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Pregnant Mare Care

Pregnant Mare Care

May 29, 2018 | Breeding

Tuesdays with Tony

Pregnant Mare Care 

Congratulations! You’ve got a bouncy baby horse coming in about 11 months! In my experience watching the humans around here, it’s a very long 11 months. There are important things to do during that time to make sure the baby arrives happy and healthy. In my experience, humans are really good at getting the heartbeat ultrasound check at 30 days, but not so good at the rest of it. Read on for Tony’s words of equine wisdom regarding pregnant mare care.

Ultrasounds

These are just so freakin cool! You get to see that baby go from a black dot on the screen at 2 weeks to having a heart beat at 30 days. At the 60 day ultrasound there are legs and something resembling a head! They grow so fast. My Docs are checking way more than just the baby when they’re ultrasounding, though. They are also checking the entire uterus and ovaries to make sure they’re doing what they should.

The most important thing they are checking is where the cervix and placenta meets. This is where the outside world meets the uterus, and it’s where problems often start. My Docs will check to be sure the placenta is tight up against the cervix, along with measurements to be sure it’s not too thick. A thick placenta can be an indication of infection. If infection is spotted early, it can be easily treated with antibiotics. On young mares who don’t have a lot of exposure to other horses, ultrasounds should be done at 5, 7, and 9 months to check for infection. On older mares (over 12 years), problem mares, or mares who see lots of other horses all the time, the Docs recommend ultrasounds at 3, 5, 7, and 9 months.

Vaccinations

Rhinopneumonitis vaccines are super, super, super important for pregnant mares. Most humans call this a Pneumobort shot. Rhinopneumonitis is a Herpes virus. Herpes viruses are nasty little buggers. Once a horse has the virus, they’ve got it for life, and most horses are infected in their first year of life. The virus spends most of its time hibernating, but stress (I hear pregnancy is definitely stressful) can make it wake up. Frequent vaccinations keep the immune system on high alert for this virus. This means that if it does wake up, the immune system is right there to tackle it.

Rhinopneumonitis vaccines follow the same rules as ultrasounds. If your mare doesn’t meet new horses often, she can get a vaccine at 5, 7, and 9 months. If she is a social butterfly, she should get vaccinated an additional time at 3 months. This vaccine can be what my Docs call hot (horses often get a mild to moderate vaccine reaction from it). The Docs recommend some Bute beforehand to help reduce the reaction if you’re worried.

At around 10 months of pregnancy, your mare will need all her “regular” vaccines. For most mares this is Eastern and Western Encephalitis, Tetanus, Influenza, West Nile Virus, and Rabies. This makes sure the baby has great protection against these viruses when it gets here.

Deworming

Don’t. Ha! That was easy. Seriously though, see my numerous blogs on deworming. Watch an entire presentation by my Docs about deworming here: Deworming Seminar  Fecal egg counts and targeted deworming is the way to go. Don’t go deworming all willy nilly like you humans are prone to doing.

Nutrition

Don’t go crazy. Again, easy! Have your mare on a good feed. If she gets skinny easily, then a mare and foal feed may be necessary. If she’s an easy keeper, then good quality hay and a ration balancer may be all she needs. This is not the time to get her fat. It won’t make foaling easier on you or her.

Exercise

Yes. Of course they tell me that too, but I don’t like exercise, so I don’t. Pregnant mares can go out and do what they did before they were pregnant with a few guidelines in place.

  1. Don’t do more than you did before she was pregnant. If you went for 5 mile trail rides, great. Don’t sign up for the 50 mile endurance ride.
  2. Watch how hot she gets in the early stages of her pregnancy. Being really hot can be really, really bad for embryos younger than 90 days.
  3. Listen to your mare. At some point, later in her gestation, she’s going to tell you she doesn’t want to work anymore. Respect that.

Before you know it, 11 months will have flown by and you will be anxiously awaiting your foal. Spend the time wisely by thinking up perfect baby names, and keeping your mare up to date on all her prenatal care! Bring her into the Clinic for her happy mom check ups and I’ll even throw in a free CAT scan by yours truly.

Now be a good human and subscribe to my blog. Scroll down a tiny, tiny bit. So easy a human can do it.

Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic

Tuesdays with Tony is the official blog of Tony the Office Cat at Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic in Newberry, Florida. For more information, please call us at (352) 472-1620, visit our website at SpringhillEquine.com, or follow us on Facebook!

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Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome

Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome

May 14, 2018 | Breeding, Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome

Tuesdays with Tony

This week we’re going to talk about a tough topic: Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome. I apologize to those who enjoy my feline brand of sarcasm, but it will be largely missing this week. Even a cat can’t be snarky when it involves death, and Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome causes foals to die soon after birth, which is even worse.

What is Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome?

Springhill Equine Veterinary ClinicWarmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome (WFFS) is a point mutation in the PLOD1 gene. I’m going to get a wee bit nerdy here because I can’t help myself.  A point mutation means that in the DNA for this gene where a Guanine should be, there’s an Adenine. PLOD1 is responsible for helping raw collagen turn into something that can support all the stresses skin, tendon, ligaments, and blood vessels undergo every day. That single change from a G to an A means the skin can’t handle shear forces. That’s it: one letter. It can also be a cause of abortions in pregnant mares because of umbilical cord ruptures. The umbilical cord grows from the foal side of things, so if the foal has WFFS, the umbilical cord will be made with defective collagen. You know those bubbles you see in a water hose before it bursts? That’s what blood vessels made with defective collagen do. And once the umbilical cord bursts, the foal can’t survive.

I tell you, the more I learn, the more amazed I am that life even happens. There are so many places where one tiny little error makes the whole system fail.

How does my foal get it?

WFFS is an inherited genetic mutation, and specifically an autosomal recessive condition. Every foal gets one copy of genes from the sire, and one copy from the dam. For an autosomal recessive condition to cause problems, the foal has to get two copies of the gene. This is a good news/bad news scenario. It means that most foals won’t be affected with the syndrome. However, autosomal recessive is a great way to have a gene silently make its way into a population.  For example, let’s say we cross a mare that is A/G (this means she’s a carrier) with a stallion that is A/G (so he’s a carrier too). With this cross, there is a 25% chance we get a G/G foal (not a carrier and normal), 50% we get an A/G foal (normal but a carrier), and a 25% chance we get an A/A foal (fully affected). This means it is very, very important to know the status of your mare and stallion if you are breeding!

How do I test my horse?

First, if your horse is a gelding there is no reason to test unless you are curious. WFFS carrier status will NOT affect performance.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way. UC Davis and Etalon Diagnostics are the two places my Docs recommend. Many, many warmblood breeders are testing aggressively right now. This means there may be a wait to get your results, but both labs are trying to get results out as fast as they can. Both labs have submission forms on their websites. You will need to pull about 25 hairs, being sure to get the roots, and mail them in along with the submission form. That’s it.  

And if my horse is a carrier?

That depends on you. Responsible breeding would mean removing carrier horses from the gene pool by not breeding them. I do understand that’s easier said than done. At the very least, avoid breeding two carrier horses. As I said, many stallion owners are trying to determine the status of their horses. Hilltop Farm has done an excellent job getting information to mare owners. They have also said any mares bred to carrier stallions must have proof of non-carrier genetic status. This is a great start. It gives me hope for you humans.

Now be a good human: scroll down just a smidge further and subscribe. It’s the only way to be sure you see all the wisdom I have to offer delivered directly to your Inbox.

Until next week,

Tony

Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic

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Tuesdays with Tony is the official blog of Tony the Clinic Cat at Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic in Newberry, Florida. If you liked this blog, please subscribe below, and share it with your friends on social media! For more information, please call us at (352) 472-1620, visit our website at SpringhillEquine.com, or follow us on Facebook!

Breeding and Foaling

Breeding and Foaling

Jan 22, 2018 | Breeding, Foals

Tuesdays with Tony

Breeding & Foaling

Thank you to everyone who came out to my Breeding Seminar last Thursday. You didn’t see me because I was inside. In my bed. Where it was warm. Obviously. Why would I go out in the freezing cold to huddle around a space heater just to learn about how baby horses are made? I did, however, lay on the computer while the docs were working on their powerpoint presentation, so I am intimately familiar with the information they presented. Oh, you want a recap you say? Well, I’m happy to oblige!

