Expert Consultation on Preparing for Your Mare's Foaling
Terminology
Regular breeds are familiar with these words. New breeders and curios people can learn the lingo.
Breeding Terminology
When the vet or stud master says something you are unsure about, become familiar with these words.
Caslick
A procedure that the vet perform on mare that have poor vulval conformation. We like a vertical looking vulva. Otherwise manure and other nasties can easily enter the vagina and risk infection in the uterus and compromise the foetus. Once a mare has this procedure, she will need to continue this all through her breeding career.
Colostrum
The important first milk. Antibodies are passed on to the foal through this first milk. When a mare loosed this, she will never produce more in this pregnancy and donor colostrum is required. A foal has up to 24 hours to absorb this milk to pass his/her IgG and have adequate antibodies from the mare, until they can produce their own at 3-4 months of age. There are ways to test the quality with a BRIX spectrometer. over 20% is good. Above 26% is fantastic. Normal milk is around 10%.
IgG Test
Immunoglobulin G are an antibody that helps protect a foal from environmental diseases. This blood test is performed to see if the foal has absorbed enough antibodies from the colostrum. This can be performed from 10-24 hours old. If the foal fails - failure of passive transfer, you can still have some time (before 24hours old) to tube more donor colostrum.. Is they still fail, then you may be up for expensive blood plasma.