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Let it BREATHE!

5/9/2017

By Josh Milledge

Hello everyone and welcome back to Avalon Equine! Have any of you ever wanted to remove the guesswork from breeding and utilize a guaranteed plan for equine success? Ever wanted a surefire blueprint from follicle to finish line in order to summit such heights as the Triple Crown or the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event? Well, today is your lucky day because I am sharing all of the classified secrets of our certified breeding program in this blog!

Okay, not so much.

Actually not at all, but hopefully I got (and will keep) your attention. Today, I would like to briefly discuss a topic which won't elicit as much excitement yet is as equally important: barn preventive maintenance, specifically as it pertains to the climate control systems in your ranch’s facilities. Consequently, heating and cooling costs constitute a significant portion of the financial burden of operating a facility and simple negligence can not only exponentially raise your electric bill in the summer, but can also leach years from your systems and cause premature mechanical failures. The advice I will give results from more than fifteen years experience in the HVAC field in which I currently hold an Unlimited Contractor’s license in the State of Oklahoma and an Unlimited EPA certification.
Now, before I frighten you away with a technical discussion, please understand I will keep it colloquial and concise.

1.Let it breathe!
a.Your indoor air filter should be visually inspected at least once a month. It doesn’t have to be replaced that often if it is clean, but the amount of airborne particulates fluctuates with each season and within each facility (i.e., a system serving a room next to an indoor arena will accrue far more dust than one serving a conference room in your administrative offices) so filters will typically experience varying accumulations. Additionally, air filters having a higher MERV (Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value) rating, or a finer degree of filtration, will typically require closer intervals for replacement. Advanced filters are more beneficial because they capture far more particulates than those on the opposite end of the continuum, despite their premium cost, but their one downside is the frequency of replacement. The following is a link to AAF International which provides a brief explanation of MERV ratings: https://www.aafintl.com/en/residential/resources/efficiency-ratings.
b.Consequence: a clogged air filter will seriously negate your system’s airflow across the indoor coil thereby hindering its ability to internally evaporate its refrigerant. This will cause liquid freon to inundate the compressor and eventually cause serious harm to your system’s “heart”. Just think of an air compressor trying to pump water instead of air.

2.Keep it open!
a.Ensure you and your staff keep air vents open (albeit partially) to personal workspaces and common areas. We all remember the Thermostat Wars of ‘29 and the devastating effects they inflicted on work tempo and morale. Accordingly, “the boss” wanted the temperature in his office set at a “balmy” fifty four degrees yet his thermostat served his other six employees’ offices, so they simply shut their vents to prevent the subarctic air. The result was a system with five-sixths of its airflow reduced because it had nowhere to push it-a result as detrimental as a clogged air filter.

3.Keep it clean!
a.Visually inspect the coil of your exterior unit once a month. This is a simple step I would say less than half of my clients over the years have realized need be done. Your outdoor unit can collect all sorts of debris depending on its vicinity to loose dirt, shavings, or uncollected trash, and allowing its coil to remain dirty can cause the highest electrical costs during the summer heat, not to mention the increased burden to your system’s compressor. Cleaning your outdoor coil can safely be done with a water hose and a high pressure spray nozzle, but remember to disconnect the power first! Ultimately, I would recommend contacting your local dealer or referring to your owner’s manual if you’ve never performed this operation before.
b.Consequence: significantly reducing the airflow across your outdoor coil will disallow your unit to properly condense its refrigerant thereby causing significantly higher than ideal pressures and providing your indoor unit with overly heat-laden refrigerant.

4.Keep it reasonable!
a.Keep thermostat setpoints at reasonable temperatures according to the season. Let’s face it, your system is not a miracle worker. There exist many factors that already work against your system such as building envelope inadequacies (e.g., improper exterior wall insulation, poor window design, and boxer hounds who leave doors open after entering-this means you, Stan!), and internal heat sources (e.g., computer servers, incubators, refrigerators, and people). These issues compounded with the debilitating heat of an over 100 degree day can significantly impact your system’s performance and your facility’s electrical demand. Essentially, the system will not shut off because it cannot satisfy your thermostat setpoint. A good rule of thumb for temperature is nothing less than sixty eight degrees. Yes, your thermostat’s gamut starts at fifty degrees and could, in theory, be set there during a cooling mode, but this setting is widely considered within a heating range for winter.

