One of our surrogate mares had her foal last nite, lovely little colt. The last time I saw a foals birth I was 16 so had no interest or understanding of the hoof but its amazing how nature works. I had only seen a bad black and white photo of a new borns feet before.
David, You mentioned this was a surrogate mare. As I understand it, you work on a TB breeding farm--- is this mare's foal going to be replaced with a TB foal and what will eventually happen to this foal? Or do I really not want to know..
Yea the mare is a surrogate mother if something is born to a mare that cant nurse the foal for some reason that little guy will be on his own four feet. They time the breeding so that say one surrogate mother had a foal in November so her foal will be old enough to be weaned without major consequences if needed now so they would have min 6-8 weeks nursing unless major disaster and the surrogate mothers foal will then be raised on the farm and eventually be broken and go to the owners daughter who does a lot of show jumping and pleasure riding. I think at this stage she nearly has as many horses as we have on the stud.
The horse I'm sitting on in my avatar was my first born. I was lucky to get to witness all but one foaling of the 10 that happened on our farm between '97 and 2001 - the same year I started as a farrier.
