And Bay Girl now:
A few of you asked last time after seeing Bay Girl's enormous pendulous belly whether or not she is pregnant. I doubt it - highly doubt it, if you want to really know - but anything is possible. She was, after all, at the ET facility when she foaled out. She didn't come back for a month, meaning she very well could have been bred on her foal heat. However, the possibility of a current pregnancy is pretty low. For starters, ET facilities usually keep their recip mares for some time after flushing, conceiving, and inserting the embryo back into the recip mare. Several pregnancy checks usually take place before the recip mare is moved on, to ensure a healthy and viable fetus. Secondly, I was told that the owners of the foal (meaning this year's foal) are charged $1000 if they don't send the mare back to the main farm. If that recip mare was carrying someone else's foal, they sure wouldn't want to risk that mare not coming home, would they? That would be a huge liability issue. As Elvis' real mother died last year, there will be no more siblings from that crossing, so he will have no reason not to send her back (the owner, that is). Unless a stallion got out right after she foale out, then she is probably not pregnant.
So the question now becomes... WHY the huge belly?
My thoughts are a few-fold. First, she has probably had a few foals in a row, back to back. Coupled with the fact that she may have never been in work at all, and that can lead to gravity doing a pretty terrible number on your topline. Second, parasites. She may have a wormy issue going on - won't know until we get a fecal done on her. Thirdly, diet. most of what she is eating is an eh quality roundbale and some sweetfeed and oats. (Not my choice.) She could do with better quality forage, a probiotc, and a gut health supplement for sure.
It was brought up to me that she may have a ligament issue in her belly - saggy, weak ligaments can keep a tummy hanging loose and low. I think that is not her problem, as the ruptured ligament mares I have seen are all dramatically sunk downwards. Bay Girl's sagginess is more outwards than anything, and has been developing post-pregnancy instead of happening in a one-time event.
So in other words, I think not... but you never know. Let's just HOPE not!!
She looks like a typical over-bred mare. What would YOUR belly look like if you had eight or nine kids? I'm with you on this one.
ReplyDeleteThe TB mare I rode in highschool got that way after she had babies. Nothing a few months of work won't take right off of her. ;)
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point about her still being there with RP, and the risk of her not going back to the facility if she is already in foal with another embryo. I hope it is just from being a mega mummy, and if so it'll be very interesting to see how she recovers and improves once she's yours to work on. :)
ReplyDelete