5.Keep it fresh!
a.Ensure that roof and wall-mount exhaust fans are running properly. If your barn and/or indoor arena were designed to be completely enclosed, chances are that it was done so with a ventilation system harboring a certain rate of exhaust per square foot of floor space (Oklahoma’s is 0.9 CFM/sqft for animal areas according to the International Mechanical Code). Exhaust fans may also be incorporated with more modern attic spaces in your administrative and staff apartment buildings. Here is a link to Grainger which provides a more extensive explanation for exhaust fans and their dynamics: https://www.grainger.com/content/supplylink-how-to-choose-the-right-exhaust-fan.
b.Consequence: a nonfunctional exhaust fan will drastically affect the aggregate amount of air changes required for your facility. This will result in indoor air normally polluted and saturated within an animal environment to remain stagnant and contribute to mold, mildew, and undesirable odors.

6.Keep it documented!
a.Keep a log of basic checks and maintenance done throughout the year. This can be a simple spreadsheet with tasks and dates which you created from Windows Excel or a more detailed journal outlining, not only dates of services, but conditions of system aspects (e.g., the status of an indoor air filter from this month as compared to that of last month or what work a service contractor performed during a call-out). This will greatly assist you and your staff in more accurately remembering when maintenance was last performed.
b.Consequence: maintenance could experience longer than ideal intervals resulting in adverse operational conditions like when a system’s air filter hasn’t been changed in six months which causes your indoor coil to freeze to the point of complete airflow blockage and your boss’s office temperature exceeds eighty degrees. Upon a service technician’s otherwise unnecessary arrival, he finds your indoor air filter looks more like a microscopic view of bacteria than a pleated square.

7.Keep it professional!
a.The need for an annual service agreement with a licensed contractor involving the regular maintenance of climate control systems is directly proportional to the size and complexity of your ranch. The largest ranches boast facilities that rival university and industrial campuses, and they require a larger workforce than their smaller cousins. This essentially means that operational aspects typically remain specific to one set of workers rather than one set of workers being multifaceted, such as in smaller operations. Ultimately, larger ranches require a mechanical contractor to handle even the simplest maintenance issues because all other operational aspects involving business prove too time consuming.
b.Having said that, even smaller facilities would benefit from preseason inspections, at the very least, because professional contractors can provide a more in depth audit (i.e., the status of refrigerant levels, enthalpy variants, electrical components, airflow celerity, etc.) before environmental systems are subjected to the crucible of summer. Indeed, passing the full responsibility of maintenance for climate control systems to an outside contractor would be most beneficial, if it is financially viable, but I would recommend shopping around before committing to one company and read between the lines of their contract! Here is a link to Angie’s list which provides a brief description and the basic guidelines for HVAC - Heating, Venting and Air Conditioning - contracts: https://www.angieslist.com/articles/hvac-service-contracts-waste-money.htm

Remember, keeping things clean and in good repair will help prevent barn fires, which on a livestock property is, without a doubt, one of the most horrific things that CAN go wrong!

Well, that wasn’t so bad was it? I hope not.

Again, even if you are not mechanically inclined or know nothing of refrigeration, the above information is quite basic and good to keep in mind before and after the advent of harsher temperatures. In closing, I would say the biggest factor to the failure of environmental systems within ANY building is cleanliness! Insufficient airflow is, in the majority of cases other than refrigerant issues, the forerunner of disaster.

Remember: Airflow is your friend!

Happy foaling, Everyone!

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The Final Goodbye

4/26/2017

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Tonka - Avalon Equine's Boston Terrier that was recently euthanized after a very long life.

By Kathy St.Martin
Last week was a rough week here at Avalon Equine. We had to say goodbye to our longtime companion, buddy, friend…confidant, Tonka. He had been with us for almost 16 years and when we traveled giving our equine reproduction short courses, he was a constant in our lives that many of you had met along the way. A funny, cantankerous, grouchy guy, he was one of the richly colored threads that make up the fabric of our lives. We kept hoping he would make the hard decision for us and just - wake up dead - but sticking to his life’s dictum, he didn’t make even that choice, easy for us. It was time.

