Rolf Harris is on channel 5 at equine hospital

[Murphy88]

Last reply got cut off, so to continue...

They will have showed her the foal, but not really 8pm telly appropriate is it! As for why not a real horse, she was in a barn with real horses, but clearly she wanted closer contact. Given she was in ICU, with other sick horses, it's hardly ideal to allow very sick horses close contact, compromised immune systems and horses from different environments do not go well together! If the plastic horse kept her happy then what's wrong with that.

 

[Marydoll]

a cut up foal would still have meant something to the mare, as for giving her a plastic horse a company what is wrong with a real one?

I so strongly agree with this, i think it would have been less stressful for the mare if she had been able to touch, see and smell her offspring, no matter what state it was in

 

[tikino]

having been in the same situation with a friends mare i think the vets did and excellent job as to save the mare. sometimes in these sitations you just got to do what you have got to do. it is not a nice situation and god can i tell you that we had a foal who was also dead and it was not nice getting him out the mare however it is then more important to save the mare.

unless you have ever been in that situation i think you have no right to critisize what they did

 

[Marydoll]

Last reply got cut off, so to continue...

They will have showed her the foal, but not really 8pm telly appropriate is it! As for why not a real horse, she was in a barn with real horses, but clearly she wanted closer contact. Given she was in ICU, with other sick horses, it's hardly ideal to allow very sick horses close contact, compromised immune systems and horses from different environments do not go well together! If the plastic horse kept her happy then what's wrong with that.

X posted, i do hope she was given the chance, no matter what, she deserved that

 

[Achinghips]

Achinghips - the foal being dead made no difference to her having to go to theatre, it seems like they would still have had to do a controlled delivery under GA anyway, the foal has to come out whether alive or dead.

As for not checking heartbeat within last 24 hours, what difference would it have made? Even if they had detected the foal was in distress, what would they have done? Elective Caesar (=dead mare and premi foal), induce delivery (premi foal that would prob die)?

Finally, I'd imagine they did show her the foal

Yes it did make a difference - she was walking while having contactions and was more resistant to getting up. If the foal was known to be dead beforehand she could have already been in a box nearer to theatre. Yes you are correct, the foal had to come out dead or alive.

I am not concerned about whether she was shown the foal or not.

 

[MrsHutt]

There were various things in the care and treatment of the mare that I would have questioned - but my biggest problem is that no one was wearing a hard-hat in with her! Surely the H&S bods will be down on them like a ton of bricks? Not as if they didn't know what was going to be happening!!

 

[noodle_]

question though....


why - with all the nice facilities they have at leahurst - dont they have an operating threatre IN he intensive care bit where the mare was???



i dont get why they have to haul everything accross they way?? even the colicing mare last week was sent accross....?

 

[AmyMay]

question though....


why - with all the nice facilities they have at leahurst - dont they have an operating threatre IN he intensive care bit where the mare was???



i dont get why they have to haul everything accross they way?? even the colicing mare last week was sent accross....?

EXACTLY!!!!! It has nothing to do with not being able to save the foal (for me), it was the way she was dragged all the way across the yard in the state she was.

I was flabbergasted.

 

[noodle_]

When i was there a few months back - it was lovely - nice stables etc in the intensive care bit but that was it........ some stocks but the amount of money that was spent!?

where is the extra theatre to stop the horses (in pain) having to walk so far.

i was shocked at that tbh.........i just (wrongly) assumed someone had designed it well..........

 

[lar]

But not every horse from intensive care will need to be operated on. Not every operation case will come from intensive care - in fact I would think the majority will be emergency referrals and therefore it is more important that the theatre is near the wagon park (which from memory it is). Isn't it more important that the intensive care is somewhere quiet so horses in recovery can be where there isn't the stress of animals coming and going all the time to go into theatre?

 

[noodle_]

But both horses we have seen so far have needed (or almost) surgery...??

Wouldnt it make sense to have a theatre close to a stable?

nd yes the theatre is close to the wagon park BUT the horses that need surgery need intensive care..............?!

