Quick Valeria/Foal Update 2

The live feed is back up. I feel Valeria is doing well enough for that. My vet is coming this afternoon so we’ll have a better idea of the road ahead of us.

Baby is thriving. A little too much. I guess that’s what happens when you are born the size of a linebacker, or as my vet said, a 6 week old foal. Seriously she’s a huge beast. Easily over 115lbs at this point.

Eat your Wheaties, kids. I’m not even 48 hrs old & can bench 245lbs.

Valeria, in her best judgement, decided to eat all the straw in her stall. It was literally a challenge, even though she had tons of grass hanging. This led to colic (IMO, cannot confirm for sure) Sunday night. My vet showed up and did the usual colic triage. Banamine is currently Land Hippo’s best friend.

Monday morning I was not convinced that she was over whatever was ailing her. I had the vet out again, we hooked Valeria up to an IV and did a uterine flush (she did not pass her placenta and with our vet’s directions we assisted in removing it Saturday night but something must have lingered). She’s receiving antibiotics to fight the infection. I think we’re lucky to have caught it so soon.

Doped into oblivion.

Lastly, Valeria isn’t producing much milk. She’s getting injections of oxytocin for that and later today we’ll bust out the big guns and give her domperiodone. We’re giving the baby some milk supplementation. Originally goat milk but her palette is too refined so now we’re using milk replacer and hopefully teaching her to drink from a bucket.

It does look like Valeria is on the upswing. I am hopeful but cautious. At least I’m to a point that my biggest stress is from watching baby chew on Valeria’s mane and tail (omg, I’m so sad about this). Even though I’m force to work because of deadlines, my entire block has stepped up to help feed Valeria every two hours and get some milk replacer into the baby. Small towns are nice and the horse community is even nicer.

At first I thought Valeria had a baby buffalo. Now she looks more like a mule.

Oh and in case any of you see Valeria going after Ben, she is more stressed when he is moved away than when he is nearby. She just doesn’t want the creepy old guy next door talking to her kid. Or something. She’s a weird horse. I’ve got a story about that for another post.