Tonka - Enjoying a sunny day at Avalon Equine!

Which leads me to this week’s Blog topic - when do you make the decision to say goodbye? Especially when dealing with large animals and weaving that with the business end of things? We are often asked, when do you say enough? And that is a tough question to answer.

LA Express, a Hanoverian Stallion that lived until he was 23 here at Avalon Equine.

Well before foals start arriving here, we have adopted a pretty hard line protocol that helps to take the emotion out of necessary and sometimes heartbreaking decisions. We will make heroic efforts on foals that we know can overcome whatever adversity a bad foaling or early illness may bring. However, if what we are addressomg will result in a foal that will live out its life as a “pasture ornament”, we draw the line. Obviously, there are things that require awaiting the outcome and tincture of time. Even if the foal may never be competitive in the show ring, if it can live a happy, comfortable, useful life, we will work to save it. We also have to realistically, look at the costs involved, as well. Typically, we will put a dollar amount on just what is acceptable WELL before foaling season begins. That figure will vary for everyone and should be established before your mare foals in order to make a decision without the emotions of dealing with a new foal. Those are ALWAYS tough decisions and knowing you are dealing with something that didn’t have a choice, doesn’t make it easier. But, in order to offer the best care for ALL of our horses, we recognize investing large sums of money into one, is not a good moral, business or fiscal decision. And of course, one has to look at whether or not the horse will live a comfortable life. There are definitely fates worse than death.

Mata Hari - Belafonte's dam, earned her retirement at Avalon Equine - with our granddaughter, Zoey.

We will mark our horses' last resting place with their halter plates placed upon the fence post above them.

Every year, we have to make one or two of those gut wrenching decisions. Our elderly horses live out their days here until they are no longer happy, comfortable and thriving. They have typically lived with us for many years and have earned a soft retirement. When the time comes, a quick and humane end is the final kindness we can offer. We don’t re-home our ET recipient mares or our elderly mares that “may” produce one more foal. We want to ensure that their final years are gentle and kind to them. When they are no longer comfortable, or no longer able to maintain their weight, we feel responsible for making their ending easy – if not for us, for them. It is, as a horse breeder, animal lover and human, our biggest responsibility. Their halter plates tacked to a fence post, mark their final resting place.

The Oak tree under which Tonka is buried.

Except for Tonka - Tonka got his own tree to sleep under. In time, we will look for some sort of memorial to mark his spot. But for now, we will watch the tree grow and change and mature.

Godspeed Tonka...until we meet again.

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What's In Our Foaling Kit? - By Kathy St.Martin

4/6/2017

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Welcome back to the Avalon Equine Blog! After a particularly rough week for a few of our breeder friends, we realized that some of the simple things we do here that we've learned through experience, may be helpful to those that may not have attended as many foalings! I'm going to walk through what we have in our foaling kit and what we do immediately post foaling.

First, we recognize there are oodles of articles on what to do during a foaling, IgG testing, what to expect, red bag deliveries, dystocias, etc. This Blog is just about what "we" do immediately following a normal foaling and why we do it.

Above is what we here at Avalon have in our foaling kit. It includes a dose of Ivermectin, Vetwrap for the mare's tail, packages of sterile lube, a navel clamp, a 50ml centrifuge tube with .5% chlorhexidine solution for dipping the navel, ob palpation sleeves, a baby bottle for collecting colostrum, a ziploc bag for freezing collected colostrum, a 30 ml syringe, an insemination pipette that has been cut down to about 8 inches, an enema and one of those hay cutter safety knifes in case of a red bag delivery or to cut the umbilical chord if necessary. We then put all of that into a palpation sleeve and hang it on the stall door!

An OB palpation glove to hold the items for your foaling kit

Putting everything into a palpation glove makes a nice, neat, clean package that is ready and there when you need it!

Umbilical clip is great if you have an umbilical cord that continues to bleed or needs to be cut.

A baby bottle with a drop in liner is clean and easy to use for collecting colostrum!

Hay bale cutters are EXCELLENT for cutting open a placenta in the event of a red bag delivery. The blade is covered, so you are less likely to inadvertently cut the mare or foal while cutting through the placenta. They also work great for cutting a tough umbilical cord!

