Post from another board - tragic

[CarolU]

I am sharing this because it always comes up every spring on if a mare/foal should be seperated. This story is heart breaking...but if it will save someone else the same grief, it should be shared.

And, sure enough, she had a beautiful little filly. She was being a wonderful first time mother and the foal was perfect. I put my four horses (three mares and one gelding) out in the back pasture like every other morning the past two weeks. But it wasn't like any other morning. My seemingly good gelding went absolutely crazy when he saw the foal in the other pasture. He literally tore down an eight foot section of fence to get into the other pasture. He chased the mare around until he was able to get at the foal. I was running madly toward them screaming for help from my husband and daughter and screaming at the gelding. By the time I got to him he had the foal in his mouth and was thrashing it up and down. I was able to chase him off, but the foal was in terrible distress. She couldn't breath with an obvious puncture to her lung. We tried to put pressure on it while the vet was on his way. Unfortunately, within fifteen minutes this beautiful little filly was gone--not even twelve hours old.

[Carol Nelson]

Horrible...but not surprising. Same thing happened to a foal that was turned out with it's mother in a group of horses in a pasture close to the breeding barn where I used to take my horses. Yes, sometimes it works fine...but why take the chance? :(

[lisa l aka marci]

That is why I still have Marci and BB separated....after Lunita kept pacing the fence I just did not feel comfortable putting her with Marci - now Lunita has had foals, so she ~may~ have just wanted to visit - but I wasn't taking any chances!!!!!

[appyday]

:( Misty has really gotten nasty to Condesa at this time I am not going to have them together at foaling time..I will stall them each to foal...

[PasoVicki]

Maybe I'm reading this wrong . . . is the lady saying she did have her other horses separated from the new mom and foal, the gelding went through/over a fence to attack the foal in a different pasture? If that's the case, does that mean the new mom and foal should be completely separated -- ie, beyond even the sight and hearing -- of any other horses??

[Candice Burger]

Yes even in the best herd dynamics foals are attacked or stolen, even in the wild. BUT I have had mares foaling in pasture with stallions, mares, fillies, geldings, and colts with very little to talk about except everything went fine. In past, we would separate out the mares to foal only to reunite them immediately back into the herd once we knew mom and kid were fine. Generally speaking that is the norm.

I've got 8 offspring that were born that way. No wait, 2 broodmares and my stallion were also born that way and so were their siblings. So out of the 15 horses I've got, all except 4 were born in a pasture full of horses. The other 4 mares were purchased and I have no history of their births. From those purchased, 2 mares were pasture bred and foaled in a pasture. My last filly was born with mom, dad, and a retired old mare in the pasture with her. She is still out there and plays with her dad routinely.

Generally speaking horses are wired to be HERD animals not the other way around. They are not the type to mate and then leave a bachelor life where mom takes off once she is pregnant to raise her foal alone. Horses are not inanimate objects and for their well being they deserve to be respected for what they are. There are risks, hardships, and heartbreaks with raising livestock, but if we continue acting like a horse should be housed, separated, and protected from themselves, we are going to start seeing and reading more abnormal behavior.

[CarolU]

Yes Vicki, the gelding went through the fence to get to the filly.

I was surprised that on that thread there now are two more similar stories and then Carol's one above. It seems to be a lot more common then people realize.

I had to put two metal fences between Zar and Bella/Bruiser. Zar was AT the fence and Bella was terrified of her. I moved Bella/Bruiser to the round coral and kept two fences between them and all my others until he was a month old or so. I judged it by the reaction of the other horses, Zar being the worst (she would have killed Bella to steal that colt).

