Madie Made It Easy
/
I am very thankful to my Fell Pony mare Willowtrail Spring Maiden for how easy on me she made her daughter Aimee’s birth. For instance, Madie let her milk down less than 24 hours before foaling, and when I tested it, the pH indicated that she would give birth within 24 hours. With her first foal, Madie defied the pH test and took ten days before foaling, which translated to lots of sleep deprivation. Not this time. The test results made an accurate prediction!
In the morning I put Madie out with the herd, but I checked her at 2pm. Unlike previous days when she’d seen me on the hill and walked away, this time she came to me. She had looked physically uncomfortable in the morning, and she did at this point in the afternoon, too, confirming my earlier sense that she was in labor. I haltered her and brought her in for the rest of the day.
When I checked Madie at dusk, I was even more convinced that she would foal that night because she was starting to drip milk (not just wax.) I also checked the weather forecast, and a storm was due to move in, which has been a fairly consistent theme when my mares choose to foal. Normally I would check a mare several times during the night to make sure that foaling went okay. The first time she foaled, though, Madie made it clear she did not want us present, so this time I told her I would be out halfway through the night. When I checked her at 2am, Aimee was on the ground but still wet, the placenta was still warm but had been expelled, and there were snowflakes in the air – all as it was meant to be!
After foaling, my job is to watch for milestones in the foal and mare. In the foal I watch for urinating, defecating, nursing, and napping. Aimee was cooperative in all but defecating. It was so dark, though, that I wondered if I had missed Aimee passing her meconium. When I mused aloud about this while standing next to Madie, she touched my arm with her nose then lowered her head to point to a dark spot on the ground. I pulled out a flashlight, and sure enough, there was a pile of meconium. As you would expect, I was struck by how Madie had understood my question and answered it!
In my mare herd, Madie is low pony on the dominance chart, so I don’t spend as much time with her as I do with the more dominant ponies. Having her in the foaling shed at night has given me a chance to get to know her again. She definitely reminds me of her mother Restar Mountain Shelley III who also made so many things easy on me. What a blessing life is with these ponies!
© Jenifer Morrissey, 2020
More stories about how amazing life with these ponies is can be found in my book What an Honor, available internationally by clicking here or on the book cover.
