Preparing for Newborn Horses: Foaling Signs
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Prepare for foaling with everything you need to welcome newborn horses. Assemble a foaling horse first aid kit, identify common foaling signs, and prepare a suitable birthing shelter.
by Heather Smith Thomas
The birth of a foal is always an exciting event. If the mare is healthy and foals in a clean place, there are usually no problems. However, if something goes wrong, you must be there to assist or summon your veterinarian for help.
Foaling Horse Shelter
Well before the mare’s foaling time approaches, decide where she will foal. The best place for a healthy mare to foal, especially if she has a history of easy deliveries, is a grassy pasture where she can be alone. It should be a clean, dry place with safe, smooth fencing, no brush, rocky ground, gullies, or other hazards — no machinery or junk that might injure her or the foal, no ditches or puddles. Foals are known to drown in small pools of water before they have a chance to get to their feet. Even a dry ditch is dangerous if a foal rolls into it and can’t get up because they can’t stay on their back very long without suffocating. If a mare lies next to the fence when she foals, and the foal slides under the fence as it’s born, you’ll have a problem.
If the pasture is safe and the weather is good, foaling at the pasture has many advantages over a stall or corral. A clean pasture offers less risk of infection. Also, it’s a more natural environment where the mare can seek privacy and be less upset. If she is at pasture on green grass, she’ll self-exercise and have looser, more natural bowel movements than a confined mare that’s fed hay and grain. Green grass or alfalfa hay are more laxative; the mare on pasture will have an easier time foaling than a hay-fed mare.
The disadvantage of pasture foaling is that it’s hard to keep watch on the mare if she’s not visible from your house. You may want her closer so you can check her often and be there if she needs help, especially if it’s her first foal. Foaling at pasture is not advisable in bad weather.
If the birth will be in a shed, corral, or box stall, it must be thoroughly cleaned. Take out any old bedding. If it’s a stall, scrub it with disinfectant — floor, walls, and all — before putting in new bedding.
A foaling stall should be at least 14×16 feet, preferably larger, to minimize the risk of the mare lying too close to the wall during labor. Shavings or sawdust are satisfactory bedding while the mare is pregnant, but when she foals, clean straw is better. Straw won’t stick to the foal or get into the nostrils as much; sawdust or shavings are sometimes sucked into a foal’s air passages or ingested by the mare when she licks him. Wood products may carry Klebsiella bacteria, which can cause uterine infections. Straw bedding should be comfortably deep for the mare but not so deep that the foal would need help getting up and moving around. Remove all obstacles, such as feed tubs, buckets, or anything that might get in the mare’s way during labor.
As her foaling time approaches, check on the mare frequently so you can put her into the foaling area before she gives birth. Mares generally foal at night, but not always; they like to choose a time when they can seek privacy and no one is watching. Normal gestation for mares is 305 to 395 days, with an average of 330 to 340 days, but mares are notoriously unpredictable. Many factors influence the length of gestation, including the age of the mare, time of year, genetics, stress, infection, and nutrition.
Be aware that mares can foal a little early or late, and it’s still a normal pregnancy. It pays to start watching her ahead of time so she won’t catch you by surprise. About a month before the mare foals, her udder may start to look fuller, especially at night when she is at rest. Initially, this enlargement may recede during the day. The udder may remain larger and look shiny about two weeks before foaling. A few days before foaling, the muscles on each side of her tail — around the pelvic bones — become relaxed and sag away from the root of the tail. The mare’s vulva may appear relaxed and swollen. There may also be a congealed secretion from the teats.
Foaling Signs Before Labor
One of the most common signs that foaling is near is a “wax” at the ends of the teats. Most mares wax within 24 to 36 hours of labor, but some don’t wax at all, and some may wax for as long as 10 days before foaling. Some mares have a large udder and leak streams of milk, dripping down their hind legs. A mare may leak milk for just a few hours before foaling or several days. Some have no milk when they foal; they come to their milk within a few hours after delivery. A mare may bag up, wax, and then stop waxing.
You can purchase foaling-prediction kits with test strips for checking the mare’s milk before foaling (the strip has four zones that change color as the concentration of calcium increases in the milk). Only a few drops of milk are needed for the test. The milk should be tested daily after the mare starts to develop an udder and twice daily after a color change occurs in two or more zones of the strip, with one of those tests taken late at night. The test is helpful when interpreted in conjunction with a mare’s expected foaling date and signs of imminent foaling but is not 100 percent reliable. These tests are more accurate for telling you when she is NOT going to foal. If the test indicates that she’s not ready yet, this is more reliable than when it says she is.
