If you have a mare in foal, are considering breeding a mare, or are simply interested in equine reproduction and management, this film is an important resource for you. It can prepare you to protect your mare and foal more completely throughout the process of reproduction.

Professionally produced and narrated, using live action, illustrations and overlays, The Nature of Foaling has been widely endorsed by veterinarians, breeders, and universities alike.

Topics include the development of the unborn foal, broodmare management, preparing for foaling, the foaling process, and post-partum care.

Creator/Producer: Laurie Thomsen at www.foaling.com
Price: $35 CAD + $3 shipping and handling.
To order: Contact Peter J. Hurst at Cyberfoal by visiting cyberfoal.com or write to Cyberfoal at Site 30, Box 11, RR #8, Calgary, Alberta T2J 2T9.
*All profits from the sale of this DVD will be donated to foal research and rescue.

by Carin Smith, DVM

You’ve been waiting for this day for months. The last few weeks you hardly slept, creeping out to the barn several times each night to be sure your mare was doing well.

In spite of all your worries, though, your mare delivered a healthy foal during one of your naps. You arrive at the barn to see a wet, wobbly colt searching for its first meal. What next?
continue reading "Caring for your New Foal"

by: Daryle Schmidt

I’ve been starting colts for over 20 years. The more I train horses and teach others, the more I realize that starting the training process at a young age is one of the keys to making it easier and safer.

Take every opportunity you have to touch and handle your foal before halter breaking. If you are fortunate enough to be around when your foal is born, take this opportunity to rub him all over. This will go a long way in quieting him down when he is at this very impressionable stage.

I like the foal to have confidence in being around me before I start the process of halter breaking. Once the foal is used to me coming up to it and scratching him here or there I’ll then go to the next step.
continue reading "Training the Young Horse"

When an animal first makes contact with a foreign substance, its body prepares a range of protein molecules (called immuno-globulins or antibodies) to attack the “invader” or infectious agent and then inactivate it.

These immuno-globulins come in five basic forms: IgG, IgA, IgD, IgE and IgM. Each has a specific role in protecting the body against one particular pathogen or foreign substance. For horses, the IgG molecules are the predominant type in the blood and colostrum.

As newborn foals have not had contact with pathogens in utero, they have not prepared their arsenal of IgG antibody “weapons” the immune system makes when an attack occurs.

In short, the body of a newborn foal knows what to do with any “invader,” but has not done this before, so there is no IgG in their blood to fight infection.
continue reading "Colostrum: More than just mother’s milk"

All too often we take for granted that our foals will receive an adequate supply of colostrum, but not all foals are born lucky. For those less fortunate, their dependency on colostrum relies upon breeders collecting, freezing, and storing this valuable commodity.

Unfortunately, these breeders are very few and are unable to keep up with demand. There are no annual statistics available as to how many foals require colostrum, but if there were, perhaps the collecting and storing of it would become more frequent, says Peter Hurst, manager of Clayborne Farm in Calgary, AB.

“It was out of the frustration of not being able to locate colostrum or nurse mares, that I first created the Alberta Nurse Mare and Colostrum Registry,” says Hurst.
continue reading "Helping the foals that nature forgot"

by Marcia King

To many people, cloning is a pretty creepy process: Taking cells from a donor animal, placing them into eggs that had their own genetic material removed, mechanically introducing the cell or fusing the two with a jolt of electricity, and voila! Life begins. The living embryo is then implanted in a mare for carrying to term.

But in the not very distant past, many considered organ transplantation and in vitro fertilization techniques (i.e., test tube babies) to be abominations, as well.
continue reading "The Truth About Cloning: Where we’re going and why"