Where do baby horses come from?

Well kids, when a daddy horse and a mommy horse love each other very much…their owners run genetic tests to make sure they don’t have any heritable diseases, pay lots of money to have semen collected, ship it cross-country, time the mare’s ovulation, artificially inseminate the mare, patiently wait 14 days, confirm the presence of ONE embryo, monitor the pregnancy with at least 4 more ultrasounds and Rhinopneumonitis vaccines, measure the mare’s milk pH to determine when she’s going to foal, and voila! That’s where baby horses come from.

It may sound simple, but a problem at any of these steps has the potential to create a roadblock to your hopes and dreams of having the perfect foal. Let’s start at the beginning: choosing the parents. Stallions may look sexy in their ads, but remember to look at their offspring’s conformation and performance records, their First Heat Conception Rate (a marker of fertility), and make sure they are free from any breed-associated genetic disorders, such as HYPP, PSSM, HERDA, OLWS, or SCID. If you want to know what these letters stand for, or if your breed of horse is at risk for them, ask one of the docs. I’m just a cat; you’re lucky I know the letters. If you are the stallion owner, it’s time to think about training him to the phantom, and scheduling a blow-out collection and semen evaluation prior to breeding season.

The next roadblock usually comes from FedEx. We here at Springhill have a love/hate relationship with FedEx. Most stallions are collected on Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Unfortunately, those Friday collections require overnight shipping on a weekend. Semen doesn’t live very long in a box with an ice pack. That means any shipping delays on the stallion end translate to a missed breeding opportunity on the mare end, and we have to wait another 2-3 weeks before trying again on her next heat cycle.

Even once the docs have gotten the semen into the mare, there is a chance her body will have an inflammatory reaction to the semen and excrete fluid in her uterus (really, it is a wonder these things ever successfully reproduce in the wild). Barring that scenario, you still have to make sure there is one and ONLY one embryo at the 14-day check. If there are twins, the docs have between Day 14 and Day 16 to pinch one of them while keeping the other alive (this is much easier said than done).

What do I do with my preggo mare?

Now that you have worked so hard to get that beautiful 14-day-old baby embryo, you may as well put in the work to make sure she keeps it. On your part, that means making sure to schedule her 30-day, 60-day, 90-day, and 7-month ultrasounds, as well as Rhinopneumonitis (a.k.a. Pneumabort) vaccines at 3, 5, 7, and 9 months of pregnancy. You may think this is just my way of seeing you more often in the hopes that you might give me snacks; but in actuality these are all aimed at making sure your mare doesn’t drop/slip/abort/lose or otherwise spit out her foal before it’s due date!

Even if you ate a tub of Ben & Jerry’s single-handedly every night of your pregnancy, this does NOT mean you need to fatten up your mare just because she has a baby on board. In fact, depending on her weight and body condition score when she became pregnant, you may not need to increase her plane of nutrition at all until the last few months of her pregnancy. The true calorie demand will come while she is nursing her foal, but that’s a topic for another day.

When is the stork coming?

When the docs tell you your mare’s ESTIMATED due date, that’s exactly what it is- an estimate based on 340 days past her date of conception. In real life, she can foal anywhere from 320-360 days of gestation, and it’s not unusual for a mare to carry over a year! So, how do you know when your cute little bundle of joy is going to hit the ground?

In our opinion, the best way to tell when your mare is going to foal is by measuring the pH of her milk once a day until it reaches a magic number. Here’s what you need to know: If her pH is >6.4, there is a 99% chance she is NOT going to foal that night. If her pH is <6.4, there is a 97% chance she WILL foal within the next 3 nights. And now you know when to start sleeping in the barn aisle/watching cameras/checking your mare every hour, or whatever it is you are doing to make sure you don’t miss the big event.

If I haven’t talked you out of breeding your horse yet, remember that I offer Breeding Packages at a very reasonable set price per cycle. And if you buy your package before Valentine’s Day, you will receive 1 free night of board for your mare…our little secret! We also perform stallion collection, semen evaluation, phantom training, and semen shipment right here at the clinic. I quite enjoy the extra company around breeding season.

Happy baby making!

