The Natural Horse Group was established in 2001.
It aims to provide information that enables people to explore ways of keeping and managing equines that enhance wellbeing and encourage a natural lifestyle
Articles
William’s Story – Fostering the Orphan Foal
By Margaret Murray
 
Deciding to put your mare in foal, then waiting for the happy event, is always an exciting time. To see the new foal and mother together is a very special moment to treasure. However, occasionally things go unexpectedly wrong. When this happens it can be overwhelming and traumatic. But life must go on. So this is William’s story.

William was born at 4.00 am on May 21st. His mother, Cleo, was a registered Fell Pony and this was her first foal. All seemed to be going well, at first; William, though small, was lively, and Cleo was a good mum. However, Cleo was slow to cleanse and then, in the early afternoon, she began to colic. She had a twisted gut, and in spite of all the vets’ best efforts she died in the evening.

So William was an orphan. Although it is possible to raise a foal on milk replacement powder, obviously it doesn’t give it quite such a good start in life. Foals are born without an immune system, and they rely on their mother’s milk to provide the anti-bodies to put one in place. The colostrum they receive in the first eight hours of their lives is essential for survival; then during the next 6 weeks, they will continue to gain anti-bodies through the milk. William was lucky, as he had fed from his mother for 9 hours, - just enough! - and a blood test showed that his anti-bodies were well up. But there is another consideration; - psychologically, a baby needs a mother, and hand-reared foals can grow up to have major problems. We decided that William needed a foster mum.

Putting him temporarily on a bottle, we rang the National Foaling Bank. Within an hour, though late at night, Joanna Varden rang back to tell us of a Section C Welsh Cob mare, whose foal had been born dead two days before. Immediately, we contacted Terry, the mare’s owner, and arranged to take William down to her stud the next day - quite an undertaking as she lives near Presteigne in the Welsh borders, and we are in Cumbria. However, we had lots of advice from Joanna both on how to travel a very young foal and how to arrange the fostering.

In the meantime, that evening, the temperature suddenly dropped to freezing. William spent the first night of his life in the kitchen wearing an old jersey to keep him warm!
Setting off the next day, William was put into an old duvet cover – (our version of Joanna’s suggested bran sack! ) – tied securely at the neck and hind-quarters, so that he could lie on the back seat of the car, with one of us supporting his head. Over the 4 ½ hour journey, he mostly slept, waking up now and then for a drink. When we stopped at Charnock Richard Services to make up a fresh bottle for him, we wondered what people would have thought if they had known that we had a foal in the back of our car, but no one seemed to notice. 

On arrival, William was released from his duvet and taken to his stable. There is a specific procedure for successful fostering. It is sometimes necessary to cover the new foal in the skin of the dead one, so, just in case, Terry had prepared that. The foal should be put in a small pen within the stable, so that the mare can get to know it without harming it. When the foal is brought out to feed, its tail should be towards the mare, as if the mother nips the foal on the head, the foal will be frightened. The mare has to be held while the foal feeds, of course, and they should not be left alone together until it’s clear that the mare has accepted her new offspring. Usually, this takes about 48 hours but occasionally it can take up to a week.
However, we were lucky. Within 3 hours, Helen, the mare, had accepted her new baby. We did not need to use the skin, but instead, to give him a more familiar smell, we covered William with some milk that Terry had drawn off earlier. Helen was an experienced mother, having already had 6 foals, and exceptionally maternal, whilst William, overpowered by his experiences of the last 12 hours, was a quiet, polite little fellow.

Perhaps the most memorable part of those 3 hours, was the changes, expressed in their faces and bodies, that occurred in both Helen and William. We arrived with a bewildered, subdued foal to find a mare depressed and grieving. On