When we have a new foal, we do a few things immediately post foaling. The mare is given a dose of Ivermectin. The foal's navel is dipped with a 1/2% solution of chlorhexidine and an enema is given. We tie up the placenta, and last but not least, we strip off about 150 cc's of colostrum and give it to the foal. We then leave the stall and let the mare and foal bond. By giving the foal it's first feeding of colostrum, we accomplish a couple of things. First, we ENSURE that the foal receives a good healthy dose of colostrum before it even stands. Secondly, we have all watched as a foal attempts to nurse on everything including walls, buckets, legs of the mare, sides of the mare...often everything BUT the udder. And of course, the frustration of worrying WHEN the foal will get it right and realizing valuable time is passing, often to the point that we feel inclined to intervene. By giving the foal that first feeding, you immediately start the absorption process AND you have time to wait and watch and let the foal figure things out as well as leaving the mare and foal to bond naturally. Usually that means you get to go back to bed for a couple hours! And by the time you get up, in most cases the foal is nursing all on its own.

If you don't have a way to warm up the enema before giving it to the foal, sticking it in your waistband or shirt will warm it nicely.

50 ml centrifuge tubes work well for dipping the foal's navel!

The method we use to get that first dose of colostrum in the foal, is also the same method we use if we find we have a dummy foal. With a dummy foal, one of the biggest issues with it is that it has no suckle response. So trying to feed with a baby bottle is futile. Yes, you can tube the foal, but in most cases, that requires a veterinarian's intervention. And when one considers that during the first few days of life, that foal needs to be fed every one to two hours, unless the vet lives on farm, tube feeding is probably not going to happen as regularly as it needs to. So, necessity being the mother of invention, we have found that by taking an insemination pipette, cutting it down to about 8 inches and attaching it to a syringe, once you have expressed about 150 mls of colostrum, you simply pull up 30ccs into the syringe (a 30 cc syringe is easier to handle and depress the plunger), while the foal is still lying down, you simply straddle it, guide the pipette into its mouth lying the pipette tip at the back of the tongue and slowly depressing the plunger, allowing the foal to swallow. Foals with a suckle response will usually suck and swallow easily and readily. Foals that have no suckle response will, in spite of that, swallow as you depress the syringe.

Cut the insemination pipette to about 8 inches. This makes it easy to place it on the back of the foal's tongue when feeding it the colostrum.

Expressing the colostrum into the baby bottle.

Using a 30 ml syringes is easier to handle and depress the plunger when feeding the foal.

All of the above - the navel dipping, tying up the placenta, feeding the foal, giving the enema, etc., should take around 30 minutes. Express another 150 mls of colostrum for freezing. If the IgG test shows that the foal has adequate passive transfer, you then know that the colostrum is good! Store that colostrum in the freezer and make sure you mark the bag with the date and the name of the mare. You can store it for up to two years.

By the time you've completed everything, hopefully the mare has dropped her placenta. Once you have done everything, get out of the stall and leave the mare and foal to bond. And the best part? Go get some sleep! When we check back in a couple hours what do we usually find? The foal is nursing quite well. We will then pull an IgG at around 12 hours. If that comes back above 800, unless there is an indication that the foal has an issue - lethargic, mare has a large, tight udder, foal is running a fever - we don't do anything further with the pair until it's time to start checking the mare to be rebred!

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Healthy Stallion Management - By Jos Mottershead

3/27/2017

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It's great to see you back at the Avalon Equine Blog! I hope you're enjoying our commentaries & that they are proving useful! As the resident stallion manager & handler, I'm going to focus on "the boys" in my first few Blog posts, & in this one, healthy stallion management. I cannot emphasise too much that stallions are a horse first & a stallion second. And that means they respond to stimuli - or a lack thereof - in an equine manner, with a dose of testosterone mixed in. This awareness - indeed understanding - is very important as a basis for managing stallions. While one pays attention to the fact that they are stallions, & so doesn't do things which are going to lead to issues, they need to be managed as horses, not some Pariah of Society. In particular, they need social interaction with other horses. This too I cannot emphasize enough, the importance of which was demonstrated admirably by some research out of U-Pa (New Bolton) which showed that in a natural herd setting, stallions had around 200 interactions with other horses an hour.
To understand domestic healthy stallion management possibilities better, we should review what happens in nature. There are 3 different ways in which an entire male horse is "managed".
The Harem stallion is one which has a group of mares. In time, those mares will produce colts, & those colts will reach sexual maturity. There may be a few who stay within the harem herd, even assisting the dominant stallion with managing the herd (but not breeding mares), but most will leave & seek a situation in the second "management" arrangement.

