Here Comes Baby: The Foaling Process

- All right, so welcome to the beginning of our 2024 Lunch and Learn webinar series.

Our speaker today is Dr. Jennine Lection.

She is a reproductive veterinarian and a PhD candidate here at Penn State.

So, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Lection and have her give a more thorough introduction.

- Thanks Laura and thanks everybody for attending this webinar.

I'm really excited to talk to you all about my favorite time of year, which is foaling season potentially depending on what breeds of horses you all have.

You might already have foals on the ground.

Obviously some breeds target the beginning of the year to try to have foals, but some of you might be anxiously waiting for your first foals to hit the ground and maybe hopefully in a little bit nicer weather here later in spring.

I do want to ask and if you all could put in the chat if you are waiting for foals.

I'm curious how many people are listening, just because they're curious about the topic, versus how many of you all are actually breeding mares and waiting for babies.

So, if you don't mind putting in the chat if you're waiting on a mare or two.

So, a little bit of my background, I'm originally from North Carolina and I of course went to my state land grant, which is NC State University for my undergrad in animal science and then they do have vet school at NC State.

So, I stayed on for my doctor of veterinary practice where I focused on equine practice for my DVM.

I have always wanted to work with horses my entire life and one of the best places to learn to work with horses is down in Ocala, Florida.

They always argue whether or not they're the horse capital world as compared to Lexington, Kentucky, but nonetheless there's quite a bit of horse country down there and especially this built a brand new show facility.

I don't know if any of you all travel down the World Equestrian Center down there, but that's definitely brought a lot more horses to Ocala.

So, I spent a year learning all about equine medicine and surgery.

As much as I wanted to work with horses, I knew I wanted to focus on reproduction.

I really greatly enjoy doing the obstetrics, the delivery of full side of things.

I also enjoy working with clients and mares who might have been having a hard time getting their mare pregnant and try to get those success stories.

And so I went up to New Cornell up in Ithaca, New York.

I saw a bunch of people were from Central New York, so probably right around in your area.

And I completed specialty training in Theriogeneology, which just means reproductive medicine.

And I became a board certified specialist in reproductive medicine in 2021.

I have some family background at Penn State and so when I knew I wanted to pursue a PhD, I knew Penn State was the place for me.

So, I'm finishing up my PhD here at Penn State, looking at the reproductive microbiome or what bacterial communities are present in the reproductive organs of horses, cows and dogs and how that affects my practice as a veterinarian and treating reproductive diseases.

So, that's just a little bit about me and all the places I've been.

A quick disclaimer for everyone on here.

I'm happy to answer any and all questions that you have, generally about equine reproduction, really for this webinar as it pertains to foaling and pregnancy.

But other questions are okay to as it relates to the subject matter.

However, I am not able to discuss specific questions, about specific horses.

Those are obviously handled best by your primary veterinarian, who knows your horse's vaccination history, de-worming history, medical history, things like that where they're living, their nutrition.

But any other questions are fair game and I'm excited to see what you all come up with.

Okay, a little bit of a roadmap for today.

We're gonna spend just a couple slides, about the physiology of pregnancy and really just what is relevant for horse owners or breeding managers to know.

There's a few points that you might want to think about in the last month before foaling.

We do a lot of preventative care in that last month to get mom ready to give birth.

And so we're gonna talk about some of those things that you might be thinking of if you're having foals due in March, April, May.

Monitoring mares.

So, what changes are we gonna see in mares as they get closer and closer to foaling and how that can help us narrow down a due date, so we're not just staying up every night for a month hoping our mares will foal, can use a little bit of science and research to narrow things down for ourselves.

Supplies to get ready, so what should you have outside the stall, right there that might be necessary, versus what should you just have in the barn and know where it is?

And then we'll talk about the foaling process and really what is normal and how it should progress and what is abnormal and when it would be considered an emergency.

Because unfortunately in veterinary medicine we say like the one true emergency that cannot wait is a dystocia, which just means that the mare's having trouble giving birth, it's a matter of minutes will make a difference if your mare has a foal that's stuck or is otherwise compromised.

Okay, so the physiology of pregnancy.

Horses have quite a long gestational length, we say about 11 months, but there's quite a range.

We usually think about gestation being anywhere from 330 to 360 days long.

If you have a foal that's born before 320 days, that is considered premature.

And then there are gonna be some concerns with that foal particularly because their bones of their joints as well as their lungs do not fully develop, until basically the foal is right at term.

So, unlike some of our other species that potentially can be born, you know a couple weeks early even, same thing in human pregnancy.

There's quite a range of when a baby can be born.

With foals, they really don't mature fully, until the last few days before they're born.

And so therefore we don't have the option of delivering a foal prematurely a month before its actual due date.

It basically needs to be delivered on its due date.

At the beginning of pregnancy, the embryo enters the uterus at day five and a half and then it's fixed in the uterus at day 16.

And so that foal is obviously in the uterus for quite a long time.

I mean, you think about it almost a year.

And one important thing to note is we don't actually know signal of recognition of pregnancy in the mare.

We know in other species, humans, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, how mom recognizes pregnancy, but we don't understand this in the horse.

And so kind of at the beginning of pregnancy, we're not quite sure why there's pregnancy loss so early, 'cause we're not sure what that signal is.

So it's an active area of research for horses.

At the end of pregnancy, what we do know is what the signal is to start the labor process.

And that's an increase in the hormone cortisol and that's actually made by the fetus.

And that is a signal to mom that, hey, we need to start getting ready to deliver this foal.

And that really only happens in the last one, two, three days before foaling.

So that foal even seven days before it decides it's ready is not going to be a viable foal.

And so the old saying that really does hold true is that the foal determines the day of birth, but the mare determines the hour.

So, the foal once again, it'll start releasing this hormone a couple days before it's ready.

And then once it's ready, mom is gonna determine when she feels the most comfortable to deliver that foal, which for all of us means most of the time it's going to be at night.

Sometimes people get lucky and we have like a 3:00 PM foaling, but that is few and far between.

A lot of us are gonna spend a lot of long nights, either watching cameras or walking past stalls, waiting for our mares to foal.

And the mare actually does have a little bit of control, over her hormones of when she's gonna fold.

So, if you've ever heard that, you shouldn't just stand outside the stall and stare at the mare and wait for her to foal.

That's true because if the mare feels threatened in any way or doesn't feel comfortable, she can actually delay her labor by controlling her hormone levels is the current research and thinking behind why that phenomenon happens.

