I don't own the horse but the owner has been posting on good old FB to keep a timed and dated record of what's happened without clogging her phone memory up. Owner seems to be very tired and on overdrive trying to figure out what's going on and making sure the new foal is okay.
Foal was born yesterday I think (she first posted that she had made it into the world yesterday morning at 6:45 am). Foal is rather tall. Owner mentioned that birth wasn't the easiest because foal was big but everything seems fine other than the nursing issue. Vets have been out multiple times. Foal can suck on the vets thumb but won't take a bottle. Owner decided to milk the mum into a feed scoop and see if the foal would at least take something. Foal is happy to take the milk from the scoop and there are videos of the foal sniffing around the mums teats and moving her lips around but she doesn't get much further than that. She can suck as proven by the vet who felt her do it when they had their thumb in the foals mouth. Dummy foal syndrome (?) has also been ruled out as unlikely by the vet.
Is there anything my tired friend can do to encourage the foal to nurse properly? She has tried a lot already but I wondered if anyone had any new ideas that maybe hadn't been thought of yet. It looks like the foal is not in a good position (height wise) and other than that is doing really well.
Please can anyone help?
Please or to access all these features
Please
or
to access all these features
Discuss horse riding and ownership on our Horse forum.
The tack room
Help with foal refusing to nurse properly.
6 replies
getyourfingeroutyournose · 27/04/2016 12:50
OP posts:
Please create an account
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.