Avalon Equine's "Healthy Stallion Management consists of stallions living in large runs, outdoors 24/7 with run in sheds adjacent to other stallions - simulating a bachelor herd environment.

The bachelor herd comprises of young intact males. We even see this in the human herd - they're the lads hanging out on the street corner, racing cars or motorcycles & whistling at the girls! The bachelor herd consists of solely males - there is no mare interaction within the herd. Once a female is introduced, competition starts (with both horses and humans!). A bachelor stallion may go off & seek a mare to breed & then either form his own harem herd, or return to the bachelor herd. There will be a dominant male within the bachelor herd, but if he leaves & returns after another colt has ascended to dominancy, there is no serious competition for the "herd boss" position, & the original leader resumes his lead position. This arrangement therefore is a very peaceful one when used in a domestic setting. Interestingly, homosexual behaviours are seen in equine bachelor herds, including sexual acts with rectal intromission.
What is rarely seen in the wild is the lone stallion. He is usually the old horse which has been driven off from his harem herd by a younger interloper stallion, & is waiting for the passing pride of lions to jump on him & eat him for breakfast. Understandably, this is not a happy situation for a stallion, & therefore should not be replicated in a domestic setting!
The ultimate "harem stallion" domestically is of course the stallion which runs with mares. We do not really recommend that, as there are obvious inherent risks to both stallion & mares. When lecturing, I invariably encounter someone who says "well, our stallion's never had a problem...", but the fact remains that he only needs a single problem if it's bad enough, & it's all over. What one can do however is have the stallion in a separate pen or stall adjacent to & in the sight of mares. These mares will then become "his" herd.

Goldmaker - a Cremello TB stallion, and Colorado Skrødstrup, a Knabstrupper stallion- at Avalon Equine in a domestic "bachelor herd" environment. Stallions live in adjacent runs with a "buffer" zone between them.

Similarly, bachelor herd arrangement could be achieved by turning all the stallions out together. Again, we don't recommend this!! There are in fact some well-known facilities in Europe who do exactly this at the end of the breeding season & it works well for them, but my nerves are not that good. So as with the harem stallion, one can also have the stallions penned or stalled next to & visible to each other. While it may be necessary to move individual stallions around in the arrangement, as they can have likes or dislikes for a specific neighbour, this arrangement will typically work well for multiple stallions, although being individuals, there will be exceptions. The important key here is that there is no mare interaction - do not drop a mare into the middle of the bachelor herd arrangement, or all hell will break loose!

A dirty stallion is a happy stallion! This is Toronto - one of the Hanoverian warmblood stallions standing at Avalon Equine. Allowing stallions to live as close to natural as possible minimizes stress and helps to maintain a healthy, happy stallion!

The bachelor herd arrangement is how we maintain health stallion management with most stallions at Avalon Equine & Equine-Reproduction.com, LLC. We can have anywhere up to 20 stallions on the property at the same time, so the bachelor herd works very well in keeping the peace. Competition between the horses is minimal & even when introducing new animals, there is only about 5 minutes or so of "chest thumping" challenging, & then all go back to peacefully eating.

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First Impressions

3/21/2017

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Avalon Equine! For those of you who have never made my acquaintance, my name is Josh Milledge and I work full-time for Jos and Kathy. Since this is my first BLOG posting for this site, I'll tell you a little about myself before endeavoring further.

First, I married into horses. I didn't spend my formative years learning the intricacies of horsemanship. I spent them as a Navy brat whose family of four consistently moved every three years until my father finished his eighteen year enlistment and we resettled near Oklahoma's panhandle, also the place of my birth. Consequently, the closest we ever came to owning a 1200 pound animal was an egregiously overweight feline named Hobbes fellowed with an eccentric hamster named Calvin (both titled after a beloved boyhood comic series to which I related most). The only exposure I had with the equestrian field before I met my future betrothed was scant, at best. Nevertheless, since meeting my wife three years ago and opening Pandora's equine box, I have learned much from her as well as from my current employers.

