foal nutritional needs Archives

December 18, 2020July 7, 2023

Signs of a Healthy Foal

Chances are your foal will sail through the baby stage with flying colors. Especially if it’s normal at birth and good management practices are in place at your farm. However, even under the best circumstances, it’s possible that your baby could experience some problems. How does a healthy newborn foal appear?

Healthy newborn foals should:

brown foal representing the signs of a healthy foal

Assume a sternal position (be able to sit up on his chest) within minutes of delivery.
Breathe easily. – slowing from an initial 70 breaths per minute to 40 to 60 minutes within 15 minutes of birth.
Have red or at least pink mucous membranes, indicating adequate oxygen is reaching the tissues.
Display a strong suckle reflex within two to 20 minutes of birth.
Appear alert and display an affinity for the dam.
Be able to stand within two hours and nurse within three hours.

If your foal does not meet these criteria, he may already be experiencing a serious condition and need prompt attention. Good observation coupled with prompt action gives you the best opportunity to help your foal avoid a setback.

Management Practices For Continued Health:

The following tips a

A well-ventilated, clean foaling environment.
Good farm and stable hygiene and parasite control.
Sound nutrition, current vaccinations and regular deworming of all equine residents.
Plenty of fresh air and room to exercise.
Commencement of a regular vaccination and deworming program.

Our Foal Health Watch Guide describes signs of common ailments that can occur during the first 6 months of life. In most cases, even if not life-threatening, you will want a diagnosis and treatment plan from your vet. Please keep in mind this guide lists signs that are frequently observed with certain foal disorders. Not all foals, however, display the same signs or to the same degree. A foal’s condition can deteriorate rapidly, so don’t wait to see all the signs before calling your veterinarian.

Foal Health Watch Guide:

FIRST SYMPTOM	OTHER SYMPTOMS	PROBABLE DIAGNOSIS	ACTIONS
Labored, suppressed or noisy breathing	Soreness, reluctance to move	Broken ribs due to severe compression from delivery	Stall rest, gentle handling
	Reluctance to move or nurse, extended abdomen	Ruptured diaphragm, often due to birth trauma	Immediate corrective surgery
	Yellow-stained amniotic fluid with delivery	Meconium-aspiration pneumonia	Antibiotics
	Depression, coughing, intermittent fever	Foal pneumonia	Antibiotic treatment based on bacterial culture
Loose stools	Mild diarrhea at time of dam’s foal heat	Transient, “9-day scours”	Gently clean foal’s tail and buttocks with soapy water to prevent scalding of skin
	Dehydration, scalding of skin on buttocks, matting of tail	Noninfectious diarrhea (from overeating, eating manure, etc.)	Fluids, decreased rations, clean tail and buttocks as above
	Rapid dehydration, scalding, matting, fever, depression	Infectious diarrhea	Antibiotics, fluids, clean tail and buttocks regularly
Colicky	Colic after ingesting first milk, enema ineffective	Closed colon or rectum – development error causes gut to end in blind pouch	Surgery, success depends on length of missing part
	Rolling, thrashing, lying on back, fecal matter not passed	Severe constipation, fecal mass too large or too far forward for enema to be successful	Laxatives, fluids
	Lethargy, appetite loss, diarrhea, teeth grinding, lying on ground with feet in air	Ulcer	Confirm with endoscopy, treat with anti-ulcer medication
Profuse watery discharge from eyes	Blinking, avoidance of light, scratched cornea	Inversion of eyelid (entropion), dehydration, if uncorrected can lead to blindness	Fluids, lubricate eye and lids gently, pull out eyelid as often as necessary, surgery may be needed
Navel stump dripping urine	Wet, soiled, warm, swollen navel stump	“Leaky navel” (pervious urachus), umbilicus fails to close	Daily cauterization with silver nitrate or iodine, possible surgery
Straining	Tail switching, meconium (first feces) not passed	Simple constipation, meconium not passed	Enema, fluids
	Distended abdomen, little or no urine produced, toxicity, fever, jaundiced membranes, progressive weakness	Ruptured bladder due to birth trauma or jerk on umbilical cord after delivery	Surgery to repair hole in bladder, drain urine from bladder, fluids
Low immunoglobulin (IgG) count	Less than 400 mg/dl	Failure of passive transfer, foal did not receive adequate colostrum or was unable to absorb IgG	Provide colostrum if foal less than 24 hours old, otherwise administer plasma IgG transfusion
	Greater than 400 mg/dl, low risk environment	Partial failure of passive transfer	Foal probably adequately protected, but watch closely
	Less than 800 mg/dl, high risk environment	Partial failure of passive transfer	Administer plasma IgG transfusion, monitor IgG level
Weakness, incoordination	Delivery between 300 and 320 days of gestation, low birthweight, little or no suckle strength, weak fetlocks and lax pasterns	Premature birth	Oxygen, humidity and temperature control, tube feeding, fluids
	Intolerance to exercise	Congenital heart defect	Cardiovascular exam, surgery
	Will not nurse, severe diarrhea, dehydration, subnormal temperature, bluish-white third eyelid	“Sleeper foal” caused by Actinobacillus equii bacteria	Antibiotics, fluids
	Inflammation of umbilical vein, fever, depression	“Navel ill” (septicemia), systemic bloodstream infection	Antibiotics, fluids, intensive nursing care
Swollen joints	Lameness, fever, depression, joints are hot and painful	Joint ill (septic arthritis) or bone infection (osteomyelitis)	Antibiotics, surgical draining
Mare cannot nurse	Mare dies, does not allow foal to nurse, or is unable to provide milk (agalactiae)	Orphan or rejected foal, agalactic mare, early weaning	Supply colostrum is newborn, provide foal milk replacer or nurse mare

At Nutrena, we believe proper nutrition plays the biggest role for a lifetime of health and happiness for every horse. That’s why Nutrena horse feeds are specifically formulated for every life stage and activity level.

