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The Circle of Life The “Circle of Life” is more fully understood as a person matures and has the opportunity to experience a multitude of life’s episodes. As we progress through life, we see how miraculous birth is, how amazing are the strong bonds between the young and their parents, how fragile life can be and alternatively how unforgiving life’s complications may be. I have heard it said on breeding farms that life can be described as “the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” If you breed a lot, you are bound to experience complications. It is still the most amazing thing to me, to deliver a young foal and watch the mare push this long-legged, perfectly-shaped baby horse out in less than 20 minutes. Then watching the foal find its legs, and assist it to find the mare to nurse, is a truly amazing event, one of which I can never tire. This month we are having the experience of raising an orphan foal. This filly lost her dam shortly after birth and a surrogate mare did not meet her needs. Having the ability to provide equine company as well as the facilities, we are raising this orphan on our farm. Using a human baby bottle we fed the filly the mare’s collustrum we had milked and also obtained about 25 ounces of other-mare collustrum for immunity for the filly. Then we started bottle feeding the filly. Within a day she was consuming 3-4 pints every 2-3hours. There are several types of dry milk replacer which you mix up with hot water, shake, and then feed. It is best to mix and shake, let stand 20 mins, then shake and feed so that all the milk is well dissolved. After 72 hours, I hung the bottles on a rail and allowed her to self feed at will. This enabled me to get some sleep at night as well. Concurrently with the bottle feeding, I brought our 17-year-old Morgan gelding to a corral adjacent to the birthing stall, where the filly was. After two days of bringing “Ollie” to meet the filly and walking them together, we turned the filly and the Morgan out together. This Morgan is a very special horse. He has totally taken over care of this filly and whinnies like crazy when she is out of his site when we bring them in. He is also a great role model and now, not even two weeks old, the filly is starting to eat hay and copy his actions. I could not have done this with any other horse we have. And soon, the gelding and the filly will be turned out with my other mare and filly that was born the night before Easter. They will be great playmates. So life indeed is a circle. And it is very precious! | ||||
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