Nicole Schnell

Another week has flown by.  We have 2 foals now on the farm; the most recent is an Afleet Alex colt.  We also had a mare abort towards the end of last week.  This was really sad to see, but it was also a neat thing to get to experience.  Luckily when it happened the vet was already on his way out to do cultures on a few of our open mares so he was able to take care of her right then.  The mare hadn't yet expelled the fetus, so the doctor had to go in and pull the baby out!  The mare wasn't due until the end of April, but the baby was fairly large already.  After looking at the placenta and umbilical cord it appeared the cause of the abortion was twisting of the umbilical cord.  The cord was very large and swollen and almost looked like a cork screw.  This mare is doing fine, and she's being watched and cared for so she'll be ready to rebred this year.

I also got to see a few other neat things this past week.  Last Thursday I did the early night watch which was exciting, but also very nerve wracking.  Knowing there are million dollar mares under your supervision can make anyone a bit nervous.  But nothing out of the ordinary happened and we didn't have any mares foal that night.  On Friday, the vet came out to suture one of the mares who had already foaled.  Around here all thoroughbred mares get what's called a caslicks (or breeding stitch).  I had always learned the only mares that needed this were those with bad breeding conformation, but around here it's a common procedure.  All of our mares have one!  So what happens is when a mare gets close to showing signs of foaling or is past her due date, the vet will come out and open up her caslicks, this way she can deliver normally.  Then once she has foaled, they wait about a week and the mare gets the stitch put back in.  The most common answer to the reasoning behind this that I've gotten has been that mares that are outside and running around tend to suck wind up their reproductive tracts.  So they think that by doing this, it's better for the pregnancy because you're reducing the incidence of anything contaminating the tract.  I also got to see a pretty neat shoeing done on one of our mares who has navicular disease in both of her front feet.  Around here the veterinarians who specialize in lameness and podiatry are also trained as farriers.  So I got to watch him put some really fancy looking shoes on this mare and learned a little about navicular disease and what may have caused it in her case.  This week I?ve also gotten to go out in the mornings and afternoons with the managers to check the fields.  We have a lot of horses on the farm and not all of them get brought in every night.  So first thing each morning the managers have to go around and check each individual horse in the fields that have stayed out all night.  Some of these mares get special medications, regumate, or have to be treated for various things such as eye infections or foot abscesses.  

Our class last night was about maximizing broodmare efficiency.  A veterinarian from Hagyard's came in and talked to us about cycling mares and how to manage problems that may occur with a pregnancy.  This was a really interesting lecture I thought.  He covered everything from getting mares in foal to dystocia, twinning, and mare reproductive loss syndrome.  He also had a lot of really neat pictures for us to see.  Next week we get to go to our first Thoroughbred Farm Manager's Club meeting.  These meetings are the first Tuesday each month and we get to attend them over the next few months while we are here.  At the meetings they'll discuss current issues on area farms and in the industry and will have a guest speaker come talk about a topic of interest.  I believe next week's lecture is about neonatology.  Plus there's dinner served at the meetings, so I guess you can't go wrong with that!  

I've got a few new pictures posted.  Not many, but I'll be adding more soon!  These are just a few of the 2 foals!  Enjoy!

Nicole's Pictures