Some mothers do 'ave 'em

 Little Misty took the torrential rain of this morning as a cue to give birth. Having evicted the Ryelands from the sheep shed she delivered a little foal to the world unaided. Its from there that things have taken a dramatic downward spiral and at this point in time the outlook for the foal is as bleak as the weather forecast.

 Misty lost her first born foal last year, she failed to produce the vital colostrum milk and with 36 hours or so Rainbow the foal lost its grip on life. This time Misty has zero milk. Nothing except a small amount of clear liquid. We were prepared this time so had purchased some colostrum from an equine medical supplier and it arrived 6 or so hours from birth. At the same time the vet and a nurse arrived to take a litre of blood from Misty, a whole leg full in other words, the plan being extract the plasma and transfuse to the foal, now called May (I know its April but the foal is called May) There was a risk to this plan, the foal may (May the foal) go into anophylactic shock and die during the transfusion. Blood taken the medics left us to get on with feeding May and injecting Misty with a drug to promote milk production. This has had no effect so far. And May seems very reluctant to drink from a bottle.

 She did have around 200ml this afternoon but despite trying various size teats she has since refused all attempt to get calories into her. The transfusion caused panic as May passed out and went all floppy but she came too and has had half of the plasma obtained from mums blood. General consensus was that she should not be given any more just in case she did die.

As I type May is perky enough, strutting around, giving it a lot of attitude, well what would you expect with Misty and Trevor as parents. She has some of her mothers antibodies now, hopefully it will be enough, there is some 200ml of colostrum inside her and we are on a 2 hour check and feed timetable. I don't think this will be a good outcome but we are trying our best.