 

[Murphy88]

Leahurst already has 2 operating theatres and attached induction boxes, to put in a third attached to intensive care would be a massive expense (theatre with suitable floor, walls, set-up, operating table, equipment, induction box with padded walls and floor, hoist) for what is realistically a small number of horses that struggle to get there. In all the colics I have been involved in there, I never saw any that couldn't make it round - bear in mind they will be heavily sedated/pain medicated by then. Any that are so bad they can't walk are unloaded off the lorry into the induction box without going in stocks.

Even in the 2 big hospitals in Kentucky, which probably see more and colics then everywhere else in the world put together, their ICU's are seperate to theatre, in fact they are considerably further walk than at Leahurst. Likewise with UPenn's New Bolton Centre which has one of the best large animal hospitals in the states. Theatres and induction boxes need to be clean, quiet places - a recovering horse needs to be in virtual silence, something unlikely to happen in a busy ICU.

 

[Gingerwitch]

I was quite shocked at how large the poor mare was.

I think vet treatement is currently in the worst place it could ever be, we are in the experimental phase, but will not know what to do for a good few years yet. Unfortunalty most owners do not realise that most cases that get to Leahurst are then an experiment -not that the vets would ever admit this - and us owners that want to do everything we can are in some cases led along - and our will to try and keep our animals is played upon. I have never ever yet heard a single vet tell a colicing owner that getting to Leahurst is only the start of the process. Many of the "newbies" sell it like the be all and end, and the poor owner gets locked onto the.... if i can get him to Leahurst then he will be fine. I have refused to transport a couple of horses until the vet has explained the "whole" process to the distraught owner - and both times when the owner has found out the whole story has taken the decision to pts without a 2 hour journey in a box.

Years ago the mare would have been pts at home - in the future maybe we will have something better to go on, maybe we will realise that we can't mess with these animals the way you can with cats and dogs, and maybe the vets will stand up and be counted as those that care about the animal welfare 1st, 2nd 3rd and last - again like we used to,

 

[NinjaPony]

I was quite shocked at how large the poor mare was.

I think vet treatement is currently in the worst place it could ever be, we are in the experimental phase, but will not know what to do for a good few years yet. Unfortunalty most owners do not realise that most cases that get to Leahurst are then an experiment -not that the vets would ever admit this - and us owners that want to do everything we can are in some cases led along - and our will to try and keep our animals is played upon. I have never ever yet heard a single vet tell a colicing owner that getting to Leahurst is only the start of the process. Many of the "newbies" sell it like the be all and end, and the poor owner gets locked onto the.... if i can get him to Leahurst then he will be fine. I have refused to transport a couple of horses until the vet has explained the "whole" process to the distraught owner - and both times when the owner has found out the whole story has taken the decision to pts without a 2 hour journey in a box.


Years ago the mare would have been pts at home - in the future maybe we will have something better to go on, maybe we will realise that we can't mess with these animals the way you can with cats and dogs, and maybe the vets will stand up and be counted as those that care about the animal welfare 1st, 2nd 3rd and last - again like we used to,

But both times the mares survived? Surely it is better for them to go and be saved and go on to live their lives happily than be PTS? Sure, for some cases then PTS is the best and sometimes only option, but in these cases I think that the treatment saved their lives so was worth it.

 

[JanetGeorge]

As far as the program goes i personally though the whole situation was very badly handled.
The mare was far too distressed in the 24 hours before she foaled, that should have given them a clue to check the foal wasnt in distress.
We foal on average 20 mares a year and only twice have i seen a mare trying to stand on end like this one was.
In both cases there was a problem although foal was got out alive.
They probably took the foal away to make sure it wasnt dead because of ehv or anything else contagious that could cause any other mare to abort

I've got to agree with Sally. As soon as I saw the mare go into labour - vet says there's 2 legs and a head - I would have known there was a serious problem. I've seen 2 mares behave like this: one was a maiden with a very big foal that hadn't made it past the pelvic brim. As soon as I managed to reach a leg I KNEW it was dead - no movement, no 'pulling back' which you get with a live foal. I double checked via the mouth, and when convinced it WAS dead I didn't have to rush the delivery - the important thing was to take it quietly and avoid damaging the mare.