Ready to ensure your horse is getting the optimum nutrition at feeding time, every time? Find the perfect feed formulated specifically for horse’s needs with our Feed Selector Tool.

September 19, 2017April 19, 2019

Feeding Foals During Weaning and Post Weaning – An Important Time Period for an Equine Athlete

Properly preparing the foals to be weaned can make the process much easier for everyone!

Keep in mind that weaning can be a high stress period for the foal. With that in mind, other high stress events should probably not take place at the same time as weaning.

The following management practices should be in place before the foal is weaned:

Make certain that the foal is consuming at least 1 pound of a feed per month of age of a feed designed for foals and weanlings. If a foal is 4 months of age, it should be consuming at least 4 pounds of feed per day. If a foal is 6 months of age, it should be consuming at least 6 pounds of feed per day. Appropriate feeds will be 14-16% protein with controlled starch and sugar along with amino acid, mineral and vitamin fortification. Keep in mind that past 2 months of age, the milk produced by the dam is not sufficient to maintain adequate growth, so the foal should be creep fed if possible as not all mares allow the foal to eat with them. The day you wean the foal is NOT the day to change feeds! The foal should also have access to high quality forage, loose salt and fresh, clean water.
Make certain that the foal has been vaccinated for appropriate diseases according to your health care plan. Vaccination is a stress on the animal, so you do not want to do this at the same time you wean the foal if that can be avoided.
The foal should also be de-wormed prior to weaning.
The foal should have been handled, taught to lead and have had its feet trimmed.

There are a number of ways to separate the foals from their mothers and many farms manage in different ways.

Monitor the new weanlings fairly closely and increase feed intake to maintain growth and body condition, feeding according to both weight and Body Condition Score. Some weanlings become a bit pot-bellied and look a little rough following weaning. This is frequently due to inadequate feed intake and too much forage.

The cecum is not fully developed in the weanling, so it cannot digest forage as efficiently as an older horse. This limits nutrient availability and may limit growth and development.

Proper preparation can minimize the stress of weaning for foals and help maintain uniform growth and body condition. Uniform growth and maintaining target body condition is essential to reduce risk of certain types of Developmental Orthopedic Disease.

One of the things we want to avoid is letting the weanling get off normal growth rate, then deciding to push for rapid growth as a yearling to hit target for show or for scheduled sales.

March 5, 2012May 22, 2013

Feeding Foals

Similar to human babies, the nutrition and care a foal receives in the “baby” stage can have an effect on its whole life – including soundness and development issues that may not become obvious until years down the road. Starting your foal on the right path to nutritional health will pay off not only in the immediate future but in the long term as well.

Within a few hours of being born your foal will take in the mare’s first milk. This milk is known as colostrum and it provides valuable antibodies that help prevent diseases. In the first several weeks of life your foal focuses on nursing to get all of his nutrition. Your foal should consume 15-25% of his bodyweight daily in milk and will be gaining from 2-3 lbs. per day. If you notice your foal nursing longer than 30 minutes at a time, you may need to investigate and make sure that the mare is producing enough milk to the foal.

Foal scratching face — Ferris with mom Rosie - foals exhibit the most entertaining behaviors....

As early as one week of age your foal may start taking some interest in feed by nibbling at hay or grain. This initial interest may be just a way of imitating mom, but the foal soon learns to use these other sources of nutrition and his digestive tract quickly adjusts to solid food. One of the things your foal may eat might not look all that appetizing to you, but coprophagy (eating manure) is now recognized as being normal in foal behavior. It is thought to be a way that the foal’s hindgut gets prepared ferment forages later on.

Between weeks 13 – 24 your foal’s source of nutrition from his dam is starting to dwindle as the lactating mare produces less and less milk. At this point we want to make sure that the foal has a good and balanced supplemental source of nutrition; you may want to start a creep feeding program to make sure your foal has good access to this supplemental diet.

Foal feed needs to be focused on providing balance to the diet. Metabolic bone disease is something almost all foal owners fear. Foals who grow too rapidly, gain weight too quickly or who have an imbalance in essential parts of the diet (minerals, protein, calories, etc.) can end up with these serious health issues, which can include DOD (Developmental Orthopedic Disease), physitis, contracted tendons and others. Make sure that you are providing a good, digestible source of protein (tip: look for guaranteed levels of amino acids), correct amounts of vitamins and minerals (particularly important are calcium & phosphorus, copper & zinc and selenium & vitamin E) and the right amount of calories for sound growth.

Check out our Equine Growth Chart to chart your foal’s progress!

The Feed Room

Tag: foal nutritional needs