So, just know you have to give them their space when they're ready to foal.

So what are we thinking about in the last month prior to foaling?

So vaccinations, obviously this is a conversation for owners and their veterinarians to formulate a schedule.

We as veterinarians have a society that most of us belong to, called the American Association of Equine Practitioners.

It's who advocates for our profession, but they come up with these guidelines for how to do vaccinations and they have them also for foals, other adult horses.

But broodmares, it's very important that we're giving mom vaccinations at the appropriate time, because then she's going to make antibodies and those antibodies or basically what's gonna give the foal immunity are gonna go into colostrum.

And then that foal is gonna nurse the mare, hopefully that she has good quality colostrum in the first day of life.

And that's how the foal starts to develop its immune system early on.

And so if the mare doesn't have enough antibodies, she's not gonna have enough antibodies in her colostrum.

So, it's very important to think about what we're vaccinating the mare for and when that vaccination is occurring.

And so probably these core vaccinations are familiar to most of you.

The things that we like to give basically a month or so, before foaling are tetanus, eastern and western equine encephalomyelitis, West Nile and rabies.

There are other risk-based vaccines and these depend on basically if there are any outbreaks in your area of rotavirus and botulism, those are more risk-based.

Most people will give equine herpes virus if you ever hear of like the Pneumabort shot at months five, seven and nine of gestation.

And so that's for equine herpes.

It's also known as equine rhinovirus.

And those shots are different.

The ones that you give for abortion at five, seven, nine, usually that shot is not labeled for the respiratory disease.

And so you actually need to give a respiratory rhino shot, about four to six weeks prior to foaling.

As far as de-worming, likely the mare can stay on her normal deworming schedule.

But with that being said, there are certain dewormers that are labeled for pregnancy and you should check whether or not, whatever you're deworming your mare with is labeled for pregnancy.

And that just means that when they did the testing, it was tested in pregnant mares and they aren't seeing any adverse effects, either in the pregnancy or the resulting foal.

One of the things that we like in general is to do fecal egg counts to actually see if de-worming is necessary.

And so this is just taking some manure, looking at it under a microscope and counting the amount of fecal eggs, well the eggs that are in the feces.

And that tells you whether your mare is a high medium or low shedding mare and potentially she's low shedding and barely has any eggs in her manure.

She might not really need as much de-worming as compared to a high shedder.

And this is just good overall horse husbandry, outside of even mares being pregnant.

But when we have a mare who is pregnant, any kind of medication that we want to use, any kind of de-wormer, we need to think about whether it's safe for both the mare and the fetus at the time, the resulting foal.

And so there's always, we have to think about it for both of those patients, even though we're just staring at the mare.

And so anything that you might want to give your mare, whether it be some kind of pain control or anything else, we have to think whether that's appropriate for the fetus, 'cause there are certain drugs that can cause fetal malformations.

And so it's just a good idea to run things, past your veterinarian, read labels of medications, make sure that they're labeled for pregnancy or if not, ask your veterinarian.

So, then other considerations.

If your mare has a Caslick's stitch, which I'll explain that in a second, but it should be opened about four weeks, before expected due date.

So if we think mares are typically due around day 300 or day 330 of gestation, then around day 300 we should we open a Caslick's stitch.

For anybody who's not familiar with a Caslick's, mares who have poor peroneal confirmation, which means that they're vulva is sloped up towards their anus and potentially could pass manure into their reproductive tract, should have basically that top part of their vulva suture with a Caslick's stitch.

And that prevents them from contaminating their reproductive tract with any pathogens that may be in their manure or any kind of bacteria.

And we know that these at the beginning of pregnancy, help promote better pregnancy rates and mares who have a slipped vulva.

But oftentimes we continue these throughout pregnancy as the mares of course confirmation, her body's changing, she's getting a little bit more round as we would expect.

And so we keep it there, just to make sure that we're not contaminating that reproductive tract during her pregnancy.

However, of course we do not want a mare to try to foal with a Caslick's stitch that could cause a lot of trauma to her reproductive tract, because it would just involve a lot of ripping of where those stitches were placed.

And so make sure that A, you know if your mare has a Caslick's or not, or the mare's new to you, she got sold to you and she was pregnant, that you have someone check, you can check yourself and see if it's suture.

But then have someone, your veterinarian open it up around day 300.

We don't want any kind of accident where we waited till 330 and now all of a sudden she's foaling, because we were gonna do it the next day, just do it early.

And then monitor your mare's body condition score.

So, usually mares for the first two trimesters of pregnancy can stay on their normal diet, but that third trimester, they are gonna need more calories, more energy.

And so we need to be thinking about she's growing this fetus and there's a lot of fetal growth at that last portion of gestation as well as she's heading to lactation, right?

So, she's gonna have to have enough calories to feed herself as well as completely feed that foal, because that fool's not getting calories from anywhere else in the first few weeks of life.

And so we need to think about is this mare well supported?

Does she have a proper body condition score or do we need to increase her energy?

And a lot of times that's in the form of feeding these mares a higher calorie grain, towards the end of gestation.

How do we monitor mares to try to nail down their their due date as best we can?

So, the first thing to look for are physical signs.

I usually like to start evaluating mares around day 300, so about a month out.

And that might just be me looking at them to start.

I might not have any milk to do testing on, the mare might be hesitant to have her udder touch, especially if it's a maiden mare.

She might not even have an udder if she's a maiden mare.

And so I just start with a normal physical exam.

So, the things that I look for starting a month out are, does the udder start to grow?

So this is a pretty small udder for this mare.

I know the pictures are a little bit dark, but we'll have one on the next slide.

A very full udder that a mare had right before she foaled.

But this is pretty small and sometimes you'll notice that the teat ends are flat and we end up seeing that these mares more just have like a edema or like fluid around their udder, rather than actually having milk and mammary development.

And so everything is just starting to swell but not necessarily producing milk yet.

As you feel over your mare's croup muscles.

So, the muscles basically around her tail head, about two weeks before foaling it starts to soften.

And I tell the students that I teach here that you know basically as mares are getting close to foaling, you almost see those muscles like jiggle, like jello.

And that's how you know they're quite soft.

Like if you go and pet them and they keep jiggling after you pat the muscle, she's getting very close and very soft to foaling.

And then in those last couple days you'll see elongation of the vulva as they're preparing to foal.

This is pretty pronounced in maiden mares who have very tiny tucked up vulva usually for the point all of their life up until that point.

But even in some of your mares that have had multiple foals over and over, you'll start to see things loose and elongate back there.

