We have only 5 mares bred this year and the first one due to foal was Jetta, our black ApHC mare. She was due to foal at the end of February or the first of March. Yesterday was January 19th and we certainly were not expecting any mares to foal on the coldest night of 2008 so far. I think it got down to 4°F here.
My husband went out to find a dead black leopard colt this morning, it was out of the sack and was clean, we don't know for sure what happened but assume that it was just premature and not viable. It was small and the mare had just started making an udder. By the look of it's feet, it never got up.
This may be the result of the quality of hay that we are feeding, a result of the drought this past summer, normally we would have had the mares separated and on good alfalfa before now but we just didn't have enough good hay to put them up as early as usual.
We are very disappointed because we have never gotten a black leopard from any of our own mares before. This mare has always had bays in the past.
1 comment:
That is a shame, I am sorry to hear that...
Poor Jetta, maybe it was just a combo of things that happened...
Love your blog
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