The second was an old, very experienced mare. I felt two legs and nose and 'handed over' the foaling to a student - because it SHOULD have been easy - and she needed the experience. I stayed close - and a third leg appeared! At that point we stopped delivery and tried to get the mare up but she wasn't having any. She'd got that far and I couldn't get the vet there in time to sedate her to correct the presentation. So VERY carefully and tentatively, we took the front legs and head down - and eased at the hind leg - whoosh - whole foal delivered alive with no damage to the mare! (We're backing him now!)

The whole process seemed to me to be a bit panic and inexperience led! The young male vet WAS inexperienced (3 years with stud work!) The mare was unsettled well before she went into labour and with all the equipment and expertise available, they should have been checking the foal's heartbeat. To say that a few dollops of wax suggested foaling imminent - what planet have they lived on! Running milk suggests foaling imminent (or abortion imminent), wax can be observed 2-3 weeks before foaling!

Why the hell did they have to hoik the mare up by the back legs to 'deliver' a small, dead, rotting foal? THAT won't have helped the ventral rupture! With a dead foal, embryotomy - I assume - is what they did so they didn't NEED to push the foal back to re-present it!

Safety for staff and students was ignored!

 

[noodle_]

interesting JG......


im not that knowledgable about foaling....but it does beg the question how can the foal be rotting/come away that quickly if they had been checking? (genuine question)?

how come it was dead so quickly? and if already dead how could it move (again i dont know im asking as ive never bred.....and never want to!)

 

[jrp204]

I can't see how the foal would be rotting after a day, i appreciate i have no experience of foaling but do have in calving and lambing. Contractions will move the position of dead lambs, legs everywhere, head dropping down. Great fun trying to get them out. It is possible to cut up (think JG had the correct term) but luckily we haven't had to resort to that yet.

 

[Toast]

i thought the whole thing was massively dramatic and there was a lot of unnecessary flapping over the mare. It looked to me like they didnt quite know how to handle the situation..

 

[elumpshie]

I feel for the mare and owner as I've been there myself in July this year thou I didn't have time to get my mare to vet school so vet had to perform a c section at my home with help of loads of folk I got my lovley bay colt I've always wanted he was alive but had contracted tendons had operations done on both legs but turned out his back leg wasn't right either after 5 days of hand feeding him I had to make hardest decision of my life to put him to sleep and 14 weeks Tomo my mare is looking great all thanks to my vet or she wouldn't be here been a long road for her. I think the Vets done great last night x

 

[JanetGeorge]

interesting JG......


im not that knowledgable about foaling....but it does beg the question how can the foal be rotting/come away that quickly if they had been checking? (genuine question)?

how come it was dead so quickly? and if already dead how could it move (again i dont know im asking as ive never bred.....and never want to!)

It's unlikely the foal would be rotting and coming apart after 24 hours unless the mare already had a uterine infection. The only 'movement' you'd get from a dead foal would be that caused by the mare's contractions - and that's a very different 'feel'. I've only delivered one dead foal (one too many! ) but assisted a vet with an embryotomy many years ago (it was revolting!) I've also done a couple of embyotomies on dead lambs (nasty - but necessary!)

I've done quite a few 'difficult' deliveries of foals - and I do knew in ALL cases that the foal was alive - except in the one case where I knew it wasn't!

I DID once deliver a 'rotten' lamb although it wasn't actually rotten - it had probably been dead for 3 weeks (when the ewe had a horrendously bad pneumonia.) We expected both lambs to die as a result of the illness so I kept the ewe on antibiotics right up to the time she went into labour (to save her from being infected by rotting lambs.) When she went into labour, she was too tired to make progress so I went in and delivered a big healthy ram lamb. Went back for the next, and as soon as I touched it, I knew it was dead but it came out black and totally dried out (mummified.) It felt like crepe paper! The antibiotics had 'sterilised' it and prevented an infection that would have killed the other lamb and probably the ewe as well.