Other methods involve installing cameras in barn stalls (viewed through a TV screen or monitor in your house or on your smartphone) or alarm systems that signal the start of foaling. A device called “foalert” signals when the mare goes into labor. A transmitter is stitched to the mare’s vulva, and when the vulva spreads apart during labor, it triggers a signal that sends a message to a pager or your phone. However, she will probably have the foal within about 20 minutes.
When you know the mare is in early labor (restless, pacing, maybe getting up and down), many veterinarians recommend washing under her tail and around her vulva, the inside of her hind legs, and the udder. It doesn’t matter what type of soap you use (as long as you rinse well afterward and there’s no soap left on her); you just need to get all the dirt off. When the foal gets up and starts nuzzling around, trying to find the udder, they’ll ingest any dirt and debris (and pathogens from manure) that might be on her hind legs and udder.
Pick up all manure in the foaling stall several times daily so the mare cannot get dirty. Washing her just before foaling reduces the risks of diarrhea and septicemia, which are the leading causes of death in newborns.
The new foal’s gut lining is wide open so they can absorb large antibodies from the mare’s colostrum, which means they’ll also absorb pathogens. It’s a race between the antibodies and the pathogens, so you don’t want the mare dirty, or they’ll be absorbing bacteria before they get the maternal antibodies from colostrum.
First Aid Kit for Foaling Mares & Newborn Horses
Check on what you might need to have on hand. A foaling kit containing routine and emergency supplies should be ready and in a handy place. If you live more than an hour away from a veterinarian, this might change what needs to be in that kit.
Here are a few things that will be handy if you need them: A new, clean, 3- to 5-gallon bucket; Clean container to milk into if you need to obtain colostrum for a foal that can’t nurse for some reason (an open pan works well because of the divergent flow from the teats — they don’t “shoot straight”) or a trigger-operated, Udderly EZ milker with bottle attached; tail wraps for the mare’s tail (pantyhose also works); pint or quart of disinfectant such as chlorhexidine (Nolvasan) (for adding to wash water to clean the mare’s hindquarters); small bottle of tincture of iodine, betadine, or chlorhexadine (for disinfecting the foal’s navel stump); plastic, shoulder-length obstetric gloves if you might have to assist with a difficult birth; clean bath towels (if you need to dry the foal); paper towels; plastic garbage bag to put the placenta in for your vet to check; prepackaged enemas (human adult size in plastic squeeze bottles, fitted with a pre-lubricated rectal tube) or foal enema kit, or mineral oil, or mild dishwashing soap that can be mixed with warm water and administered from a large syringe; flashlight and new batteries; heat lamp; obstetric chains and handles or nylon pull straps and handle; suction bulb, for clearing mucus and fluid out of the foal’s nostrils if you have to help him start to breathe; obstetric lubricant. You may not need these things, but they help you be prepared if you do.
Select a clean bucket and line it with a clean trash bag; whatever is in it will stay clean. You can yank it all out of the bucket when you need it. You don’t necessarily need sterile obstetric sleeves, just new, clean ones out of the package — not something that has been collecting dust on a shelf. Have some lubricant to apply to the sleeve.
Every foaling kit should have scissors. If the mare red-bags (placenta coming ahead of the foal — which is rare but dangerous for the foal), you have to get through it to reach the foal. If the mare has placentitis (inflammation of the placenta), this tissue may be tough and nearly impossible to puncture with your fingers. With scissors in your foaling kit to poke through the placenta, you can reach in and get hold of the foal.
After foaling, sometimes the placenta hangs down for a few hours before the mare passes it. Have some string to tie it into a ball so she won’t step on it.
Put a card in the kit with the veterinarian’s phone number. It’s also good to have the phone number of someone to call if you run into a problem and need another pair of hands. All too often, people scramble for that information in an emergency. You want to save precious time when your mare needs to be on the road.
Have a cup or small jar for dipping the foal’s navel as soon as the cord breaks. Iodine or chlorhexidine can be used for this purpose. If the mare foals on clean pasture, this probably won’t be necessary, but in a stall, it’s a wise precaution.
A complete foaling kit will include obstetrical chains or straps if a foal needs to be pulled in a difficult birth. If you live a long way from a veterinarian and are unfamiliar with using obstetrical chains or straps, discuss this with your veterinarian and have them show you how to use them properly.
Heather Smith Thomas ranches with her husband near Salmon, Idaho, raising cattle and a few horses. She has a B.A. in English and history. She has raised and trained horses for 50 years and has been writing freelance articles and books nearly that long, publishing 20 books and more than 9,000 articles for horse and livestock publications. Find Heather’s online blog here.
Originally published in the March/April 2024 issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.
