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Whats the different PMU/ Orphan2007-11-24 21:22:43

PMU horses are occasionally rescued or given away from farms that haven't been able to sell that foal. That hasn't been a big problem here in Alberta as there has been a good market for the foals at the farm auctions. Foals were sold at the auction I attended for as much as $1000 each (if they were fancy color registered foals ) and for as little for under $100 for a scrubby looking grade colt. There wasn't any foals that went through the ring without a bid. That included a foal that had a hernia, and another with a minor eye injury, they were both sold.

Good luck with finding a nice baby for yourself. I would agree with the other writers that a baby on a bottle is not only time consuming and hard work, but potential for problems. But it can be done, just don't forget that feeding isn't your only job. They need to be socialized to other horses, pets, and various people and trained to be a horse, not a person.

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i had an orphan foal last year,his mother just would not accept him at birth and litterally tried to kill him,i ended up bottle feeding,before you go out and get a bottle baby foal if you can find someone out there willing to let you do this,please do plenty of research into it,it is a very difficult,energy draining and time consuming task to do,every two hours for the first month or so,with no sleep,i felt like a walking zombie person and i have found the mortality rate is high in bottle fed foals,they aren't a thing like bottle fed calves,their stomachs are much more sensitive and colic easily mine colicd 3 times in his first 4 months for just no apparent reason,they don't take to formulas as well and keeping weight on them is no easy task,when it comes time for weaning you literally have to teach the baby to graze as it has never had any socialization with other grazers and hasn't a clue,once again not an easy task,if you are lucky you can find an old barren mare or some type of gentle equine to take the little one under it's wing at an early age before weaning and teach it the correct behaviors,bottle foals tend to be more aggressive as they have not been taught proper horse etiquette by other horses all this i found out the hard way my foal also refused to become a horse he was terrified of other horses and wanted nothing to do with them at all,i have found that this is a common thing as well,had i done research i would have not made so many mistakes,i now know there are some wonderful sites on this subject,he ended up being a nice little foal but a lot of the things i did and behaviors i let him get away with had to be reversed,i no longer have the paper work a friend sent to me and cant remember the names of the sites i checked out but i am sure if you google care of orphan foal some excellent and informative sites will come up,but in my opinion bottle feeding is a very difficult and sometimes hard task to complete and i wouldn't reccomend it to anyone unless they absolutly have to