 

[jrp204]

Mummified lambs are pretty gross, we call them 'mank lambs', we only get 1 or 2 a year but that is too many. We have found they have died at 3-4 months. We now, if the lamb is big or badly presented get a C sec which the ewes seem to recover from really well and you avoid damaging the ewe.

 

[noodle_]

It's unlikely the foal would be rotting and coming apart after 24 hours unless the mare already had a uterine infection. The only 'movement' you'd get from a dead foal would be that caused by the mare's contractions - and that's a very different 'feel'. I've only delivered one dead foal (one too many! ) but assisted a vet with an embryotomy many years ago (it was revolting!) I've also done a couple of embyotomies on dead lambs (nasty - but necessary!)

I've done quite a few 'difficult' deliveries of foals - and I do knew in ALL cases that the foal was alive - except in the one case where I knew it wasn't!

I DID once deliver a 'rotten' lamb although it wasn't actually rotten - it had probably been dead for 3 weeks (when the ewe had a horrendously bad pneumonia.) We expected both lambs to die as a result of the illness so I kept the ewe on antibiotics right up to the time she went into labour (to save her from being infected by rotting lambs.) When she went into labour, she was too tired to make progress so I went in and delivered a big healthy ram lamb. Went back for the next, and as soon as I touched it, I knew it was dead but it came out black and totally dried out (mummified.) It felt like crepe paper! The antibiotics had 'sterilised' it and prevented an infection that would have killed the other lamb and probably the ewe as well.

thank you that makes sense


and i can imagine how horrid it is loosing a foal


would be interesting to see what the vets would be saying if reading.......!


i suppose doing a show like that (like anything) you leave it wide open to be slammed/critisized... etc

 

[Ibblebibble]

would be interesting to see what the vets would be saying if reading.......!


i suppose doing a show like that (like anything) you leave it wide open to be slammed/critisized... etc

think it would be very interesting to hear what the owner had to say about the whole thing! maybe that is why the groom came to collect the mare.........

 

[thatsmygirl]

Janetgeorge what a fantasic post

 

[noodle_]

think it would be very interesting to hear what the owner had to say about the whole thing! maybe that is why the groom came to collect the mare.........

very true..... never thought of that...


shame they dont do updates of the last horse (millie?) with the colic surgery... and now this one...

 

[Laafet]

Sallyf totally agree with what you said. IMO vet hospitals are not necessarily the best equipped at foaling, apart from when it is going wrong even then it better to try to treat the mare at home where she is happy and relaxed. This year we had a vet at a normal foaling which was occurring during a colic for another mare in the other main foaling box, said vet (a partner from a very large Equine Hospital) was very interested as he had not seen a normal foaling in a long time :O, I just looked at the mare said, 'she's about to foal', she was not sweating or pacing but I just had this feeling, next thing she lay down and broke waters.
As for the foal being taken away, seriously, horses cope with grief in a different way to humans. I have seen two dead foals in the last four years of foaling on a TB stud (I sit up 6 nights a week), one was PTS as it had an abnormal heart and at 10 days was just struggling too much. The mare was allowed to have the foal for half an hour as it had stood and nursed before the vets took it away for a PM, she lost interest very quickly. The other mare struggled during foaling and her foal died during birth, she too lost interest very quickly, pawed the foal a bit, then we had to take it away for testing (as is standard), she was then placed in a box away from the other foals for a day and sadly we had another mare that died during birth. So we decided to foster that mare onto the orphan foal, she took to it with great success. This mare had lost foals before and seemed unfazed by the whole experience. In the wild, the mare would not hang around a dead foal for long and from what I have seen even in the highly bred TB, they too lose interest very quickly.

 

[ribbons]

The mare I had that birthed a dead foal had had 3 previous foals and was a wonderful mother. I wondered about letting
her have time with the dead foal but my vet said remove immediately. Had she had even an hour with a live foal it would have mattered as they would have bonded by then but as she never muzzled or spoke to foal it was irrelevant to her. I don't know if he was right or not but mare never fretted for foal and was out with her friends 8 hours later and never looked for a foal at all. She has had foals since and was, as always a perfect attentive mother.
Although tv mare was hospitalised for obvious reasons I think most of her distress was due to being away from security of home without familiar company rather than losing a foal she never met and bonded with.
Janetgeorge, brilliant post. The voice of much experience and knowledge.

