Day 326 - Welcome Baby!!

Finally!!

It's a filly!!



After two long days of agonized waiting, I settled down on the couch to watch O from the window. At around 9:20pm, she started walking around curling her lip a few times. She doesn't normally do that, so I assumed it was probably time to go check on her. I figured labor would take awhile - first stage is usually 1 or 2 hours. I walked out the door to see her curl her lip again, and her water broke. She had been eating hay quietly not even 5 minutes before that. She was still on her feet when the sac appeared about 5 minutes later. Thankfully, she had the sense to go lay down - I thought for a second I was going to have to catch!

(I do have lots of birth pictures.... they're not uploaded yet!)


She had a normal presentation although I did have to help her a bit. The baby is HUGE. HUGE. I can't believe this giant baby came out of a maiden mare!

My super sexy foal watching outfit complete with head lamp

Her legs are SO long that she took a little while to get them out from under her. She is big and strong, but those legs gave her a lot of trouble. Pax jumped right up and stood the first time she tried. This new filly fell, and fell, and fell, and fell. And finally she stood, and could get up and down by herself.

And then she took AGES to latch. It was three hours before I felt like she really had gotten a good latch, and longer until she really could do it by herself. I gave her extra colostrum just in case. She's so tall that she just couldn't get the hang of everything for long enough to make it happen. Pax latched the first try and held on like a leech. She was already jumping around within the hour.

But, Pax was also a violent foal. She would buck, leap, strike, rear, kick, and thrash around every time you touched her, for at least three weeks. This one is docile as a lamb. Less than 24 hours in and she lets you walk up to her, pet her, put a halter and blanket on, and stick your fingers up her nose and into her ears. Every little bit of resistance melts away in moments. I was NOT expecting that!

O passed the placenta within a half hour, the baby passed meconium pretty easily after an enema, I dipped her naval stuck a blanket on her for the night. It wasn't too cold but it was dewey in the morning. O got her dewormer, I fussed around for awhile longer just doing nothing, and then passed out at around 2am.

How did all that baby fit into that tiny mare!?

She weathered the night well, and got a good checkup with the vet today. Her IgG was good, and was drinking well, pooping, peeing, and acting normally. The placenta looked great, everything was normal. The baby is a little bit windswept behind, but it's pretty minor. She should continue to straighten out over the next few days!

I have so much more I want to write about - how O is such a good mom, how Dylan is behaving, and not to mentiomn the show last weekend AND the chiro today! - but I am EXHAUSTED. I must sleep!

The new baby is taller as a newborn than Pax was at 4 weeks old! And O is a solid hand shorter than P, AND a maiden!

Day 325, Comedy of Errors Style

Well wouldn't you know my luck. Last night O was testing very close to imminent, and I fretted all night about whether or not I should stay home, or go to the show. I pretty much knew my answer by 5am - safer to scratch and watch my mare than to risk driving off and having her foal alone.

At 7am, she started to get restless. She hadn't eaten much all night, and was stretching out like she had to pee, but wouldn't. She then went right into pawing, sweating, and trotting around. Yes, literally trotting in circles. Around and around she went, only stopping to paw. This is it, I thought! This is labor!

Aaaaaand two hours went by. Three hours. She stopped and took a nap. She started up again. Then she stopped. Started. Stopped. It was impossible to tell how much of her irritation and tail swishing was due to the flies that had come out by this time. But after six or so hours, I felt pretty confident that the baby was just repositioning. 

Damnit mare. I scratched from a series show for this! Did I mention we were supposed to be at a WE show? I will have more on that soon, because we did go for our dressage on Saturday! EOH and speed were today but obviously I stayed home. Because my life is a comedy of errors.

So late afternoon comes around and the sky gets black. I check the forecast - oh great. Tornados. Yes, tornados. We are supposed to have hail and tornados. Fml. Comedy of errors. 

With much grumbling and heaving, I dismantled the pen and moved the entire thing into the front pasture so that it could be placed in her shed. I sectioned it off half for her with a run, and half for Dylan. At dinnertime, I checked her milk again, and she is even closer than she was before - now decidedly in the 95% category. We should have a baby within 12 hours but since my life is a comedy of errors I guarantee nothing!

So once I have done all of this I realize that I can't see her in her shed. I didn't even think about putting up a camera but it orrcurs to me that I can run to the store and get a baby monitor easily enough. I drive off with the clouds hanging low, picked a suitable monitor, and came home. I set the whole thing up, turned on the screen, and... The screen is cracked. It's faulty.

Comedy of errors.

Back to the store.

The second time was the charm... The monitor is up and working. And now.... We wait.

Day 319

The internet situation at my house has reached an all time low, save for the month or so when we literally had no internet provider. Right now I am sitting in my truck writing on my phone, which is impossibly hard to do due to my giant fat fingers, because my internet won't work and my phone has no service inside my house. Ugh. This sucks.

But anyway. I do have a quick O update!

Day 319 has arrived! O looks much the same, huge and holding. Her udders are getting bigger very, very slowly, and her hind end is softening little by little. She still has great control of her tail even though the area around it is getting mushy. I still can't get any fluid to express. We will clearly make the 320 day cutoff, and then it's anyone's guess where we go from here!

Day 303

O has crossed over the coveted day 300 mark! Her next milestone is day 320 - once she reaches that, her baby will be considered safely full term, and can come anytime. Before 320 is considered premature. Every day that passes as we get closer to 320 is a good day. 

At the end of this week, she will receive the last of her pre-foaling vaccines. Since these guys have had clean fecals and were dewormed not long ago, I won't be deworming her again until the day she foals. Other than that, she is acting the same, eating well, and being her usual self. All of this is great... normal and boring is exactly what we want. 

