| Featured Article - August 2007
In The Shadow of Equus From Tragedy, A Triumph for Daisy |
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call came in early July. Nikki Ayers, an equestrian coach and three-day
event rider, was urgently looking for a nurse mare and she had
contacted me because I have been managing the colostrum registry for a
number of years. She was desperate. Exhaustion and sorrow plagued her
voice, but she managed to maintain her composure. Earlier that day, her
newborn foal had lost its dam, Star, Nikki’s beloved broodmare. Trying
to set aside her need to grieve, Nikki was frantic to find a nurse mare
to feed and raise baby “Daisy.” It all really began eight years ago. In 1999, she was competing at Swiftsure Ranch Horse Trials in Idaho where the ranch’s owner, Colleen Sullivan, had a filly that she agonized about having to euthanize. The filly had been born “windswept” with an angular leg deformity (in “windswept” foals, both fore or hind legs are slanted in the same direction). She was a very well bred half Trakehner, half Hanoverian filly that would never be ridden, but having to put down such a lovely animal so young seemed such an unnecessary tragedy. There had to be another answer. There was, and it came about in a conversation with Nikki. Through the young eventer, Colleen saw another life for Star as a broodmare. In the most natural and simplest of gestures, she gave the dark dappled bay to Nikki who brought her home to Harmony Farms at her parents’ acreage in Hazelmere Valley. “When Star was four years old we bred her to the Thoroughbred stallion Sky White and she had Georgia,” said Nikki. “Her next foal was Virginia by an Irish Sport horse, Pallas Digion. “Ginni” was chestnut with four white socks. Both fillies have inherited the same great qualities from Star, in that they are so easy to work with. In 2006 we bred her to Aberjack, a New Zealand Registered Sport Horse owned by Mark Todd (Olympic Gold medal-winning New Zealand three-day eventer).” Star went into labour on July 3 and she had her foal at 11:45 pm. But 15 minutes went by and the mare didn’t get up. Nikki and her family managed to get her to her feet and the newborn was able to nurse. But Star started shaking and she still hadn’t expelled the afterbirth. “Our vet, Eric Martin, came immediately,” continued Nikki. “He gave her fluids and did everything he could for her to keep her going. He explained all our options. We hoped that she would be all right. We stayed up all night. It was terrible. But in the early morning we made a decision to put her down. She had torn her uterus and was losing a lot of blood.” The foal had nursed from Star throughout the night and had received a quantity of colostrum, the first milk that kick-starts the baby’s immune system. But in the cold grey of dawn as time slipped away for Star, Nikki faced the inevitable outcome and began bottle-feeding Daisy. She was emotionally drained, but there was no time to lose in the search for a new mom for Daisy. She began working the phone, calling friends and breeding barns. An internet search yielded no help. A friend who has a Thoroughbred breeding farm in Aldergrove offered a mare that had just weaned her foal. But the mare showed no interest in Daisy and would turn her hindquarters toward the foal, not allowing her to be close. |
By now Daisy was being
bottle-fed every three hours around the clock. But Nikki knew that
feeding alone was not enough. The foal had been without a mother for
two days and she needed her own horse “family.” As it would turn out,
that family, in the form of Ms. Jate, was just a few miles away. “Ms. Jate is a Standardbred,” said Langley veterinarian and reproduction specialist Dr. Juan Samper who delivers over 150 foals each year. “She was bought at a sale in Pennsylvania and brought here. She has been a great mare for me and she’s worth her weight in gold.” As a broodmare, Ms. Jate is an excellent mother. She delivered a foal a few weeks before Daisy was born but lost the baby from ulcers. According to Dr. Samper, the loss of a foal or the loss of a mare during or immediately after birth is more common than it should be, and more common than people realize. There are many reasons for problems to suddenly escalate and put either the mare or the foal at risk. When tragedy happens and a broodmare dies, horse owners must not only deal with their own shock and grief, but the survival crisis facing the foal. “Dr. Samper had a mare that had lost a foal two weeks earlier,” said Nikki. “He offered Ms. Jate and she took to Daisy. Dr. Samper gave her hormones to bring in her milk while we continued Daisy on Foal-Lac (a milk replacement) every three hours. However, Daisy had become detached from other horses and was bonded to me and other humans with bottles. So we started bottle-feeding Daisy next to Ms. Jate while she nuzzled the foal.” In those anxious first few hours and days, Nikki and her family watched for the chemistry that would trigger Ms. Jate and Daisy to bond. It was subtle, elusive, tentative. But knowing Ms. Jate’s strong maternal instincts, Dr. Samper was confident. “There are mares that have a higher maternal instinct than others and some won’t respond (as a nurse mare),” he said. “There’s a treatment that we use that will bring in a mare’s milk even if they haven’t had a foal.” Ms. Jate and Daisy were in adjacent stalls and Nikki opened up the divider so that Daisy could go in with Ms. Jate at will. The mare showed interest in the foal but at first Daisy just wandered around then went back to her area. It would take a lot of patience and encouragement to help Daisy transfer her attachment from a human to a horse, but slowly the bond began to shift. “The mare started producing some milk and we pushed the foal toward her,” Nikki said. “Ms. Jate let the foal nurse if we were there.” In a short time the bond strengthened with each session of suckling and nuzzling. Daisy thrived and Ms. Jate relaxed into the contented world of raising an adopted baby. Today, Daisy is a bouncing, energetic month-old filly with, no doubt, a career as an event horse ahead of her. From the ashes of tragedy, a mare and an orphan foal found company and contentment in each other. Nikki and her family couldn’t be happier. Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal
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