If we think specifically about mammary development, there's some specific changes that we start to look for.

So this mare has very much larger udder, compared to that last slide.

And she has this little bit of wax, little bit dried milk.

And this is something that we start to look for in the days leading up to foaling.

Mares, as I said, start to make an udder, whether they start to develop edema and then get milk about a month prior to foaling.

And edema just means swelling around the udder, any earlier is concerning.

So, if you have a mare and she's doing three months and she's making an udder, she needs to be evaluated.

The things that can possibly cause a premature udder are placentitis, which is just an infection of the placenta or the fetal membranes.

The supporting structures around the baby.

Mares who have twins, a lot of times will develop an udder sooner than expected or unfortunately if she is about to lose her pregnancy, so much as we think about mares in the last month, start to develop their udder leading up to foaling.

If this mare's gonna foal any earlier and lose her pregnancy, then a lot of times they do start making an udder as that pregnancy is likely dying unfortunately.

In the last week to foaling, their teat ends start to fill with milk and elongate.

So, these teat ends are not flat, like they were in the last picture.

They actually have some character and substance to them and they're filled with milk.

And in the last week we typically see mares get waxed.

Sometimes it's in the last couple days, but if you have a mare and you breed her multiple years over, then you'll start to see what her patterns are.

Sometimes mares will only get waxed the day that they're folding, but it's really more dependent on the mare and you can't like necessarily specific trends, across every mare.

But this is a reason to keep really good records on your mares and know, "Oh well she started bagging up three weeks, "before she was due to foal "and then her croup muscles started getting soft, "about a week before." And then you can notice the same trends year after year.

And that's what we do with our horses here at Penn State.

We have the, all the undergrads who participate in our classes, keep meticulous records of all the different signs that they see.

If we wanna get even more scientific, other than just physical changes, we can actually do a little bit of testing on mammary secretions.

So, mammary secretions, we say that because it's anything that you're getting out of the udder whether it's colostrum, whether it's milk or sometimes it's just kind of a watery substance, but you can do these tests on whatever kind of secretions you're getting out of the udder.

We suggest performing these tests in the evening, 'cause they're most indicative of what the mare's gonna do overnight.

So, if you perform your milk testing at 8:00 AM, it's likely gonna change by 6:00 PM.

And so usually we're looking at mares here, between about five and 6:00 PM.

There are two types of tests that we can look for.

You can take the pH, how acidic the milk is and you're looking for a drop in pH below 6.4.

And the thought is in the next two to three days, after that drop, she will foal.

If you're gonna order pH paper, which is very easy to order, you can order online off of Amazon, you wanna look for something that actually has decimals with it.

You don't want pH paper that just has whole numbers.

Sometimes you'll see pH paper and it'll just tell you whether whatever substance you're measuring is a five, a six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

That's not precise enough for taking these measurements.

You want something that might tell you if it's 5.4, 5.7, six , 6.3, something like that.

So, you can actually see the drop as the mare gets closer to foaling.

The other indicator that we can measure in milk is calcium.

And so you're looking for levels of 200 parts per million.

We usually start out with little calcium hardness strips which are little strips and they have little foam squares on them and you apply the milk to it and you look to see how many squares change color.

The ones that we have have five squares.

Once they're over three out of five squares on those, we actually switch to something called a full watch kit and actually this little glass vial that can give you an accurate measurement of the calcium.

And so that's where we get this parts per million.

I think it starts around 50 parts per million I think is the bottom of the scale on that and goes up to 500.

But when a mare's milk secretions, start going above 200 parts per million, you should be expecting that foal also the next three days.

And as much as we use these tests to help tell us when the mare is gonna foal, we also use them more to tell us when the mare is not going to foal.

So, if I have a mare that has a pH of 7.6 and her calcium is less than 50, I'm gonna feel better about sleeping that night than if I have a mare whose pH is 5.8 and her calcium is over 500.

That's one mare that I'm gonna spend all night watching, because I think that she's imminently gonna foal.

Once again, this depends on the mare and we see with our results with having the same mare's bread every year that they seem to foal at relatively the same numbers.

So maybe some mares will foal always when their calcium hits about a 250, versus some mares wait till 500.

And so it's good once again to keep those records.

You also wanna look for a change in the quality of milk from looking like regular milk that you would get in a jug at your local grocery store.

So, white and watery to sticky and yellow and the sticky and yellow is the colostrum.

So, this is all of the antibodies for the foal are in this product that looks is what makes it so thick.

And the may only has colostrum for about the first day or two of the foal's life.

And so that foal really needs a nurse on that mare within the first 12 hours to be able to absorb that colostrum through its GI tract.

Otherwise we would have to supplement antibodies by giving intravenous blood products.

And so you can also look for this change in milk from white to yellow and sticky as indicative that the mare is getting close to foaling.

And this is just an example of what colostrum looks like.

So, ways to monitor mares.

First of all, you can be in person.

Once again, you don't want to be in person, and put out a camp chair in front of your mare stall and say you're gonna sit there all night, because she might not foal.

But it still needs some sort of constant surveillance.

So, bigger barns will have a night watch person who walks past the stall every 30 minutes or hour.

But if you're committing to having in-person monitoring, then it needs to be constant surveillance.

Cameras, give us the access to be away from the barn or away from the farm and still watching the mare.

But once again, it takes constant surveillance.

If a mare's close to foal, you can't say, "Oh well I'm just gonna check the mare every three hours." You might check the mare at nine and there's nothing.

You might check the mare again at midnight and there might be a foal in the ground.

That process can be that quick.

There have been new products in the last, I would say, oh okay, well, five or so years that actually are halters with activity trackers.

They track the mare's heart rate and how quickly she gets up, lays down, how long she's laying down for.

I went online last night to see the status of these products and they actually were pulled from the market.

So, I'm curious if anybody uses this technology to monitor their mares, but it is an option.

There are also a couple other options.

I think there's one that is like basically a pager that connects to your mares halter.

I've never used it and so I don't have any personal experience with it, but there are quite a few options out there.

Lastly, one pretty common option that I see is the foalert.

So, this is a little transponder that gets sewn into the mare's vulva and it has this transponder that goes on one side and then there's a little magnet within the slot of the transponder and that gets sutured to the other side.

And you can imagine when the foal's feet start to pass through the vulva, the vulva opens up and it pulls these two parts away from each other, that will send a signal to this, which is both an alarm as well as you can hook it up to a phone line and it can actually call your phone when this magnet gets tripped.

