13/05/2026
I promised to do an update on the last few weeks.
After the safe delivery of Amethyst little filly, I was meant to have a bit of a break with foaling. On the 25th of April however, Shady Acres Royal Rain lost a tiny little mushroom filly foal, by Shady Acres Zephyr.
She was about 3 weeks early, and hadn't shown any signs, and she lost the foal in a red bag delivery.
Thankfully Rain is doing well!
The following weekend I was on call, and had, to go back and forth from the clinic and home, to check on 2 mares looking ready to go at any minute.
I got home around 4.30 am sunday morning, after a call out, and everything looked fine. I fitted both mares with alarms and then went to bed to hopefully get a few hours sleep.
After less than 2 hours my phone went off again, and before going back to the clinic, I checked on the mares. Debbie E v. Wittenburg had foaled, but the foal was nowhere to find! She was on a small paddock by herself, because she was stress go in the stable, and had mannaged to foal, without triggering the alarm.
After a frantic search I found the foal, all the way across our property, on the otherside of the fence, stranding in our neighbours field.
A big beautiful palomino filly, who was very heavy to carry all the way back to poor Debbie. She was delighted to be reunited with her foal. I quickly stabled them and as soon as I was sure she was feeding fine, I drove to the clinic.
I came back later in the morning to check on the other mare, but around noon I got called out again. After the first few patients, I ended up waiting for over an hour, for a client who never showed up!
Finally I gave up, and drove home. When I got back, Shady Acres Arabella had starting foaling, and I realized right away, something was wrong.
The foal presented with the right front leg pushed back, and she had been struggling for a while. I was alone, so I tied up Arabella and quickly got to work. It only took me about 3 minutes to puch the foal back in, find the missing leg and straighten it out.
With the next push a very big red dun and white c**t foal came flying out.
He had a heartbeat, and I got to work on him, but never mannaged to get him going and after about 7 minutes his heat stopped.
I treated Arabella with pain medicine and soon I was called out again.
When I finally got back late that night, I saw that Arabella had a retained placenta, and I got to work with oxytocin ect to get it out. At that point I had hardly sleept in the last 60 hours, and was just wiped out! Thankfully my boss was great, and relived me, so I could finally get some sleep!
It was hard on Arabella, and I flushed her uterus over the next couple of days, treated her with antibiotics and pain medicine for 5 days. Thankfully she is doing well, and has forgotten about the foal.
Sorry for the long post.... more updates to follow, but now I have to go check on Diamora who is waxed up, and hopefully soon ready to go 🤞