The first impression I had of Avalon Equine when I started last year essentially mimicked the first experience I had in the military nearly sixteen years ago. Of course, it didn't follow that of the basic training experience that every military member has when they first enlist because I went to boot camp nine months after joining my unit, like many Army National Guard personnel do. Contrastingly, my first experience I had with the military was that of a three day Live Fire Exercise (LFX) in Ft. Chaffee, AR attempting to perform a variety of tasks that were otherwise antithetic to normal civilian life in an atmosphere where everyone already knew their job. Likewise, my first workday occurred after the height of breeding season yet still in the thick of it when dozens of broodmares were being managed and several stallion collections were being conducted aside from the normal daily operations of any horse ranch.

To put this into perspective, my Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) involves emplacing and firing 105mm howitzers into an unseen area within any given theater of ground operations. It essentially amounts to aiming and shooting an oversized rifle except the rounds are only expended with an outside observer's guidance considering the intended target's distance, unless the howitzer crew can see their target such as in the rare direct-fire situation. So, as you may imagine, firing a howitzer is more complicated and requires the coordinated effort of far more people than simply aiming and firing a rifle. I quickly learned during my first LFX in 2001, this same type of realization encompasses my first impression of Avalon Equine. Ultimately, throughout my first days of work, I was impressed with the coordination and knowledge each member displayed, including the seasonal interns that were working there at the time. Everyone knew their specified job during each task, such as stallion collection, mare management, and general horsemanship activities.

Stallion collections are always an interesting occurrence here, as I'm sure they are on every breeding ranch. My first few that I performed during initial training were actually conducted on my wife's Friesian which, as I discovered later, proved to be some of the easiest. By comparison, he was a docile lamb in relation to some of the others we've collected since. So, needless to say, my first impression of stallion collection was significantly skewed.

Certain aspects of mare management were also revealing and somewhat confusing, at first. Watching Kathy expound on the intricacies of the mare reproductive system via ultrasound was somewhat daunting. I still occasionally struggle with what I'm seeing on the monitor as I watch her ultrasound mares, but I have a far better understanding than when I first began observing. I'm always relieved to be on the eating side of the horse while she conducts ultrasounds considering all of the feces that has to removed by hand before the procedure can be conducted.

I was also intrigued by a few aspects of my new employers' unorthodox management style. Like Kathy always declares: "We try to make it fun around here". Case in point, she has a tendency to purchase inflatable outfits that depict the wearer as riding some kind of animal like a horse or an ostrich. Tutus are also another favorite. Of course, I haven't partaken in any of these shenanigans-not in fear of the opinions of any innocent bystanders who might see such a scene-but simply because I worry for the safety of every horse on the property and such a sight might just put them at too great a risk. Ultimately, tutus and inflatable costumes are just unsafe for both horse and human, alike. Safety first.

Complementing the subject of fun at work, construction and repair projects are always a joy and somewhat comical activity when all of us are participating in them here at Avalon, as I quickly discovered when I began my employment. I've been in the construction industry since high school (albeit on the Heating and Air Conditioning side) and I've enjoyed the work dynamic of several different construction crews, but this one is definitely the most fun and entertaining. Ultimately, any task on which we embark always reaches completion yet not without the crew's fair share of logistical disagreements, jibes, and humorous expletives-chiefly between the projects two chiefs. Described musically, the work environment concerning projects and remodels is rock and roll sprinkled with jazz contrasting the timeliness of classical. All kidding aside, I truly do enjoy it.

In final, my first impressions of Avalon Equine were promising, encouraging, and enjoyable (a statement which was in no way coerced by my Editor-in-Chief).

Happy Foaling, Everyone!

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Drawing Blood on the Newborn Foal

3/14/2017

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First of all, Welcome to Avalon Equine! We are thrilled that you have come to visit us and check out all we have available. As many of you know, we also own Equine-Reproduction.com, LLC and are big on educating breeders, horse people and health professionals in the equine industry! We have been asked repeatedly, to start a blog here on the website but for one reason or another, haven't been able to sit down and get to it. We've finally started one, but have decided we’re going to do things a bit differently! While we will definitely be blogging, there will be three of us doing the blogging here. Me - Kathy St.Martin; my husband and partner in the business, Jos Mottershead; and our wonderful farm manager and right hand man, Josh Milledge. We thought it might be fun and interesting to see what we do here from different perspectives. Hopefully, you will find these informational, helpful, insightful, entertaining, funny, and as is sometimes the case when dealing with animals, sad.

