What should I do if my horse rejects its foal
my mare gave birth about a week ago (poor thing in the heat...but still yay!! :) ) she let it suckle for the first 2 days, but then the next couple of days she would allow it to feed...we bottle fed it for 5 days and it seems to be doing all right...what is going on here? why did she abandon the baby? is there anything we should do? all answers greatly appreciated!!
Answers:There is no way to say why she rejected the baby. The best thing for both you and the foal now is to get it onto a bucket and off the bottle. You get mare's milk replacer and just train the foal to drink from the bucket. If you have a black bucket, it needs to hang from a white wall or a white bucket needs to hang from a darker wall/fence etc. They have trouble at that age making out shapes etc and this helps them recognize and find the bucket.
Maiden mares can be a bit stupid and it might just mean that you hold the mare every couple of hours while the foal nurses or you can tie her short and hobble her. However, if she has truly rejected the baby, quit the bottle and get her onto a bucket. Makes your life easier and the foal can feed as required. In a few weeks as she gets bigger, she will start bullying you and getting rough when she wants to feed and you are not going to have a bottle big enough to do it.
Sometimes mares reject their foals for no reason apparent to us. This happens most often with new mothers. You might want to try to find a surrogate mare. Your vet can help you with that. If a mare recently lost a foal, she may even be willing to let your foal nurse.
keep trying it will soon figure that the foal is its baby but it will take a while if it dosent take care of it over nite then try again in the morning
Be very careful with bottle feeding your foal. Bottle fed foals can grow up to be very dangrous and difficult to handle. I had a bottle raised gelding once, he was completly psychotic. He basicly treated people like other horses, he was very dominant, agressive and didnt respond to any discipline. He was basicly uncontrolable.
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