is vital within the first twelve hours of the foal’s life for it to be of any help.
As always, if unsure seek out the advice of your vet and don’t hesitate to have them look over your newborn – better to have them check and tell you everything is fine that to put things off and potentially lose the foal.
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