It's a Baby!

By: Lana Chumney

Class of 2011, Texas A&M University

I was so excited to start my fourth year in the clinics on the large animal emergency rotation.  As it turned out, they should have named those two weeks “the petting zoo rotation” due to the wide variety of animals that we saw.  These included a miniature donkey colt, a miniature horse, a pony, a mule, another donkey, a baby camel, a kid goat, a Dexter bull and a few horses.  About the middle of my week on nights, just when the lack of sleep was catching up to me, a miniature horse came in with a newborn 25 pound foal that was premature and having trouble breathing.  As it was my case, I spent a good deal of time questioning the owners on its history.  “We’ve only had the mare for three months.  We had no idea that she was pregnant.  When I got home I thought, ‘Why did the kids leave a stuffed animal out there with Rosey?  But when I got closer, I saw that it was a baby!”  Now you may be thinking, how does someone have a horse that is 11 months pregnant and not know that it is pregnant?  I continued to ponder this question as I continued with clinical rotations for the next month.  At this point, my mare had been at my parents’ house in a stall for a year with no stud horses on the place.  I had seen her a couple of months earlier and remarked on how fat she had gotten on the free choice coastal she was eating combined with her lack of exercise.  About that time I got a call from my mom: “Your horse just had a baby!”  As it turns out, the farrier had turned an uncastrated colt out with her for an hour 11 months earlier and the rest is history.  And that was the end of my pondering.