-Tony

 

Tuesdays with Tony is the official blog of Tony the Office Cat at Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic in Newberry, Florida. For more information, please call us at (352) 472-1620, visit our website at SpringhillEquine.com, or follow us on Facebook!

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Tuesdays with Tony – Pregnant Mare Care

Tuesdays with Tony – Pregnant Mare Care

May 23, 2017 | Breeding, Foals, Vaccines

Pregnant Mare Care: What should I do?

Breeding season is sadly coming to a close. While I’m relieved to see an end to the interruptions of my early morning and late night cat naps, I will miss the excitement of watching the docs confirm a mare is pregnant for the first time. If you just heard the awesome news that your mare is in foal, congratulations! Now what? Should you simply mark your calendar for 11 months from now, sit back and relax?  Well, not exactly. Pregnant mare care is about to become a big part of your life for the year to come! Let me explain.

Cute ultrasound pics
If you were a pregnant human, you’d be visiting your midwife or OB/GYN about once a month throughout your pregnancy. For horses, we recommend ultrasounds at 14 days, 30 days (“heartbeat check”), 60 pregnant mare foaldays, 90 days, and 7 months of pregnancy. How else can you get cute ultrasound pictures to post on Facebook with your mare’s pregnancy announcement? But seriously, early embryonic loss is not uncommon in mares, so we like to do several ultrasounds during the first few months of pregnancy to confirm that all is well. The 7 month ultrasound is primarily to look for signs of placentitis, or infection of the placenta. When identified early, placentitis can be treated and can prevent abortion of a late-term foal.

Your mare, the pincushion
While there are many potential causes of abortion in mares, there is one that is very easily prevented: equine herpes virus. The Pneumabort vaccine is extremely safe, and designed specifically for pregnant mares to protect against equine herpes virus infection. In my humble opinion, giving your mare a Pneumabort shot at 3, 5, 7, and 9 months of pregnancy is a no-brainer! Also, don’t forget to schedule your mare’s pre-foaling vaccines 4-8 weeks before her due date. The docs like to vaccinate mares shortly before giving birth to boost those antibodies so they will transfer to the newborn foal in the mare’s milk. A brilliant plan, if I do say so myself!

Prenatal vitamins for horses
Now that she is eating for two, it may be time to increase or change your mare’s feeding program. Just like pregnant humans, mares need a strong vitamin and mineral package to support the healthy growth of their fetus. Lucky for you, there are several commercially available Mare & Foal feeds that are well suited to meet the needs of pregnant and lactating mares. Especially towards the end of her pregnancy, it will be important to keep up with your mare’s nutritional demands in order for her to produce enough milk once her foal is born.

So, fear not my friends. For although this year’s breeding season is coming to a close, you will see me again at least another half dozen times between now and when that adorable foal makes his debut! As a matter of fact, you can come see me at 6:30 pm on June 8th here at the Clinic for our ever-popular Skin Funk Seminar! If you bring me a treat, I’ll let you pet me. Well, I’ll probably let you pet me even if you don’t bring a treat, because I’m a good guy like that.

-Tony

Tuesdays with Tony – Foals First Check-up

Tuesdays with Tony – Foals First Check-up

Apr 24, 2017 | Breeding, Foals

So, you’ve got a brand new foal, and some questions…

   When should my foal first be seen by a vet?

This is a tricky question, because most foals enjoy making their debut in the middle of the night. Do you call the doc immediately? Do you wait until morning? If all looks good, does the vet need to come at all? In short, yes. It doesn’t hurt to call the vet immediately when the foal is born, check in again in the morning, and check back as often as you like afterwards. Don’t worry, our docs understand what mares are like, and they won’t be mad if you wake them up in the middle of the night. Now, sometimes when I stay over at Dr. Lacher’s house, she gets a bit aggravated when I wake her up at 5 am by making biscuits on her back, but that’s a slightly different situation.

If your mare & foal are acting normal and have followed the 1-2-3 rules (stand within 1 hour, nurse within 2 hours, and pass the placenta within 3 hours after birth), your foal can be examined the next day. Ideally the new foal exam should happen at least within the first 24 hours after birth. However, if you suspect ANYTHING is wrong in the meantime with mare or foal, you need one of the docs out right away.