I have all of my foaling supplies ready. All I need is to make sure I have fresh towels available! I have milk strips ready to go as well, but we don't have any fluid to test yet. Her udders have been changing, and were getting quite big, but they have gone down in the past few days. 

She has REALLY gotten bigger in a month's time as well!

Dec 20th

Jan 28th

I do hope she holds out until March.... February in Texas is usually mild, but sometimes we still get a freeze here and there. 

Interestingly: two years ago today I was writing about P being approximately 70 days away from her due date. I also wrote about P's day 303 as well! She was just as huge as O. 

What do you think we will get? A colt or a filly? And what base color? It will end up grey but it will be born either chestnut or black! With my luck... I'm assuming another chestnut filly. 

Happy Birthday Pax!!!

Happy 1st Birthday Pax!! My little tiny baby is now a big, bouncy yearling and I can't believe a year has already flown by. 

One year ago today, P decided that 9:30am was the perfect time to lay down and have a baby - we didn't have one single missed night of sleep in the barn! It was an easy birth, and the baby popped right up within a 1/2 hour unassisted and went straight to the milk bar with a strong latch. Basically it was the easiest breeding season ever - P was ready to be bred right at the very first time we took her in to check her, caught with just one dose of semen and only the one breeding, carried with no problems and needed hardly any extra calories, and popped a perfectly complete and healthy baby right out. I'll never have a season that easy again, that's for sure!

She is 14.1 now at the withers and 14.3+ at the butt, shedding out to be a shiny dark liver again. I imagine she'll be like her mother with the fading, unless kept under a UV sheet all the time! She does everything a good baby should know how to do - leads, ties, trailers, clips, bathes, blankets, comes to be caught, stands to be trimmed, wears her flymask and flyspray, knows the very basics of how to lunge, and has worn a saddle and girth and been led around with it. She takes everything in stride and doesn't worry about any of it. She's going to be a fine strapping beast when she grows up!

While it's not 100% a done deal until a contract has been drawn up, I do have a good friend who really wants her and made an offer that I accepted. While I did not breed her to sell her, she truly would be in the best of hands with this friend and I of course would be able to stay in touch and watch her grow up, and have the ability for first right of refusal. This friend is a consummate horsewoman that I have known since we literally were grade school kids at summercamp together. We both grew up totally horsecrazy together!

And selling her does have a small bonus - it frees me up to for my plans for next year... I'll share that next!


Happy Birthday Pax!!!!!!!!!!

Day 351 - Welcome Baby!!

Right after I posted my last little blurb, P went into active labor! First thing in the morning, how great is that? No overnight foal watch required! Right after L sent me the picture of the udders dripping milk, she called to say that P was definitely acting like she was going into labor - getting up and down, sweating, curling her lip. I was on my way to work but I promptly rescheduled everything and turned my fanny around to make the trek back up north. It's a good solid hour drive from where I was, not to mention there was rush hour traffic... I opted to take the back route and I'm sure glad I did!

When I got there, it was 9AM and her water had just broken. We were hurriedly cleaning her stall to ready it for her, but she had other plans - she flopped down outside in her run and in the blink of an eye we had a foot. Presentation was normal - two feet and a nose, good to go! The baby was HUGE so I helped her a bit with the shoulders.

You guys are not going to believe this... but when I pulled off the sac, I found....

A CHESNUT FILLY!
The odds were super small genetically, but apparently the horsey gods decided that redheaded mares are my fate now!

"Wtf how on earth did I end up with ANOTHER ONE OF THESE?"

Poor Pmare got the dirt ground into her eyeball... looked much better after a good cleaning though!

O going, "WHAT IS THAT I MUST HAVE IT"

From water breaking to presentation was about 15 minutes. Actual birth was about 5 minutes, if that - she just popped her right out. The second I pulled the sac off, her head shot up, and she was breathing and sitting upright. Talk about a strong filly!

Within 15 minutes she was already halfway onto her feet - and she had been trying to get to her feet the moment I put my hands on her.

O was very interested!

HUNGRYYYY

She grabbed right onto my finger and had a strong suck reflex. At 1/2hr of age, she was ready for the milk bar and got to her feet, unassisted. Once she was up, she stayed up - not one single tumble. She stayed up for well over an hour! It only took her 10 minutes to find the food - and she latched right on like a magnet, no problem at all.

Meeting of the minds... these two are going to be serious trouble when they get together!

We brought them back into the stall, where there was fresh straw and fewer things to wipe out into. The baby kept going round, and round, and round again, torturing her poor momma who just followed her nickering nonstop. P passed the placenta intact by about 10:40AM.

She has unfolding to do for sure, and she is a bit lax in her hind pasterns, but she'll straighten up soon.

Especially if she keeps dancing like this. 1 hour old and already frolicking around!

Strong latch on both sides!

She is going to be a real handful, I already can tell. As strong as she is and as big and she is, it is already all I can do to hold onto her when she pitches her little red filly fits - which she is already doing. We'll be working with her every day to reinforce the rules with her - we'll definitely regret it if we don't!!

Both momma and baby are doing great. Baby is a super-nursing, meconium-passing machine, and gets up and down easily without assistance. P is super attentive, eating and drinking well. And as for O, she is alternating between talking to the baby, eating quietly, and rearing manically in her stall because she wants to come steal the baby for herself. Typical!

There was something like a 6-12% chance that I'd get a red baby. I also was sure that I was going to get a colt. Who knew!

I had names for a colt but not for a filly, so I'll have to start wracking my brain!

WELCOME BABY!!