[Carol Nelson]

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with Candice. Without the careful management of man and the advent of new medical breakthroughs all the time in the field of equine healthcare, Equus could well be extinct by now.
My favorite saying is: "Next to the bones of the dinosaur, they found the bones of the horse...the horse is still here." Thank god, the dinosaur is gone... ;-)
But just because it is what they did in the wild, doesn't mean it is the best way and although under no means do I advocate keeping a horse in a stall fulltime, I do believe that when you're rearing horses, it is your duty to keep them in as safe an environment as you can...and if that means separating them from others...then that is what it means.
I hate going to a farm and having a bunch of broodmares come up and they are full of bites and hoofmarks and chunks of flesh taken out and there is always one or two that hang back afraid to come to the fence for being chased out of the crowd. I don't see how that is a better way to keep them.
I've about gone broke on putting crossfencing in...but all of my mares except for a couple are separated into their own very roomy grassy pen...where they can live a pretty much injury free, stress free life. And when I wean my babies, once mama dries up, the babies are put back in with the mother because I have found that mama is much less apt to hurt them than another weanling their own age. They can be adjacent to another weanling in the adjoining pen but there's still a fence between them and they seem to enjoy fine just running up and down the fence playing.
Sorry....JMHO

[Terry Wallace]

Donkeys are famous for savaging foals too... I have two friends that both lost one foal each to a BLM donkey....

Even mares can savage their own foals... its not uncommon.

I foaled many a mare in a pasture full of mares, stallions & geldings.
I had one incident out of probably 30 foalings...where another mare tried to steal the new colt. That colt suffered trauma to his neck at one day old that caused him to be a wobbler and have wobbler syndrome by six months of age.

Now, I always try to foal them in a very big stall...16 X 30. So they have privacy, security and plenty of room...but still fits in my camera screen.

The last thing I want is a battle between two mares over a baby...its the baby that can get hurt badly. This incident happened YEARS after the same herd had been together with no incidents...so you never know...

[Candice Burger]

I'm not surprised by your reaction Carol and I respect it, but horses would not be extinct by now if medicine did not intervene. I have many years and many horses to prove otherwise. All propogated by the genetic wiring we humans find attractive in the species. I'm not alone in this country and this country is not alone either. ;-)

The fact is what is done in the wild IS better. Medicine and man cannot duplicate the conception rates of pasture breeding. Not hand breeding, not on-premise AI, none have the same success as a mare and stallion mating on their schedule and discretion. What medicine is doing is intervening when perhaps they shouldn't. Oh, I've spent some pennies saving horses that were dying and a few died anyway. That is LIFE.

What you are describing is housing a horse under high density conditions where the animal cannot get out of the way and is forced into a herd situation by man's manipulations. I've yet to go to ANY farm where the horse housing is truly mimicing nature. Stallions are separated, mares moved around at a whim, foals are weaned by some secret moon phase.

I do it too. I've got a colt that needs company but he is by himself because I don't want him breeding anything at his age. In nature, he probably wouldn't be and find a few bachelors to keep him company. Here, he'd be run to death by his father OR breeding every blood relative he could because there's no stallion in the pasture OR various scenarios in between; I have no way of knowing because I decided to protect my interests not his. I don't have room to give him exactly what he needs so I do the best I can as does everyone else. However, that is NOT how a horse is designed.

Carol sometime you should see what happens when mothers are grazing peacefully side by side and the babies frolock together and sleep in a pile beside one another. It's nice to see buddies scratching each other's back and watch the herd round up to protect the little ones when they sense danger real or imagined. You should see the gentle reprimand of my stallion as his daughter checks him out for groceries and watched my colt bug his sisters to death with his jolly ball. I truly mourn what your horses will never experience what it is like to have interaction with their own kind. I wean my babies differently. It's the mothers that are removed not the babies from the herd. I guess that's the difference. I see a family not a commodity.

Yes, there are boo-boos. Yearlings get scrapes and nicks from playing and from bugging their elders. My mares remind the younger ones who's boss. That is LIFE; it is how they learn to be a horse. Of course there's the aggressors and the milder ones. I have the same dynamics in my bunch. What you are not seeing or saying is my mildest horse is best buddies with my most assertive one. My orphaned filly bosses her mother's little sister everywhere. Why would I want to deny her that? And how would I select for my brood band without knowing what type of horse they are? I can't learn this and neither can they by being completely denied access to their own kind.