The one downfall to foalerts is that mares seem to love to rub them out if they're like a mare who loves to rub their tail, they might rub it out at 3:00 AM and then you have to go put the two parts back together, even if she's not foaling, because they just felt like rubbing it out.

And so you have to be diligent about always having someone who can go check on the mare and see is she actually foaling or is she just itchy?

Let's see, oh I guess the lights are motion activated in this room.

So, things to watch for, for your mare while she's pregnant that could constitute an emergency.

So, while mares get a little bit colicky and uncomfortable at the time of foaling.

If they are a couple weeks out and they're a little bit colicky, this can be an issue in mares.

This includes sweating, rolling, flank watching, going off feed.

Pregnant mares both right before and right after they deliver are prone to a type of colic, called a large colon volvulus, which is pretty devastating kind of colic.

It's where they take their large colon and they completely flip it over on itself.

The prognosis for fixing one with surgery is only about 50% of horses leave the hospital.

And then there's not really a prognosis if it's not corrected with surgery, 'cause their colon will actually die off, inside their body if it's flipped.

And so we have to be particularly careful about colic and pregnant mares 'cause we know that they're predisposed to this because everything is kind of moving around and displaced in their abdomen, because they're growing a baby.

Other things to look for are vulva discharge.

So, that can be white, yellow or bloody, but there should be no normal discharge from the mare's vulva during pregnancy.

Obviously they urinating out there, that's fine.

But if it's anything other than urine, it needs to be addressed.

We already talked about the importance of thinking about early mammary development.

So, if your mare starts to bag up, more than four to six weeks before she's due, she needs to be evaluated.

And lastly, a rapidly expanding abdomen.

There are a couple different reasons why a mare might seem like she balloons up, just over a couple days, but a lot of times it's a defect with the placenta that the fetal fluids are not being recycled, through the placenta and through the fetus appropriately.

And so instead of having like 10 liters of fluid, now she has 200 liters of fluid and this makes her a very high risk pregnancy.

So, if you see any of these signs in a pregnant mare, they do need a veterinary evaluation.

So, it's a physical exam, likely blood work, a transrectal ultrasound which helps us evaluate the placenta at one of the points where it's most commonly gets an infection.

But a transabdominal ultrasound, allows us to evaluate the fetus and for us to see whether or not there's any fetal distress by taking heart rates as well as looking at the quality of those fetal fluids and seeing if there's any signs of distress.

The fluid around the first layer of the placenta, should be nice and black.

And so if it looks like a snow globe, that starts to be a cause for concern on our ultrasound.

So, supplies to get ready.

The first thing to get ready is a plan.

So, you always need a contingency plan in case of an emergency.

You should develop a relationship with your local veterinarian long before the mare's due date.

They should know roughly about when she's due and then going from there, you can set up a plan with your veterinarian if you kind of communicate any of that pH or calcium data.

For my clients, I really like to know in advance of when they think their mare's gonna go.

So, I know that I have a plan to get to their farm if there's any issue.

Foaling should be attended by someone, we do not want mares out in a field by themselves.

No one knows that they're foaling.

That's just a recipe for disaster.

Foals need to be born within 30 minutes of the mare's water breaking, which we'll talk about in a few slides.

But if no one is watching the mare and time goes on, it could be devastating for both the foal and the mare.

And then it's a difficult topic to think about beforehand, because usually having foals is a happy process, but you have to think if something does go wrong.

Are you willing to bring that specific mare to a referral facility for anesthesia and potentially a C-section?

As well as you need to think about who you're valuing, between the mare and the foal.

Some owners really want the foal, maybe the mare you know is old, they weren't gonna breed her anymore but they really want to maximize the potential to get a live foal.

And so sometimes that leads us to make different medical decisions than if someone wants to value the life of the mare and does not value the life of the foal as much, then that leads to a whole different decision making process.

And so it's good.

Even those are hard questions to ask yourself.

It's good to ask yourself that question beforehand, rather than when you're faced with an emergency and you're trying to figure out what you should do.

Or the case also comes that some people have horse insurance.

So, talking to your insurance policy, seeing what they'll cover, what they won't cover.

Do they only cover surgery?

Do they cover just referral and anesthesia?

But having all of that worked out and then hopefully you get all of that worked out and then you don't need any of it and it's just a perfect foaling and everything goes as to plan.

But it's good to think about these things beforehand.

So, supplies to get ready, this will become very apparent in the last section of my slides, but you need to keep scissors or a sharp implement outside the stall for a red bag delivery and just hold onto that bit of information.

We'll come back to it.

Towels, so once the foal is born, you want to go in there and stimulate to breathe.

And a really good way to do that is to rub it all over its body with towels.

As well as you want to make sure, obviously it's gonna be cold, coming out of a very fluid environment into, especially cold Pennsylvania weather right now.

And so you want to dry that foal off as quick as possible.

If you're foaling mares in stalls, they should be bedded with straw.

If you have shavings it can actually stick to the foals eyes and cause little ulcers on their eyes.

They'll stick to their umbilical stump.

And so we just prefer straw as far as cleanliness, if you're gonna foal a mare in stall.

The foal should have their umbilical dipped, after they're born for one to two days.

I prefer to do dilute chlorhexidine, which is an antiseptic solution for umbilical dip.

I think it typically comes as a 2% solution.

And so we dilute that down to a 0.5% solution.

So, it would be one part chlorhexidine and then three parts water.

Disposable gloves for handling placenta.

Unfortunately when mares get placental infections, there's a couple of those infections that actually are pathogens that can infect humans.

We call these Zoonotic diseases.

And so if the placenta comes out and it has a problem with it, it's just a good idea to just always handle that placenta with gloves.

Foal blanket depending on where you live, you don't want to find out the hard way that your foal was born in a nine-degree weather and you didn't have a foal blanket.

So just having one, probably less of an issue if you're down in Florida, somewhere tropical.

But up here in Pennsylvania, absolutely we're putting foal blankets on.

Digital thermometer, always good to have for both mom and baby.

If you ever see a problem with either, typically with the foals, like if they start to have swollen joints or lameness, things like that, it's good to take a temperature if you think that they have an infection and then a halter for the mare and have that somewhere close.

Unfortunately, one of the things that we sometimes deal with as reproductive veterinarians is foal rejection and that can be on a spectrum from the mare just ignoring the foal, all the way up to the mare being violent towards the foal.

And so you want something to be able to catch that mare quickly if all of a sudden she wants to go stomp on the foal and break its legs, which unfortunately I've had happen.

