The foaling season started surprisingly early at Wellfield Stud this year when one of the mares gave birth about six weeks earlier than expected. The newborn foal weighed just 36kg and was born at 5am on the 14th July.
Luckily Wellfield's capable foaling manager, Libby, was on hand to ensure that everything went smoothly. The foal has been named Jessie, after Wellfield owner Bill Gleeson's daughter who shares her birthday.
Foals that are born this early rarely survive, but Jessie did not have the typical appearance of a premature foal. Part of the placenta had been infected for about a week before Jessie was born, and the stress that this caused kick-started the foal into maturing early. Even so, she was quite weak and had to be helped to stand to nurse for the first few hours. Libby had to head to town and pick up a dog cover as the foal covers swamped little Jessie.
Although everything appeared to be progressing normally, we were quite worried about Jessie as early foals are at high risk of developing complications like septicaemia (blood poisoning). She was started on a course of antibiotics as a precaution, the mare's udder and legs were disinfected to reduce the chance of infection getting in while Jessie nursed, and we gave her a plasma transfusion to increase the number of antibodies she had to fight infection.
Even with the transfusion, blood tests showed that her levels of antibody were dangerously low after 24 hours so she was given a second transfusion. This helped a lot, but IgG levels were still under the ideal 800mg/dL so she had a third transfusion on day four.
It sometimes seems that we are being overly aggressive with our treatment when the foal appears to be fit and healthy, but in these cases, prevention is definitely better than cure. Once a foal becomes septic, the prognosis is never good and they can become very costly in terms of heartache as well as dollars.
Jessie is progressing well and has been spending some time outside with mum when the weather is fine.
Small but perfectly formed: Jessie and studhand, Mark, from Wellfield
