Page 100 - June 2016

looped him right up and took him with her all around the paddock.”
The mare raised that foal, but Tracy even- tually had to wean him a bit early because he was nursing her down to nothing. “She raised him well. He was not the smallest yearling on the farm that year, even though he was the youngest,” says Tracy.
That barren mare worked very well as a substitute nurse mare. “The only way this pro- cedure (stimulating a barren mare with drugs to produce milk) would not have worked would
This experiment turned out to be very successful, and other breeders have also tried this technique with good success.
have been to lose a mare to colic or at foaling. That would not have given us time to prepare the barren mare,” he says. It works best if you can have at least a week of lead-time to get that mare ready with the drugs.
“The great thing about the mare we used was that she was a naturally maternal indi- vidual and it was easy to adopt the foal
onto her. Unfortunately, after we weaned him, it broke her heart and she also dete- riorated more quickly with the melanoma problem and we had to put her down, too. But, she did raise that baby for us and it was a wonderful situation for that foal.”
If you lose a mare suddenly, the foal would probably have to be fed with a milk replacer, unless you have access to a nurse mare. “But in our situation with the foundered mare,
we had the luxury of having the time to set this up and bring a barren mare into lacta- tion.” Tracy also says it’s a good idea to save colostrum when a mare foals, and to keep it in the freezer for an emergency in case you lose a mare foaling.
Tracy used this same procedure (inducing lactation) one other time to create an instant nurse mare. He had a pregnant mare several years ago that ruptured her prepubic ligament and her belly was dropping down. “We took her over to Texas A&M and they decided to keep her going as long as possible. If they did a C-section a month and a half before term, the foal would not survive. They put a big belly wrap on her and tried to determine when she might come into labor. They thought it would be mid-February, and I said I would have a nurse mare ready.”
After day seven of Dr. Cross’ protocol, the barren mare should be producing enough milk to start the adoption process of the orphaned foal.
An orphan foal may be bottle fed with replacement formula, raised by another mare, or raised by inducing lactation in a dry mare.
The attending veterinarian wondered
how he could do that, and Tracy told her he planned to induce lactation in a mare he had at the farm. “When the veterinarian called me, saying the mare was starting labor and she was going to wait about an hour and do a terminal C-section, I took off with the substitute mare in my trailer and had the nurse mare there at midnight,” he says.
“The foal was puny and weak and didn’t want to get up, but they had a lot of vet stu- dents who took turns holding the foal up to nurse the substitute mare. The veterinarian didn’t think the mare would ever let it nurse because she was a little nervous. So, I asked if they had a twitch. We put the twitch on the mare, stuck the foal onto a teat, and took the twitch off the mare and the rest was history.”
When the barren mare begins to make a bag, the mare and orphaned foal should be placed in a stall together with a separation so they can get used to each other. The foal and mare should then be introduced to each other and the mare palpated while the foal is near her head, thus making the mare think she has foaled. The sleeve used to palpate the mare should be rubbed on the foal so her scent is on the foal, making the mare think the foal belongs to her.
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