THF Nugget

Nugget -
just a few minutes old
Nugget while he is still wet.
Scroll down the page to read about his birth.

April 24, 2002
When we built the foaling barn my brother installed a small, b/w, video camera that actually only shows the center of the square stall. A fat mare can walk all around the perimeter and not be seen. So far none have foaled on the edge of the stall. The 5-inch monitor can rest on the table by my bed so it is easy to sleep a bit then just open an eye and check out the mare. Often Pallio was standing along the wall, eating hay or looking out the window.

Around 1:30 this morning I watched Pallio doing laps at first then she parked with her tail at right angles like a flag. I took that as a sign that she was asking me to come up and do the tail wrap. After I did that I went back to the house and woke the kids who both came out to watch. Upon our return the foal sac was already showing, then feet, then a nose. Once the whole head was out I had my daughter, Sonia (age 18), stay by Pallio's head to prevent her from rising. I opened the foal sac to get a hold of the legs and held them steady as Pallio went through two more rounds of pushing. From the tail wrap to birth it took 30 minutes.

Pallio lay there a bit as the colt was struggling his way out of the sac. Eventually she got up which disconnected the cord. All she did was go to the other side of the stall and lay right back down again. So Sonia and I busied ourselves with towels and did a minor amount of imprinting and the iodine on the umbilical cord. (Here is a lesson, I think leaving iodine out in below freezing weather turns it to gel. I had to take gobs of it and smear them on the cord end.) After a while the colt was attempting to rise and doing the comical/scary learning to rise and walk.

I felt that Pallio might recover faster 1- if she got up and walked around a little and 2- knew she had a foal, get the old hormones going. So we got her up, put her head over the foal then backed off to watch. At first she just stood there, drooping, then the colt moved, her ears perked, she lowered her head, and boom, nickers, nuzzling, licking. It was magic!

I believe this is Pallio's first foal. Her udder looked as though it had never been used and she didn't look for the foal when he was born. Now she is being a great mom. Before this foal was born the kids, Sonia really, had decided to call it Nugget. So that is his name. Nugget is a bay with a small white star, a snip and one white sock behind.

He was walking pretty quickly and at some point Sonia and I grabbed him, we gave him an enema and a quick measure (32 inches). Pallio passed the afterbirth fairly soon which was a relief. She was still cramping after that though and was often lying down. It seemed to take forever for Nugget to actually, successfully latch onto a nipple and swallow milk. (That is what we were waiting for so we could go back to bed.) Finally Sonia stuck a nipple right in his questing mouth and saw him drink a bit. We returned to the house around 4am.

Oh, I have to mention Toasty's reaction to all this. She wanted in! She watched the whole time through the window. She nickered to Nugget and was all over us when we came out smelling like ... everything. This morning, after I cleaned the barn, she came right over, nickered and nipped me like I was her foal. I am going to wait until she has hers before I put them together. I think she'd try to steal Nugget for herself!

We were up again at 6am to get ready for school. The kids both went out to check on them and reported that Nugget was nursing very well. It was my turn for the carpool so I wasn't able to get back in the barn until around 9am.

Pallio is quite bruised inside and was cramping throughout the morning. She lay down a lot, rolled some and then paced around the stall until I stopped her. Poor little Nugget had to follow her around and he was hungry. Pallio seemed better by the time the vet arrived. The vet gave her a painkiller shot anyway (Banamine). Other than that they were both pronounced healthy.

Tomorrow I have to call one vet or the other to draw blood from Nugget to test for antibodies. Today the vet was out too early, (but not for Pallio). I guess they need 18 hours before they get proper results.

I had a bit of a technology break-down during the early morning. First one spot light bulb quit (a set of neon bulbs needs a new resistor too, but that is beyond what I can fix), my watch stopped and then the battery died in my digital camera. So we only got the one picture. Because of the lack of lights it came out dark, this is the best I could do to brighten it. I took others with the flash but they came out too bright, (scary in fact {-:) I then pulled out the old film camera, those pictures are at the developers now and then will have to be scanned before I can post them. I will try to get others while waiting for the vet tomorrow.