What should a foal eat

For example, a two-month-old foal should be eating two pounds of feed per day. In free-choice situations, foals will often over eat and can begin gaining weight too fast, putting undue stress on an immature skeleton. This is especially true when the mare is an exceptionally good milker. There are several approaches for offering supplemental feed to the foal; the choice will depend on the specific situation and goals for the foal.

Feeding mares and foals individually offers the most precise method of offering supplemental feeding to the foal. In this manner, each mare and foal receives exactly the amount of feed they need. Instead, they will either build a creep feeder that foals can access but mares cannot, or mares and foals will just be fed together. Also, foals must be grouped by age and fed amounts appropriate for their age. When mares and foals are fed together, it is important that the mares and foals be sorted according to age of the foal and body condition of the mare.

Otherwise, some mares and foals will get more than they need and others will not get enough. It is also important that the feed troughs are at a height the foal can comfortably reach, and there must be plenty of space available for all mares and foals to get to the troughs and eat at the same time.

If mares and foals are to be fed together, they must all eat a feed that is balanced to support foal growth, such as the Purina feeds mentioned previously. Colostrum can be collected by the mare owner and stored after filtering to remove dirt particles in an ordinary freezer bag, for up to two years.

Freezer bags are ideal because they easily can be labeled with the date, and thawed quickly when immersed in warm water. You can milk colostrum every two hours from a mare which has had a stillborn foal, until six to 12 hours after foaling. A mare which is supporting a foal usually can afford to donate about ml a half pint , after her foal nurses.

About 16 fluid ounces constitutes a single feeding for a newborn foal, and most experts recommend that an orphan receive three to four feedings within the first eight hours of his life. Feeding a newborn colostrum usually is a matter of gently warming the milk to equine body temperature and offering it by bottle. Some perseverance is required, as some foals take a while to get the idea.

Hunger, however, tends to be a great motivator. To ensure your foal has absorbed sufficient antibodies, you might wish to ask your veterinarian to test his serum IgG levels , a blood test that must be performed when the foal is between six and 10 hours of age.

Discuss your options with your veterinarian before foaling season, since supplementing foals with compromised or low IgG is time-critical. After the critical newborn stage has passed, your next task is to arrange some method of regularly feeding the orphan foal. The lowest-maintenance way to do that is to find a nurse mare which can play surrogate mom to your motherless waif.

For the owner, a nurse mare is the ideal solution. Many large breeding farms maintain a few nurse mares. There also are a few farms largely based in areas where breeding farms abound, such as Florida and Kentucky that will lease you a nurse mare if you find yourself in need.

Getting a nurse mare to accept your little stranger as her own offspring sometimes takes a little work. Still, you might find that you have to restrain the mare at first until the foal has nursed long enough for her to become familiar with him usually within 24 hours.

Tie the mare in her stall, offer her hay or grain to distract her, and consider placing a bar or pole along her side, at about flank height, from the front to the back of the stall, to prevent her from kicking the foal or her handlers. She might initially squeal and threaten to kick or bite the orphaned arrival, but a healthy, hungry foal will not be easily discouraged, and once he manages to latch on, most mares will relax.

Resist the temptation to tranquilize the mare, however. The drug can be passed in the milk and accidentally sedate the foal, reducing his efforts to nurse. Observe the nurse mare and her new charge closely for a few days. Once acceptance has occurred, you gradually can remove the restraints on the mare and let them proceed as Nature intended. A caution with regard to using draft-breed mares as surrogates; in one study of orphan Thoroughbred foals raised on draft mares vs.

Those foals also had a slightly higher incidence of developmental orthopedic disease. For that reason, some farms now prefer to use light-horse breeds for their nurse mares. Because nurse mares are relatively scarce, and can be expensive to lease, a great many farms hand-raise their orphan foals. While this is a valid approach, it often can result in a foal which is more socialized toward humans than to horses.

But as he grows, his lack of equine social skills can make him dangerous. Treat them like normal foals. Hand-feeding is a time-consuming project under any circumstances. During the first week of life, a normal foal can nurse as often as seventeen times an hour. With the caveat that the more frequently the foal is fed, the more optimal his growth rate, most orphan foals can be placed on a feeding schedule of once every one to two hours in the first week, then every four to six hours after the second week of life.

Within a few weeks of their arrival, most foals will begin to show interest in consuming solid food, which will allow you to taper off the milk feedings as you gradually make the switch to a milk-based pellet formulated for foals. But bear in mind that large, twice-daily feedings tend to cause diarrhea.

How much should a foal drink? For example, a pound foal could consume 25 pounds of milk a day, or 50 cups. Because their lactose content is low, and their fat is highly digestible, they can be used for horses.

The easiest way to do that is to purchase pectin, a powder that is largely dextrose and used to set jams and jellies. One two-ounce package of pectin is enough for three liters three quarts of milk. Or you can add 20 grams per liter four teaspoons per quart. This clearly proves the need to get the foal sucking on mare milk in the initial hours of birth for a disease-free and better health condition. Moreover, colostrum also acts as a laxative, facilitating bowel movements to excrete the meconium which, if not done right, can cause colicky and difficulty in breathing.

The quality of colostrum in specific and mare milk, in general, can be improved by following these steps:. Looking for good tips on grooming horses? Take a look at this article on taking care of horses. This not only helps when the mare milk is insufficient but also establishes the normal gut flora for easy digestion of regular solid feed. This extra feeding along with the milk consumption is called creep feeding.

Normally, creep feeding is not nutritionally essential until after the 8th week. This is the time when production and nutritional content of milk start reducing and mare milk is not adequate in fulfilling the energy requirements of the foal.

This will not only provide the foal with pre-weaning growth, but also prepares it for regular eating during the weaning phase. Although this phase can be very taxing and stressful for foals, the pre-weaning phase helps them to prepare their body for solid food consumption already. Not only do they require a lot more caring than a regular foal but they are much higher maintenance, considering they will need your attention almost every hour in their early days.

However, this might not be the case if you take absolute care of all of its nutritional needs and monitor its growth properly.

The most important point for foal feeding orphans is to feed it colostrum, keeping in mind that it can only be absorbed within the first 18 hours of the birth. In general, foals can only consume ounces of colostrum. However, some mares can secrete a lot more than needed for their newborns, especially during the very first meals.

During the first 15 hours of the birth, mares can be hand-milked to get You can then store it in colostrum banks. Before getting to the specifics, we should be clear about three points that must be taken care of at all times. Note: All of the guidelines are for an average horse of lbs 50 kg feeding There are lots of questions pouring in from our readers.