So yes, making sure to have a halter.

And that brings us to our last section, what actually happens during foaling.

We thought about all the preventative care, we have a plan ready, we have supplies ready, the mare's getting close, we've been monitoring her milk secretions.

So, what is actually going to happen?

So, the process of delivery, there are three stages of labor.

The first one is the preparation stage, which can take anywhere from one hour to 12 hours.

And this is when you start to think, "Hey my mare's gonna foal tonight, "'cause she's pacing around the stall, "she's getting up and down, "she's looking at her flank." Some mares stop eating, versus this is one of our mares here at Penn State.

She decided to eat the whole time, during her first stage of labor.

So, she would be uncomfortable then she would eat.

But yes, these mares get uncomfortable, they look at their flank.

You should never feel like the mare is violently uncomfortable.

So, if your is down, rolling, thrashing, getting herself cast in her stall, that might mean that she's more colicky.

Foaling, yes is quite an overwhelming process for the mare.

However, it shouldn't, you shouldn't feel uncomfortable going in the stall with the mare because she's acting so violently painful.

So, once the mare's finally ready, stage one ends with her water breaking.

This is a yellow fluid.

Sometimes it can be confused for urine, but it's quite a large volume.

So, it's about eight to 15 liters is about how much allantoic fluid they're supposed to have.

And so sometimes mares will trick us out, because they will urinate quite a bit, during stage one labor 'cause they're uncomfortable and they're trying to make room.

And so you'll see the mare lift her tail and you think, "Oh she gonna break her water." But then it's just a couple drops of urine, like if she actually is breaking her water, you're gonna know she's breaking.

Her water's gonna be quite a bit of a flood.

Once she breaks her water, that foal needs to be delivered within 30 minutes.

Anything past 30 minutes and it is more and more likely by every minute that foal will be compromised.

And this means if you're not seeing any progress, after her water breaks by about 15 minutes, that becomes an emergency and the mare needs to be evaluated.

We'll talk about emergencies a little bit more in a couple slides from now.

The last normal stage is stage three that starts once the foal delivered, it's on the ground and now the mare needs to deliver her placenta or her fetal membranes.

This should take less than three hours.

At this time she might be getting up, licking her foal, stimulating her foal to get up.

The foal might get up, it might nurse.

All that should be happening during this period.

But once a male retains her placenta for longer than three hours, she needs to be evaluated.

And why that is is that mares who retain any bit of their placenta, whether it's the full placenta or just a tiny little piece of one of the horns from the placenta, it can cause a very large inflammatory response in the mares uterus.

And horses do not do well with inflammation.

One of the things that horses commonly do if they have any kind of overwhelming inflammatory response is they start to develop laminitis or they start to founder.

And because of that process, we wanna try to get that placenta out of that mare as quick as possible.

It doesn't mean that we should ever pull a placenta out of the mare, because that's likely to leave small pieces that then can cause all this inflammation.

But we need to treat it, like it starts to become an emergency if she retains a placenta.

Because otherwise a lot of these horses who have this inflammation and up in a hospital, have ice boots, go on fluids, it becomes a whole process.

And so it's just best we can make sure that placenta is out by three hours.

So, this was the reason why I said to keep scissors actually outside the mare stall.

When a foal is born, it should be born in a white glistening membrane, which is the amnion.

This is not white or glistening.

This is the outer layer of the placenta, which is the chorioallantois.

It is red and velvety.

What becomes the problem is when a mare, starts to deliver foal, within this outer layer of the placenta, it means that the placenta is fully or partially detached from the uterus.

This means the foal is no longer getting oxygen from the mare and will start to suffocate.

If you ever see a red bag delivery such as this, this part of the placenta needs to immediately be opened, hence keeping the scissors outside the stall and then the foal should be delivered immediately.

So, I don't advocate for trying to pull foals out, while they're being delivered, but this is the one time that that foal needs to be delivered quickly, within a matter of minutes, because it could either have low oxygen from mom or be suffocating.

If you ever see this, hopefully you have someone around you, but if there are two people, one person should start correcting this and one person should call the veterinarian, 'cause likely that foal will be sick, because it will be oxygen deprived.

Unfortunately, if you are one person in seeing this, then you need to go ahead and open up the placenta and try to deliver the foal.

Maybe you can ask like Siri to call your veterinarian or put them on speaker or something like that.

But this needs to be tended to.

There's actually, it's really rare to have pictures of these red bag deliveries, because you should never stop and take a picture of this.

It needs to be corrected within a matter of minutes.

So, what if there's another kind of issue with the foaling?

So, let's say the foal has the amnion coming out, which is that white glistening membrane and then you see one foot and 10, 15 minutes go by and you don't see anything else.

This is considered a dystocia and it means either the fall is stuck somewhere or is in the wrong position.

So, this is like I said, a true veterinary emergency.

And if your mare's water breaks and you're not seeing anything by 15 minutes, they need to come evaluate the mare.

So, your mare should make progress every few minutes, between when her water breaks and that 30 minute mark.

So, water breaks at minute zero, maybe five minutes later you start to see amnion, maybe two or three minutes later you start to see one front hoof.

Couple minutes later you start to see the other front hoof.

Couple minutes later you start to see the nose.

And once you start to see the nose, that means that the shoulders, which are the widest part of the foal are in the smallest part of her pelvic canal.

And so that is gonna be the hardest point for the foal to be delivered.

Once the whole head is out, the shoulders are further into the vagina and it should be a relatively smooth sailing foal, past that point.

But if you don't see anything by 15 minutes or your mare's not making progress every five minutes or so, then that foal needs to get evaluated or and the mare.

And so what should you see?

How should this come out?

So, this is a foal being delivered in its amnion, which is fine.

Once again, it's this white glistening membrane, looks very different than that red bag presentation that I described earlier that needs to be dealt with immediately.

So, foal should come out, anterior, which means headfirst.

They should not come out posterior, which means tail first.

Or they should not try to come out with all four legs and their abdomen first, trying to present at the same time.

That's considered a transverse presentation.

They either come out dorsal sacral, which means they're right side up or dorsal pubic, which means they're upside down.

They should absolutely come out right side up.

If they're upside down, they possibly can catch the mare's rectum on the way out with a foot and cause a rectal tear from the vagina.

Posture just means how their head, neck and legs are oriented towards the foal's own body and you want their head and neck and their front legs to be extended out towards you.

So, this is a very nice example.