So today’s blog will start with pulling blood for IgG tests on foals!

One of the things that we always do with our foals at 9 to 12 hours after birth, is an IgG test. Foals are born with a functioning immune system, but it has not developed any antibodies. The main immunoglobulin (antibody) produced in the colostrum is gamma globulin (IgG) and the foal must receive that within the first 24 hours of life. But if the foal is slow to nurse, the mare has poor quality colostrum or has streamed milk for days prior to foaling, or if the foal is unable to absorb those antibodies, you may have a foal that has failed passive transfer. In order to be proactive, rather than reactive, one can easily pull an IgG test. If you know that a foal is low or has failed passive transfer at 9 to 12 hours post foaling, you still have approximately a 12 hour window to address the problem orally with another mare’s colostrum that is known to be good quality, or with a commercial product such as Seramune. We will then test again at 24 hours to insure that we have sufficient immune coverage. If at 24 hours, the reading is still low or passive transfer has failed, one can then address the problem with a transfusion.

There are several stall side tests available that cost as low as about $10. They can be purchased singly or in kits of 10 – obviously the more you buy, the lower the cost. Two of the most common are the Idexx Snap test and the Immuno-Chek G. The tests come with complete instructions, so I’m not going to go into detail on the entire process. But, both do require being able to pull blood a small amount of blood from the foal and is where many become a bit uncomfortable – attaining that sample of blood. Our goal here is to show you just how easy it really is to do! Indeed, I often end up doing it by myself – so the photos that accompany this Blog will show me doing exactly that!

The first thing is to either catch the foal when it is lying down as in the photo below, or you will have to lay the foal down. You "can" pull blood with the foal standing, but we have just found it much easier to do with the foal lying down and definitely easier to do if you are having to do this procedure by yourself!

A resting newborn foal, by Cremello Thoroughbred Stallion Goldmaker

Not all foals will be so cooperative and be lying down when you are ready to pull blood. With those that are standing, the easiest way we have found, is to wrap our arms around the foal as seen in the first picture below. Slide your hands down the legs opposite to your body - in this case, the foals left front and back legs - and gently lift the foal up while "rotating" it sideways, and gently laying it down, as in the second picture below.

Wrap your arms around the foals chest and rear, grabbing a hind leg.

Gently lay the foal down.

Next, straddle the foal and apply pressure to keep it lying down. They might initially struggle, but usually stop fairly quickly. You "will" have to hold them down somewhat with your body, but as you can see in these photos, you don't need to put much, if any, weight on them. Straighten the neck out as shown in the first photo below, and raise the jugular vein as you would for any other blood draw. Please note that I am using a 1cc Insulin syringe with a 28 gauge 1/2 inch needle. The needle is very, very fine and indeed, we use them for as many applications when giving injections as possible, in order to inflict as little discomfort as is possible.

Straddle the foal, be sure not to put too much weight on them. Straighten their neck to gain access to the jugular.

Use a small needle for comfort when drawing blood for an IgG test

We use a 1cc Insulin syringe with a 28 gauge 1/2 inch needle to make the process as pain free as possible.

You need very little blood for this test - typically we pull around 2/10ths cc. We then decant that blood into the needle cap.

Follow the IgG kit instructions to test the blood.

Next, using the 10 µL (ten microliter) pipettor pull up the blood and decant it into the dilution solution as per the kit instructions. Mix well and follow the rest of the test's instructions according to the one you will use. In this particular test, we were using the Immuno-Chek G.

Foal IgG test, determining whether more colostrum is needed.

And of course, when you are done taking the blood, make sure you give the foal lots of scratches!

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Let it BREATHE!

The Final Goodbye

What's In Our Foaling Kit? - By Kathy St.Martin

Healthy Stallion Management - By Jos Mottershead

First Impressions

Drawing Blood on the Newborn Foal

And of course, when you are done taking the blood, make sure you give the foal lots of scratches!

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