Rolf Harris is on channel 5 at equine hospital

12barh said:
the mare was in the hospital for almost 3 months before going into labour and scans from in that time showed a viable growing foal with heart beat. There was little option but to wait until she went into labour, and many many hours were spent watching her!
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What was wrong with her that made them monitor her in the first place, i didnt see the first part! :(
 
She had had a tear in her abdominal wall muscles, which is why she had such a wierd shaped dangling belly. She was liveried at the hospital so that she'd be able to have an assisted foaling as soon as she went into labour as there was little to no chance she'd ever actually be able to give birth on her own.
 
patterdale said:
Not sure how impressed I'd be if I was the owner watching that....
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In what way? You have a large animal that if left to nature would die, the vets dealt with her, the foal wasn't viable anyway and the mare is still alive. I think I would be grateful. It was an emergency and for some of that time they thought they had a live foal so they did what they had to do. Unfortunately large animal practice especially birthing can be quite brutal and ending with 1 live animal is better than none.
 
I think they did a pretty good job given the challenges and issues in this mare's case - they managed to save her at least which wasnt at all certain beforehand.

Just goes to show tho how difficult horses are in these sorts of situations - spindly legs, highly strung etc - TBH I was impressed with what they managed to do.
 
12barh said:
She had had a tear in her abdominal wall muscles, which is why she had such a wierd shaped dangling belly. She was liveried at the hospital so that she'd be able to have an assisted foaling as soon as she went into labour as there was little to no chance she'd ever actually be able to give birth on her own.
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Ahhh i see. When/How did they know about the tear?
 
She was referred into the PLEH in May, so about 3 months before- she was fairly classic presentation with the dangly belly and they confirmed the diagnosis by repeat ultrasound scans.
 
I just cringed watching what they're going to be doing next week on that horse's face. My horse had similar done when she had tooth/sinus problems and we were allowed to stay with her - vets instructions were "if you're going to be ill, please leave and go outside because we can't be dealing with you being ill while we're dealing with your horse". We stayed with her, but I spent a lot of time looking away - when they put that saw in and start sawing through the facial bone it's really not nice!
 
Wow Murphy - A ceasar on a mare is definitely bad news then. I wondered about this during the programme. I knew that labour in mares is generally very quick and that if there is trouble the vets have very little time to act.

I didn't see the very start of the programme, but I guess that the mare had had several foals (judging from her reaction after the stillbirth) and the foal was potentially valuable.
 
I really think that the vets did the best that they could have done under the difficult circumstances, and they did say that the foal would have died anyway so losing the foal probably wasn't due to the difficult labour. I felt so sorry for the mare though, and I hope that she has a healthy future.

Loved Parker the goat, I like a happy story at the end... Was a bit concerned about the breeding of the St Bernard though - does that problem arise from over/irresponsible breeding?
 
The worst bit was when she was distressed when she couldn't find her foal :( I could just imagine her saying "Where's my baby? I can't find my baby!"
The plastic horse made me giggle though! I think that'd spook Ned, rather than calm him!
 
Can't quote, but IME if the foal was dead enough to be rotting and falling apart he should have been able to tell that straight away. The smell alone is unmistakable.
Then, he should have found the hind leg that was coming through with the fronts first time he checked, but he didn't look for anything beyond the 2 legs and head.
The 'third' leg would have been there all along, presentations don't change that quickly, particularly when the foal is sadly long dead and therefore incapable of movement.

Then when they kept saying the foal was changing position....ditto above.

Also, the girl watching her saying that she was 'trying to urinate and then collapsed' totally missing the fact that it was actually the waters, which my husband spotted before she did.

The various handling shockers.

But mainly the fact that he didn't notice that the foal was dead and presented wrongly straight away.

I know it's hard etc and they did bring the mare through it, but like I say - I wouldn't have been impressed.
 
Foalings are always unpredictable and things can change fast but in this instance I do tend to agree with much of patterdales comments.
I was surprised that a pregnant
mare already at risk was in what should have been the best place possible, then, very near her time was left to be observed by someone who didnt know the basic difference between urinating and waters going.
Not overly impressed by the events thereafter either.
 
My OH also got the waters breaking part- not even very into animals either.

TASH - As for the st Bernard i imagine its like my Newfy not actually an issue that is too do with breeding but just like in humans some babies are born with deformed limbs. Although Im not a vet so can't guarantee that's correct!
 
patterdale said:
Can't quote, but IME if the foal was dead enough to be rotting and falling apart he should have been able to tell that straight away. The smell alone is unmistakable.
Then, he should have found the hind leg that was coming through with the fronts first time he checked, but he didn't look for anything beyond the 2 legs and head.
The 'third' leg would have been there all along, presentations don't change that quickly, particularly when the foal is sadly long dead and therefore incapable of movement.

Then when they kept saying the foal was changing position....ditto above.

Also, the girl watching her saying that she was 'trying to urinate and then collapsed' totally missing the fact that it was actually the waters, which my husband spotted before she did.

The various handling shockers.

But mainly the fact that he didn't notice that the foal was dead and presented wrongly straight away.

I know it's hard etc and they did bring the mare through it, but like I say - I wouldn't have been impressed.
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I fail to see how the foal was rotting enough to fall apart when it's heart was fine 12 hours before ! It would take a lot longer for rot to take that effect, it just seemed to be a cover for incompetence.
 