    That all-important First Milk

Let’s say your mare is one of the special ones, and decides to foal at noon. All went well with foaling, and mare and foal are acting normal and comfortable. Should you just have the vet out the same day to get that first checkup over with? Well, you can, but you will probably end up paying for 2 separate farm calls. There is an excellent blood test, called an IgG test, that your vet will perform at baby’s first checkup which determines whether or not he has received enough colostrum (first milk). However, this test can only be performed at 8-12 hours after birth at the earliest! If you think about it, that makes sense: first, the foal has to nurse, then, colostrum has to get absorbed across the foal’s GI tract, then the IgG from the colostrum has to make it to the foal’s bloodstream in order to show up on the test.

So, why not just wait 48 hours until the first check up? Again, the reason has to do with that first milk. The foal’s gut only stays “open” for a short period of time. That means, the foal can only absorb colostrum until 48 hours after birth. By identifying if a foal has a low IgG at 24 hours, the vet still has time to correct the problem before the gut “closes.” Horses, I tell ya…this wouldn’t be the case if a cat had designed them!

   What does the vet do besides pulling blood?

Springhill Equine foal checkWell, I’m glad you asked! Although it may take less than 5 minutes to complete your foal’s first check up, there are a lot of subtle things the doctor is checking during that time. Of course there are the usual things that she would check on any horse: heart rate (are there any heart murmurs?), lung sounds (any amniotic fluid still crackling around in there?), and temperature (foals tend to run higher than adults- especially if they’ve just been bouncing around). Then, your vet will feel the foal’s umbilicus to determine if it is abnormally thickened or moist, check for swelling within ALL of his joints. It is common for your vet to perform a complete ophthalmic exam on a foal, as congenital cataracts, persistent pupillary membranes, corneal ulcers, and entropion (rolling in of the eyelids) are all common disorders of newborns. Additionally, the vet is gaining a lot of information from her at-a-distance exam. Can the foal stand easily? How is his conformation? Is he nursing well on both teats? Is he urinating and defecating normally, and out of the correct places? Does his behavior seem normal? How is his energy level? Is the mare acting protective and motherly?

The best part is, by knowing within the first 24 hours of birth if there is a problem, the docs can get to correcting it right away! Once again, my Tony wisdom exceeds all expectations. Until next week, folks!

 

Tuesdays with Tony – 5 Panel Testing

Tuesdays with Tony – 5 Panel Testing

Mar 7, 2017 | Ailments, Breeding, Buying and Selling, Competition Horses, Craigslist, Dr. Google, Foals, Infections, Q & A, Safety

Ah, your mare! You look wistfully back on your history with her. You and your mare have accomplished a lot. She’s made your dreams come true; she’s been there as your partner, and companion through thick and thin.  You’re ready for her to carry on her legacy with a foal.  You’ve poured through the magazines, you’ve researched performance records, and you’re a pedigree expert. Your perfect stallion has been found and is even 5 panel testing negative! Oh goody!

What the heck is  5 panel testing? Is it a good thing when a stallion is negative? What’s a positive mean? Never fear, your intrepid feline source of information is here.

Why do I care about 5 panel testing?

Long ago, in a land far, far away horses were bred for speed, muscle, good looks, color.  You name it, humans have bred for it.  Along the way some other stuff was selected for too, on accident.  Beginning about 30 years ago, scientists found a way to test genes to see if some of the not so desirable stuff was present in the DNA of a horse.  

In 2015, the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) took the important step of saying “Hey, we can test for a bunch of bad stuff.  Let’s make sure we breed responsibly.”  This means that ALL stallions that file a stallion report now have these results available to you the mare owner.  Many other breeds have their own genetic diseases that are routinely tested for.  Not sure about your breed of choice? Ask the registration association for that breed or check with my minions.  My minions work hard to stay up-to-date on this ever changing world.

What does 5 panel testing test for?

The 5 Panel Test covers, shockingly, 5 major genetic disorders common in Quarter Horses, Appaloosas, and Paints: Hyperkalemic Periodic Paralysis (HYPP), Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy type 1 (PSSM 1), Malignant Hyperthermia (MH), Hereditary Epidermal Regional Dermal Asthenia (HERDA), and Glycogen Branching Enzyme Deficiency (GBED).