This foal is being delivered, we can't see the head at this point.

The nose is probably here behind these legs, but we have front legs coming out.

They're staggered, which is good.

So, they're not at quite at the same level, which means the elbows are staggered, which is an important part of the delivery.

And then we know these are front legs, because you can see the carpus here of the foals.

Sometimes if you ever have to try to pull a foal, you can't just tell from the hoof or the fetlock which limb you have.

You have to feel up to whatever the next joint is to decide do you have a front leg or a hind leg?

'Cause even if you're trying to remove the foal from the mare, you want them to still come out face forward.

And so you don't really wanna be pulling on their hind legs.

You want to try to orient the folds, so the head and the legs are coming first.

And so what is normal?

Anterior meaning headfirst.

Dorsosacral meaning right side up and then head and neck and limbs are all extended.

After delivery, we have the one, two, three rule, which is vital for anybody dealing with pregnancies to remember.

So, the foal should stand in the first hour of delivery or after delivery.

They should nurse within two hours of delivery and should nurse basically every two hours after that.

And then the mare should pass her entire placenta by three hours after delivery.

And just a reminder to handle placenta with gloves.

You can see this mare unfortunately, I don't know how far along she was, but she was post-delivery.

And you can see this bit of placenta was still hanging out of her.

It wasn't the full placenta but still had to come out.

Otherwise she would've developed that horrible inflammatory response to the part of retained placenta.

And so what do we look at when we look at a placenta?

There are three layers.

The top two are fused, so the chorion and the allantois.

And this is the outer layer here, the chorion that we're looking at.

If we were to flip it inside out, you would see the allantois, which is more of a pink color.

And then the amnion is the layer that actually surrounds the foal.

And that is more of this pinkish white color.

And that's once again what the foal should be delivered in.

So, whenever a foal's starting to be delivered, you want to see amnion, you don't wanna see this color chorion.

And the placenta is just there to protect, support the fetus.

It actually makes some hormones to support the pregnancy.

Obviously it participates in nutrient exchange between the mare and foal.

It's a vital organ for the foal.

But then once again, as soon as the mare's delivered, we want that placenta gone.

If a placenta is retained, there's some things that we can do.

We can lavage or put a large amount of fluids into the uterus to try to coax the placenta out.

We can also give her hormones.

It's the hormone oxytocin, which if you've ever been around humans, the brand name is Pitocin for humans.

But that causes contraction.

So, we can try to have the mare contract and push the placenta out.

Once again, we never try to just pull it 'cause honestly it will rip.

And then you're worse off to just leave a little portion in the uterus.

That's harder to get to rather than have it all connected.

And one thing that you can do to make sure it doesn't rip is as your mare's passing her placenta, if it's not all passed already, you can actually tie up the bit of amnion, so she's not stepping on it, because this will start getting tangled up in her hind legs.

And then of course she'll step on it and she'll probably rip part of her placenta and then you're gonna end up in a larger mess than when you started.

So, that's something we constantly do maybe every 10, 15 minutes as the mare's trying to pass her placenta is go in and tie up the free end and that way she's not stepping on it.

And then caring for a newborn foal.

Just a couple points to think about.

As I mentioned before, the umbilicus should be dipped in dilute chlorhexidine.

Some people also use dilute iodine or Betadine, about 0.5% solution three times daily for the first day or two of life.

After that, you should start seeing the umbilical stump start to dry up and then the little stump will actually fall off.

You need to keep an eye out for any heat or swelling around the umbilicus.

That could be a sign of an infection or a hernia as well as any heat or swelling around the foals joints as well as lameness.

Foals have a different blood flow pattern that if they get an infection in their body it can actually migrate to their joints.

We really don't see that process happen in adult horses.

And therefore every time I evaluate a foal, I feel every single one of its joints down its legs to make sure I don't feel any heat or swelling.

The devastating part of a foal is that if they get a joint infection, it can start to eat away at that bone in their growth plates and kind of ruin that joint for later in life.

Even if you have no concerns, you have a perfectly happy, healthy foal.

It's stood at one hour and then nurse by two hours has continued nursing, pass meconium, has urinated.

You should really still have your veterinarian evaluate that foal in the first 24 hours of life.

One of the things that we do other than a full physical exam to make sure that there's no abnormalities to the foal is we look and see how many antibodies they got from the colostrum.

So, this is an IgG test.

The level that you want to hear is that your foal has greater than an 800 IgG, anything less than that and potentially the foal needs to be supplemented.

If it's really young, like less than 18 hours old, it can be supplemented with additional colostrum.

Some veterinarians have colostrum banks, but the foals anything over 12, 18 hours, it has to be supplemented with plasma, which that is basically an IV transfusion of a blood product from horses who, known horses who've been vaccinated against a certain subset of diseases.

For Penn State, I have to give photo credits.

So, the foalert picture is from their website.

The red bag picture is from an amazing website that shows all different kind of reproductive conditions, across domestic species called The Lorie that's hosted up at Prince Edward Island University.

And then all other images are personal images of mine from seeing patients and working with mares and foals for the last several years.

And with that I'm happy to take questions.

This is my favorite foal that I ever produced, 'cause I produced a full with a perfect little question mark on its face.

So, I use it for all my question slides.

I'm gonna stand up for a second and see if these lights can come back on.

I'll be right back.

- Thank you so much Dr. Lection.

That was absolutely fascinating and so, so informative.

We had a lot of comments for you in the early part when you asked if anybody was expecting foals.

There were a number of people who are expecting foals this spring.

So, it sounds like this is well timed and very relevant to a lot of people.

We did have two people say that they do use the foalert system.

So, if you wanna talk with them about that.

Other than that, before we get to the questions, I wanted to thank Dr. Lection.

Thank everybody for coming out today and request that you fill out our evaluation survey.

It should take a minute or two to let us know what you thought of this topic, of this session.

And if you have any ideas for future topics, we have a couple questions.

Is the recording gonna be available if you came in late?

Yes.

This entire webinar was recorded and it's gonna be posted to our Penn State extension website within a week or so.

So with that, I will open up the first couple questions that we got.

We've had trouble with high meconium blockage in the last several years.

Do you have any thoughts as to what causes this or how to prevent it?

- I mean, I don't know if, I don't have a good way to prevent it.

I'm curious if there's a lot of foals on one farm that are getting it as far as if you're seeing a pattern or if it's the same foals outta the same mare.

I mean typically for meconium, we will do what's called Fleet Enema.

And you can get these at the drugstore, they're available for humans.

