04/19/2024
Life: it’s all about balance.
Spring is a great time of year, but there’s a balance here. We get wildflowers blooming, and pollens that trigger allergies. Equine-related businesses begin to pick up, and taxes are due. Foals are born, and so are flies. Thoughts like these are the mothers of cliché: Without the valleys the mountains don’t mean much, a big pile of manure is a good sign, cuz there’s bound to be a pony nearby, and my personal favorite: a pessimist is just an optimist with inside information.
One of my favorite parts of this season is seeing mares and new babies frolicking in verdant lush pastures with butterflies and hummingbirds fluttering about like an old Disney movie. (Mosquitoes, rattlesnakes and rabid skunks are seldom depicted in idyllic scenes like these). OK, in my part of the world, the mares and foals look like most any in the world, but a more accurate view of our environment is sage brush, cedar and some really tough grama grasses that somehow manage to hang on, no matter how dry it gets. Your vision may vary, but the point is the resiliency and regeneration of nature.
For example, your mare really hated the stallion all winter long, but suddenly, for about a week every month or so, he looks pretty good to her! If the timing is just right, the stars are aligned perfectly and you’re wearing your lucky socks, a single s***m cell becomes intimately acquainted with an equine egg and…BINGO the magic begins! About 345 days later, you get a new addition to your feed/vet/farrier bills. What can be better?
Part of the miracle of birth, among many miraculous aspects of mammalian life, is the transition from prenatal to neonatal physiology. This is the critical period that the foal/puppy/baby makes the trip from being an internal parasite, to an external one. (Let that sink in a minute, you’ll appreciate the irony.) Although it looks like the foal just dives out of the mare, jumps up and starts nursing (as an external parasite now…you’re catching on!), there’s some real interesting stuff that’s happening on the inside.
There are three shunts, or gates, in the foal’s body that must open instantly after the first breath in order to make the shift to life on the outside. These are in the heart, the large vessel from the heart to the lung, and the tube that runs from the bladder to the umbilicus. If we think about it, foal doesn’t need to breathe when he’s in the mare. So, the blood gets shunted away from the lungs, supplying nourishment to the rapidly growing cells during the development of the fetus. The foal doesn’t need to p*e, so the bladder is open to the umbilicus where the waste products strained out by the kidney get dumped into the maternal circulation through the placenta…and you thought changing diapers was bad? Imagine having someone else’s urine in your blood!
If all this wasn’t complicated enough, the lining of the foal’s gut is very porous during the first few hours of life on the outside—just to make this balancing act interesting. A porous gut allows the absorption of colostrum, the first milk that contains most of the foal’s immune system for the near future, but this can sometimes result in the absorption of bacteria, and that’s bad.
The challenges of this neonatal adjustment can escalate with alarming sp*ed, as the sick foal’s metabolism wants to go back inside where it was safe and warm. That’s why the navel starts dripping, the pulse and respiration goes up to compensate for diminished cardiovascular function, and bacterial infection raises its ugly head because some many other things are going wrong. The point here is the importance of a thorough examination of the foal during the first few hours of life on the outside. Signs of impending problems are easy to spot; A temperature of 102 or higher, a pulse of over 120 beats per minute, and urine dripping from the belly button are indications that the transition is not going as planned. Veterinary intervention is essential in these cases.
Although almost all foals do just fine without our help, but when there’s a wreck, it’s a wreck! AND (it gets worse) if we wait until the foal isn’t nursing, has a swollen joint or diarrhea, it may be too late. SO, with that cheerful note, Happy Spring! Madison Seamans MS DVM (AKA “The Village Horse Doctor”)
Strive for perfection, accept only excellence, ride with purpose. Check out my website: www.cornerstonquine.com Pics here of a couple of our 'external parasites'