These diseases are all caused by one teeny, tiny mutation which makes them easy to test for, and they all cause really bad diseases. I put a short description about all of them at the bottom of this blog in case you want to read more about them.

Should I test my mare?

You really should.  That’s the short answer.  Here’s the long one.  You can never have too much information when it comes to breeding.  Additionally, HYPP, PSSM, and MH could cause health problems for your mare during pregnancy so knowing if she’s got them can be very helpful to your wonderful veterinarians.  

You really, really should do the 5 panel testing if your stallion choice is positive for any of them.  If you have found that perfect hunk of a guy for your mare, but he’s positive for one of these diseases, you really need to know if your mare is positive too.  If she is, you are definitely going to have to go back to the pretty pictures and find her a different guy.

I’m pretty sure I can now pass a test on this 5 panel testing! Want more information? Call, text, or e-mail my humans.  They love talking about mares, and babies, and stallions, okay, pretty much anything horse.  Until next week, may your litter box be clean and your food bowl full.

HYPP
HYPP stands for Hyperkalemic Periodic Paralysis. This disease affects the electrical impulses within the body that control muscle contraction. The defective gene results in clinical signs of muscle tremors and fasciculations. In some severe cases, horses may be unable to stand, or even unable to breathe. Horses can show symptoms with only one copy of the defective gene, but symptoms are often more severe if they have two copies of the mutation. This disease affects mostly halter horses, and can be traced back to the prolific stallion ‘Impressive’. Since Impressive lines were also used in Paint and Appaloosa halter breeding programs, HYPP is found in those breeds as well. AQHA does not allow registration of foals that test positive for two copies of the defective gene (H/H), but will allow registration of foals that are H/N: one defective and one normal gene.


PSSM 1
PSSM stands for Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy. This disease causes changes in the way sugars are stored and used by the muscles. It causes frequent episodes of ‘tying up’ if not properly controlled by a special diet and regular low intensity exercise. There are two types of PSSM. Type 1 is caused by a genetically identified mutation, which is testable. Type 2 is suspected to be genetic, but that mutation has not yet been identified by researchers. Most Quarter Horses with PSSM have type 1. Horses will show symptoms of PSSM type 1 with one or two copies of the mutation.  Like HYPP, PSSM type 1 is more common in halter QHs than in other lines. Some QHs have been shown to have mutations for both HYPP and PSSM.


HERDA
HERDA stands for Hereditary Epidermal Regional Dermal Asthenia. Horses with HERDA have defective collagen, an important protein that is part of skin, cartilage, muscles, and tendons. The major clinical sign is skin that is easily injured, torn, or even sloughed off. The skin is also very slow to heal. There is no treatment for the condition, and horses that have it are often euthanized. Horses will only show symptoms if they have two copies of the mutation for HERDA. Horses with only one copy of the mutation are clinically normal. These animals are called ‘carriers’. They can pass copies of the mutation to their foals, and if one carrier is bred to another carrier, the foal might inherit the mutation from both parents and be symptomatic. HERDA is limited mostly to horses with reining and cutting horse bloodlines.


GBED
GBED stands for Glycogen Branching Enzyme Deficiency. Like PSSM, this disease also affects how sugars are stored, but in a different and more severe way. It results in abortions, stillborn foals, and foals that are alive but weak at birth and die or are euthanized soon after. Like with HERDA, horses may be carriers for GBED – if a horse has only one copy of the mutation it will be clinically normal. Paints and Appaloosas can also carry the GBED mutation.


MH
MH stands for Malignant Hyperthermia. This disease changes the way muscle cells handle calcium, and thus the metabolism of the cell. Horses with MH will appear normal most of the time, but have specific occasions when they show symptoms. During an attack, horses will have a very high fever, profuse sweating, high and irregular heart rate, high blood pressure, and rigid muscles. Attacks are triggered by certain anesthetic agents or stress, and are sometimes fatal. MH is believed to be less common than either HYPP or PSSM, but the percentage of affected horses is not yet known. Several breeds including Quarter Horses and Paints can be affected. Horses may be positive for both PSSM and MH together, and these animals appear to suffer from more severe episodes of tying up than horses that have PSSM alone.