She was being observed by a student, who may well have never seen a foaling before, or even have been very horsey. It was the middle of the night in a stressful situation, and actually she didn't need to understand the significance of what she was seeing, as she called for assistance straight away regardless. What you have to remember is that this was in the middle of the night - there is 1 intern, 1 resident and 1 surgeon on call, plus 5 students. Now, none of the staff get the day off after being on call, so would you expect an intern/resident to sit up the whole night for potentially several nights and then carry on with their normal duties the next day? Not to mention, this is a large hospital with a lot of sick horses, the on call staff are in charge of all of these cases - the idea of students is that they monitor the horses and report back findings to the intern, which allows the intern to know what is happening with every horse in the hospital - students are not vets yet, that girl may not even want to be a horse vet, they don't need to necessarily understand the significance of every little change in a horse's condition, they just have to be able to detect those changes and alert the intern.

As for the whole dead foal/position thing, as none of us were there I don't think we can really comment. However the last foaling I did the foal was dead, considerably so, and the only way I knew was because its hair was coming away in my hands. There was no smell, but a foal has to be decomposing for its skin and hair to shed like that. And from what I am aware the vet involved had done 3 southern hemisphere stud seasons, so I would guess he wasn't lacking in experience, I have spent time in a big Aussie stud practice during foaling season, and Newmarket is probably the only place that can compare with the intensity of stud seasons over there.
 
Sorry, I understand what you say about staff, hours etc. But had I been the owner of that mare in the best equine hospital with the cost that involved I don't think it unreasonable to expect the person left to observe the mare to have at least the bare bones of what they were looking for.
 
ribbons said:
Sorry, I understand what you say about staff, hours etc. But had I been the owner of that mare in the best equine hospital with the cost that involved I don't think it unreasonable to expect the person left to observe the mare to have at least the bare bones of what they were looking for.
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She knew exactly what she was looking for, anything abnormal, and she reported it accurately and straight away: Mare looked like she was straining to urinate and then collapsed. Wouldn't you think that fairly descriptive statement a better way to report than "I think her waters have broken" which conveys nothing other than the viewr's opinion?
 
i don't know enough about vet procedures to comment on how competent they were but i was a little confused over the vet saying the foal was coming apart but they'd seen a heartbeat the day before:confused: how quick does a foal deteriorate in those situations?

one other thing which struck me was when the mare went home it was 'the groom' who came to collect her rather than the owner. considering all the mare had been through and how the owner had said she was her favourite it seemed a little odd:confused:
 
ribbons said:
Foalings are always unpredictable and things can change fast but in this instance I do tend to agree with much of patterdales comments.
I was surprised that a pregnant
mare already at risk was in what should have been the best place possible, then, very near her time was left to be observed by someone who didnt know the basic difference between urinating and waters going.
Not overly impressed by the events thereafter either.
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I was pretty horrified actually (shouting expletives at the telly). But perhaps we're just lucky never to have been in that situation, I don't know......
 
Nope, I was pretty horrified too.

Stand by all my previous statement. Balls up all round IMO.

Particularly how they were trying to cover up the mistakes. Rolfs voiceovers 'They discovered the foal had changed position again.'
Rubbish.

There are plenty of things I don't know about, but birthing large animals isn't one of them and there genuinely were mistakes galore there :(
 
Must say that it did look a bit panic-stations when in theory they had plenty of time to plan ahead for all eventualities, and I thought they were monitoring mare and foal constantly - would they not have spotted the lack of foal heartbeat if it had been dead - could be wrong but didn't they say foal dead 24 hrs?

And a big gripe of mine concerning vet hospitals - it did look as if the mare could not actually see another horse, I wonder if that (aside from losing her foal) was a source of distress to her? Vet hospitals are so focused on physical needs but the psychological ones are so important too.
 
dorito said:
Must say that it did look a bit panic-stations when in theory they had plenty of time to plan ahead for all eventualities, and I thought they were monitoring mare and foal constantly - would they not have spotted the lack of foal heartbeat if it had been dead - could be wrong but didn't they say foal dead 24 hrs?

And a big gripe of mine concerning vet hospitals - it did look as if the mare could not actually see another horse, I wonder if that (aside from losing her foal) was a source of distress to her? Vet hospitals are so focused on physical needs but the psychological ones are so important too.
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I have been round the PLEH and in most cases the horses can see others (except in the case of infection of course). Quite a few are in american barn type stabling. there were stables alongside the mare but its possible they had found she got more upset with other horses there, or the owners of those horses didn't want them filmed. Who knows, we only saw a short piece of film of a mare who as stated above had been there for 3 months.
 
Odd that the nurse attending the mare couldn't smell the difference between urine & amnoitic fluid, surely someone experienced should have been watching the mare if it was predicted to be a very difficult birth ? There is a very distint smell to birth fluids.
 
Yes, agree patterdale.
I gave been lucky and only lost one foal in 40 years. That occasion was a presentation so bad there was no way foal could be saved, but the immediate thoroughly progressional approach by my vets was incredible. All in my yard at home with state of the art equipment and no reason to expect a problem.
This mare was in a top veterinary hospital because she was at risk.!
To my mind there were several glaringly obvious mistakes made, in fact to many for me to list on the iPhone. Like patterdale there are lots of things I know little about (technology !!!) but foaling is not one of them, the whole care of that mare from the moment wax was observed was certainly not the way I, or my vet would have proceeded.
I also am confused that a rotting foal was removed 12 hours after a heartbeat was noted.
 
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