And so we typically do that right after the first nursing.

But that is obviously only so far into the GI tract.

If it's deeper down in a lot of times there's special enemas that veterinarians can do called retention enemas.

But I do not have a way to prevent that.

I think in, like I said, it's curious whether or not it's happening to multiple foals across one farm or they're all from the same mare.

But I've not had a string where it just keeps happening over and over.

- Okay.

And that did actually lead into another question that we got.

Let me see if I can find it.

I read in a magazine or a book that it's protocol to give a newborn foal an enema.

Is this still true?

- So, the research is very mixed on whether or not it helps.

I do not feel like it hurts if you just give one enema.

So once again, these are Fleet Enemas, they're actually made from sodium phosphate.

And giving one potentially does kind of help the process along.

I don't think you're wrong if you don't give it.

However, the issue is, if you give too many, can actually cause systemic abnormalities in the foals electrolyte balances, which can lead to more problems.

And so if you think a foals seems like they need one, they're having a little bit of trouble passing meconium, I would always tell owners give one.

But then if there's any more trouble like that or as the previous question was talking about, like high meconium impactions that needs veterinary evaluation, I feel like almost all the places that I've been and worked, we give enemas, but the scientific proof isn't as conclusive, about whether it truly helps or whether we're just making ourselves feel better.

- We do have a follow up from the first question.

It was multiple mares and one the same mare have been having babies with meconium blockage, even after passing a large volume of meconium.

- Yeah, I mean that's unfortunately it would be more of a question for a veterinary internist.

They're the ones who typically treat those.

My extent of like working with sick foal is honestly minimal like I deliver them.

But then usually if there are problems, those are internists.

It is an interesting question.

It's not that I have a way to get back to people, but it's something I'm gonna ask my internist friends now if they've ever seen it from the same mare over and over.

But yeah, sorry for your situation.

I know that has to be really frustrating, especially, I don't know if those foals are going to surgery, but yeah.

- Alright, next question.

Is it acceptable to squirt the umbilical stump with the diluted chlorhex solution from a syringe versus trying to dip it?

- So, the whole thing with applying an antiseptic solution is you want contact time.

And I would be worried that if you just squirt it, it's just gonna roll right off and it's not gonna provide that contact time.

'Cause I like to hold it there for, probably a good like 10 to 15 seconds.

I don't just, and then pull it off.

And so I prefer dipping, because I think it's providing that contact time that that antiseptic needs to work on the umbilicus.

- Okay.

So, we still have some questions.

It's one o'clock.

If Dr. Lection is okay with staying a couple extra minutes, then we are happy to keep going and anybody who has to step out again, all of these questions will be recorded and on our website.

Are you good to keep going?

- Yep.

- Super.

All right, if everything is looking normal, should I step in and pull the bag away from the nose or mouth?

- It depends on if we're talking during delivery or if a foal has already been delivered.

You, I don't necessarily think there's a problem with going in once if the foal looks like it's progressing okay and ripping the amnion away, that's not really the part of the placenta that we're worried about getting retained.

Obviously once the foal is delivered, if it was delivered fully in its amnion, which sometimes you will see, you won't see it rip during the actual delivery, absolutely get in there and rip it off.

'Cause that foal needs to start breathing and it needs to be stimulated.

But during the delivery, I don't think you need to.

A lot of times it does rip once the shoulders pass, but if there is any concern that it is like a prolonged delivery then yes, because then that would allow the foal to start having oxygen versus once it's in its amnion, it's getting some oxygen from the placenta as long as placenta's not detached already.

So, I think you could go either way.

If it's normal delivery, if it's an abnormal delivery, I would rip it off.

- Okay, great.

Next question, is the salmonella vaccine useful after foaling or only as a pre-foaling vaccine?

- I actually do not have any experience.

I've never administered that vaccine to any mares, so I don't want to tell you incorrect information from something that I've never used before and I do not know anybody who has used it.

So, sorry about that.

- Okay.

Can you discuss briefly the dangers of fescue and its management in Pennsylvania?

- I can discuss the dangers of fescue, maybe anyone else wants to address about Pennsylvania, if any of our extension specialists have thoughts, but so fescue grass predisposes a mare to having dysgalactia and longer pregnancies.

So, dysgalactia just means, or agalactia means she's not going to develop milk.

And so if we know a mare is not developing an udder, she has fescue exposure, there are medications that we can put a mare on to try to induce her to have an udder.

A lot of times though, once we induce them to have an udder, they're not gonna make colostrum and so you need to have a plan for that foal of how it's gonna get its antibodies.

Mares who are on fescue are typically pulled off fescue, about 60 to 90 days before foaling to try to prevent these side effects.

I don't do any sort of pasture management though in Pennsylvania, so I do not know the prevalence of fescue in Pennsylvania.

- I can comment on that, 'cause I do the pasture management work for the horse farms here.

So, we do have a lot of tall fescue in Pennsylvania.

There's sort of a wild type tall fescue that is very, very hardy and it grows everywhere.

It's in almost every horse pasture I've ever been in here in Pennsylvania.

The problem is when it's infected with a fungal organism called an endophyte and this wild type fescue generally is, so this end of fight makes the plant incredibly hardy and it can withstand a lot of challenges but it also gives it these physiological problems, within the animals.

This is sort of like the cooler range for tall fescue.

It's very prevalent in southern states in the country, sort of like that middle strip, we call it the transition zone, between like cool season and warm season.

I have been told by some of my clients that their veterinarians don't worry about tall fescue and the ergo valine problems so much in Pennsylvania as they would in other states.

So, that's pretty much what I've heard.

- Cool.

- All right.

Is there any way to detect dystocia or a baby being born the wrong way before birthing or is it just as they're in active labor, we see and we call the vet.

- Something that we can check for, you know like in the last month of pregnancy, doing like a transabdominal ultrasound is whether the foal is coming head first or tail first.

Obviously if it's tail first we would think that that's a likelihood for dystocia.

There are other species that can be born backwards but horses really aren't one of them.

How much you can see on ultrasound to detect if there's a problem.

I mean if there's some kind of gross fetal abnormality, sometimes we can detect that on ultrasound.

But a lot of times the foal really in the first stage of labor goes from lying on its back, flipping over and presenting itself with its front legs and its head right at the cervix about to be delivered.

And so it's during that flipping process that like a leg could get caught back, instead of being extended out, it's flexed back at like the elbow or something like that.

And that really just happens like in the last couple hours, right before the mare delivers.

