About the birth

Now that I've gotten some rest, and am getting over this cold that's going around, I want to share a little more about the whole process that we went through here over the last week or so. Like I said, this was my first foaling, but old hat for the owners as well as the mare, so it was a really good experience.

The big thing that I learned is that the (almost) tell tale sign that the foal is coming tonight is the waxing. This sign is the "Big Red Flag" that let us know that it was gonna happen, and soon. We went through a couple false labor type days, several times that the mare went down on her side, her bags would fill, then recede some, then fill, and so on. Needless to say, we got worked up WAY too early, mainly because she went longer than expected before foaling.

Our next mare comes due in a couple weeks, and I am sure this one will be a lot less hectic. The thing to keep in mind is that even though waxing is the sign to watch for, some mares will skip this step all together. If you don't know your mare's history, it's important to watch all of the other signs too to be on guard for the big day.

We'll talk more about that in a while, I'm going to go back to some facilities issues here over the next few blogs.

Stay tuned!