Orphan Foals Part 2
When you are faced with an orphan or rejected foal the best solution for the foal long term is to have it accepted by its dam or a foster mare. Raising an orphan by bucket feeding is less than ideal as they quickly become overhumanised and often miss out on the socialisation skills they learn from other horses. This is why orphan foals often become pushy insensitive horses when they grow up as people usually cant provide the strict discipline a herd situation provides. Even if the foal is kept with other horses preferably young ones it can play with too it will be returning to the people may times daily for a drink for the first few months of its life and this can be a problem if the people arent strict with balancing love and discipline. If the mare is alive but has rejected the foal then there is a window of opportunity in the first few days to train her to accept it before her milk dries up. Ive heard vets say it wont work if the mare hasnt accepted the foal within the first few days but from experience I found that it could take up to 3 weeks providing you are willing to put the time and training in. We did that while waiting for a foster mare to become available hoping the real mum would retain her milk but sadly she was unable to possibly due to the two hours between drinks and the small amount the foal was getting from her initially. However it can be done and heres how we went about it
The mare will need to be milked every hour to stimulate her supply and possibly even need a hormone injection from the vet to let her milk down. If you are not able to milk her easily then set up a crush with a portable fence panel against a wall as shown