Yes, Terry it happens, it also does not happen quite commonly too. I'd like to see more numbers because 1 out of 30 is still in favor of the horse not man. Could you have saved the foal or prevented--absolutely and but I can pull up as many stories here on the BB about people watching their mares 24/7, completely padded, separated, and still almost losing the foal or did lose the foal. I've lost foals when I've been involved in the whole episode because a vet didn't arrive on time. I lost a foal that was with only his dam, completely separated from all other horses when he was not even a week old. LIFE happens. We all LUV to talk about the devestating things that happen to us. Well for every foal I've lost, for every tragedy I can recall I've got years and years and years of every day, routine, boring, and very normal times where I begged for something to happen...careful of what you ask for....

I might as well just come out and say it. I'm not going to pretend I don't worry about my investment in the horses. Allot of time and money is spent on these things and I want something to show for it. NO, everyone watching me expects me to have something to show for it. I can't excuse my actions by saying I'm "protecting" my horses. I'm protecting my interests, my emotional well being, and my pocket book, not the horses. Just because they will quietly tolerate my manipulations in their lives...just because I can doesn't mean I should.

Ya'll can treat ravaging and beserk horses as normal (or should I call it a paso fino?) if you want to, but there's a whole bunch more like me that know horses are naturally social and protective species. I don't think most of what we do is helping anyone but ourselves.

[Carol Nelson]

I'm not surprised by your reaction Carol and I respect it

Oh gee...am I that easy to read?? Pinto Paso once referred to me as "mushy".,.... :lol: :lol:

[Pam M]

I've only bred one mare and I had every intention of keeping her and the baby separate from the rest of the herd, as I'd always heard that was the "right" thing to do, but on the day the filly was born my gelding - who had been inseparable from the mare for 2 years - started calling hysterically and the baby squeezed through the fence and went to him. He wouldn't give her back and it looked like it could get pretty traumatic if I forced the issue so the three of them lived together and he essentially raised the baby. Everything but the nursing. The mare didn't seem to mind much. It was quite strange but somehow it felt very natural.

[Candice Burger]

:D :D No Carol, I wouldn't call it mushy, just overly concerned. I used to worry myself into a raging mad woman unsafe around humans and I decided that I didn't have omnipotent powers, horses had done just fine before I came around and I needed to get a grip. I quit worrying about costs and began putting what I consider a real value on the horses. They deserve to live their lives as naturally as I can possibly provide. It is the least they deserve.

Pam, that IS natural!!!

In a herd situation, which is what you had before separating the horses, a horse will become nurse maid to the mare and foal. Since we geld, sometimes it's a gelding instead of another mare. What is so abnormal about that? Usually there is a horse or two that essentially "raises" the foals not the mothers. They are busy being mothers, nursing, checking to make sure everything is ok, grazing, generally being watchful. It's another horse that watches the baby.

It's nothing unusual to see a horse nearby after the mare has given birth. It's there to protect the interests of the mother. Sometimes they will follow the pair around for a few days until the mother allows for interaction. When foals are born the herd is generally nervous and watchful, very alert, very interested in the process. It really is like watching a family when a baby is born.

When my filly orphaned her foal it was the other mares and fillies that took care of her. Several were extremely upset when I had to intervene and take the filly. They weren't trying to hurt it, they were making sure I wasn't. I finally had to pen everyone up so I could get to the filly. Even then they watched my every move It was only after trial and error that I found the mare who had adopted the filly after the birth mother violently rejected her daughter. No mare or filly had tried to steal the foal, the mother had rejected it and the others were taking care of it. When I found the filly it was sleeping with about 4-5 of my mares standing around watching it and very concerned. It was completely unharmed, healthy, and strong. Somebody saved the filly before I got there.