 

[china]

These things happen, and unless you are in that situation yourself, I can't see how people can comment. I can imagine it being a very tense time that goes at 100 miles an hour and the decision you make could be the difference between life and death for mare and foal.
I know a mare who had a perfect pregnancy, went into labour and foal was dead and presented with 4 legs and a head. Mare had a ceaser and foal was absolutely perfect, no ovbious difformaties. Mare had a huge road to recovery and is now fighting fit. These things happen and when they do it is horrific and I bet they went home thinking what they might have done differently. Hind sight is a powerful thing!

In the beginning of the clip the owner visited her and was saying how much she adored the horse, the 'groom' who picked her up looked like the owner to me, or they are very much alike. It may well have been her but was commentated incorrectly. I thought it was a very interesting programme, although I did cringe a few times when they were close to getting smashed in the face by a tonne of horse in labour, but I expect they reflected on that afterward!

 

[SusieT]

Couple of things-how does anyone on ehre know it was a 'small' foal exactly?
And does anyone know exactly what taking the heartbeat of the foal entails? not just a case of putting a stethoscope on the mares belly..15 minutes of natural labour attempted then they intervened-whats' wrong with giving nature a chance? and i'll guess he felt head and legs and then wanted to let it happen naturallya nd avoid section if he could so wasn't too bothered if there was a withdrawal (which can not always be present anyway or felt if foal still far in). As for walking her across the yard, unless you feel they should do the ops in every stable some horses are going to have to walk to the operating theatre and sterility is impossible if your theatre is in the middle of the yard!
This will have been very edited, there will have been a more senior vet on the end of a phone/just out of the picture, remember the only reason this was intensive care was not because the foals viability was in question but because the mare might have got it stuck/been unable to push. And the fact people misread the tv is clear int hat half the posters seem to believe the girl was a nurse when she was a student-

 

[JanetGeorge]

Couple of things-how does anyone on ehre know it was a 'small' foal exactly?
And does anyone know exactly what taking the heartbeat of the foal entails? not just a case of putting a stethoscope on the mares belly..15 minutes of natural labour attempted then they intervened-whats' wrong with giving nature a chance? and i'll guess he felt head and legs and then wanted to let it happen naturallya nd avoid section if he could so wasn't too bothered if there was a withdrawal (which can not always be present anyway or felt if foal still far in). As for walking her across the yard, unless you feel they should do the ops in every stable some horses are going to have to walk to the operating theatre and sterility is impossible if your theatre is in the middle of the yard!
This will have been very edited, there will have been a more senior vet on the end of a phone/just out of the picture, remember the only reason this was intensive care was not because the foals viability was in question but because the mare might have got it stuck/been unable to push. And the fact people misread the tv is clear int hat half the posters seem to believe the girl was a nurse when she was a student-

1. The vet said it was small. And - even when dead - a LARGE foal doesn't present with head and all 4 legs!

And yes - I know exactly what checking for a heartbeat on a shortly-to-be-born foal entails - a simple u/s scan in the correct position on the mare's belly. You probably couldn't count the beats per minute easily, but you CAN see the heart beating. It does need a powerful scanner - but the film showed the heartbeat being checked earlier and it was very clear.

2. Giving nature a chance is fine if you have a healthy mare and no signs of trouble - that mare wasn't healthy and wasn't going to have an easy birth. Once you can feel 2 feet and a nose you CAN help the mare - carefully and gently - to speed up the process and reduce the stress on the mare.

How many foals have you delivered SusieT. I've probably delivered at least 100 in my life (those that were helped) and I can assure you that if you can take hold of a foot inside the mare, you WILL feel withdrawal if you're working slowly and carefully. If you just shove a hand in and out, you won't feel anything!

If there'd been a more senior vet present he WOULD have been in the picture. The situation was critical - he wouldn't have been hiding out of the way!