So, if there's like an obvious malformation with the foal, potentially we could pick it up on ultrasound or if it's coming butt first rather than head first, you could potentially pick that up on ultrasound.

But anything other than that it would be very hard to detect prior to the foal being born.

And I would say from the veterinarians, I know we usually check the position of the presentation anterior posterior, but there's not much else we can tell, like from our ultrasounds, even when I have high risk mares, unless your mare's presenting with any of those other signs, like she has a really large abdomen or sometimes mares will tear their abdominal wall and so they'll have a giant hernia.

So, like things like that obviously are predisposes to dystocia but for a normal mare there's not too much we can tell beforehand.

- All right, those are all the questions I had in the Q and A pod.

I see we still have plenty of people on so if you have more questions type them into the Q and A box.

I see two in the chat box.

Should I have a heat lamp ready for Central New York?

I assume that's what CNY stands for.

- Absolutely, yes.

Foals are not very good at thermo regulating the beginning of their life and so if you are in a place that is extremely chilly, having blankets and having heat lamps, absolutely.

- Wonderful.

And last question that I see, how exact exactly do you dip the umbilicus?

Is a cup used or a gauze?

Do you need two people, one to hold the foal and one to dip?

- Yes.

Two people highly preferred, 'cause you have to imagine you have to keep the foal stable for probably 10 to 15 seconds and then be under its abdomen.

You want to make sure to keep your head out of the way in case it tries to kick you but you have to be under the abdomen to actually see the umbilical stump.

It is done with a cup.

So, like I said chlorhexidine, I think you can probably get out of pharmacy.

I think there are some like name brands for chlorhexidine that you can get at pharmacy but you wanna dilute it to 0.5% so you have to look at the original concentration, do a little bit of math and then I make new dilute chlorhexidine every time or I'll make a bigger container like I don't know, maybe something like this size, go ahead and dilute it beforehand and then every time I'm gonna dip the umbilicus.

I just get like a little, we use urine cups at a clinic but a little small plastic cup about this big, fill it up with fresh dilute chlorhexidine from my like normal container that I made up and then I try to dip it for about 10 to 15 seconds.

I also try to make sure that there's not a bunch of shaving stuck to the umbilicus because that defeats the purpose of there being contact.

If instead we're basically dipping the shavings and not the actual umbilicus.

So, if there are shavings on, I try to pick 'em off the umbilical stump and then dip it.

You'll get a hundred different answers for how many times.

I think usual is about two to four per day for the first two days of life.

Your veterinarian can recommend more if they think that there's a problem with the umbilicus, but that's standard procedure in the first few days of life.

- All right, a couple more have come in.

If the umbilical cord does not detach or break, during labor on its own, is it standard procedure to twist it or break it?

- It is.

So, what you wanna do in that case is make sure to support the umbilicus at the foals body wall, 'cause the last thing you wanna do is rip it away out of the foals body wall, because then you can end up with a hernia there.

There is kind of like a natural break point of the umbilicus so you can kind of twist it and tear it.

The thing that you should absolutely not do is take any kind of sharp implement and make a like a cut whether you're using scissors or a knife, that umbilical stump basically won't heal as well, because you have this straight edge, rather than actually having jagged edges from ripping it is preferable for healing.

I think that was that question.

- Yep.

Do you worry with foal blankets about it interfering with the bonding between mare and foal if it's done too quickly?

- It really, I think it depends on the mare.

I honestly thinking about that, maybe for something like a maiden mare, it's her first time we don't know how she's gonna act.

Maybe waiting a little bit just to kind of see how that mare is with that foal, that is one of the things that if we have a mare reject a foal, we actually do sometimes take the mare's like vaginal discharge and rub it on the foal and try to retract her to the foal.

So, definitely all those scents and smells, kind of bond the mare and foal and so that is a good point.

I think for some of my mares who are on their Nth foal, have had a bunch, I kind of know how they would react.

Also depending on, I mean is it below negative 30 degrees.

So, it's a little bit situational I think for a maiden mare I might wait a little bit longer for her to see what her bonding process is, versus an old maiden mare who's like 15 and has had eight foals.

- Okay and then I'm sure the answer to this question, sort of depends on climate and where you are in the country, but what would you consider the temperature that you need to blanket the foal?

- I don't have an exact one.

I honestly kind of feel like if I'm wearing a coat and I'm cold then probably that foal needs something.

So, a little bit different from our adult horses.

But yeah, I think if you feel like there's any kind of chill in the barn, probably 30s, 20s, things like below that, that that full probably needs some kind of heat support.

But I don't have an exact number in my head.

I'm just like, "I'm wearing a coat, "the foal probably should have something." - Okay, great.

How would you deal with suspected meconium aspiration?

Maybe that's too far after the birth?

- Yeah, I mean once again that's an internist question but I mean so meconium aspirations, so they're aspiring meconium into their lungs, they can likely develop pneumonia.

I think monitoring that foals temperatures to see if they're starting to develop any kind of sign of infection.

Taking regular respiratory rates.

Those would be the two kind of monitoring procedures.

Are they breathing harder, 'cause they're developing pneumonia and are they developing infection, so now they have a temperature.

If it really potentially seems like the foal did aspirate meconium and it seems compromised, then obviously a veterinarian would start antibiotics.

But unless I had very, very valid evidence that I think that foal is compromised, I am a little bit stingy with just prescribing antibiotics because I think something might have happened, versus if, yeah, if we see, I don't know if it's coughing up meconium or I some kind of weird circumstance that would make me feel like, oh this thing actually did aspirate pneumonia, then I would go towards antibiotics.

- Okay.

And I'm gonna do our last question, hopefully should be an easy one.

What's a normal respiration rate for a foal?

- So, when they're first born, in the first minute, it's about over 60, 'cause they're gonna be gasping.

But in the first few hours of life post-foaling, it's gonna go down to about a 30 to 40.

One important thing when you're taking a respiratory rate for a foal, if you're ever gonna examine a foal, that's the first thing you should do and your exam should start outside the stall when that falls asleep and go ahead and take that respiratory rate before you go in, it tries to get up, it starts running around, it gets excited.

That's not as accurate of a respiratory rate.

So, I try to take my respiratory rate when the foal is down and quiet.

- Okay, wonderful.

Well thank you so very much.

This has been just so fascinating.

For anybody who's still on, I did just drop the evaluation link in the chat box.

So, go ahead and let us know what you thought.

And with that I'm gonna stop the recording and hope everybody has a wonderful day.