Well Care
Vaccinations, Deworming, Floating, and Nutrition
Sports Medicine
PRP, IRAP, Lameness Exams, and Shockwave Therapy
Surgery
Purposely Planned State-Of-The-Art Surgical Facility
Internal Medicine
Infectious Diseases and Neurologic Disorders
Reproductive
Mare and Stallion Breeding and Neonatal Foal Care
STARTING YOUR FOAL OFF ON THE RIGHT HOOF
Foals should begin receiving their first core vaccinations at 6 months of age. The American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) recommends tetanus, Eastern/Western Equine Encephalomyelitis (EEE/WEE), West Nile Virus, and Rabies.
Help keep your vaccine schedule on track by downloading AAEP's complete Foal Vaccination Cart with expanded details, booster timelines, and information on risk-based vaccines at buff.ly/2LYXUTi
The much-discussed 1-2-3 Rule of Foaling tells us the major tasks a foal should have accomplished by the end of each hour. Now we want to dive deeper into the first hour of life. Beyond standing in the first hour, a foal should exhibit certain milestone behaviors. If you do not observe these actions, contact your veterinarian.
- Within the first 1-2 minutes after birth, the baby should be lying upright.
- Within the first 5 minutes, be reactive to stimuli.
- Within 20 minutes, exhibit the suckle reflex by stretching its tongue out and curling it. You may or may not hear a sucking sound.
- Within 30 minutes, it is responding to its mother's nickering.
- Within 60 minutes, it is standing.
If any of these milestone markers go undetected, contact your primary care veterinarian.
Colby Black
TUESDAY TRIVIA ANSWER: Is a senior feed a complete feed? Not always. Complete feeds are engineered to minimize or remove hay and pasture forage from the daily horse diet. While many senior feeds are complete feed products, some are not. A complete feed is a mix of grain and forages fortified with high-quality fiber sources such as beet pulp, alfalfa, and soybean hulls. These ingredients significantly increase the amount of quality fiber in the feed, allowing you to safely reduce or remove hay from the diet.
You can tell if a product is a complete feed by looking at the feeding guidelines. It will always give you instructions for feeding when a horse is on a reduced or no hay diet.
If you consider making a diet change to a complete feed, Mid-Rivers recommends making it under the primary care veterinarian's guidance.