All the babies

It all reminds me of something I would read in a horse story back in middle school... Stormy, the black colt!

We had another baby born today... at 11:30 in the afternoon! This is unusual as the vast majority of horses will foal at night, under the cover of darkness. It's their instinct to foal at night, but every so often a mare just can't wait that long and has to foal in broad daylight.

This little guy caught us all by surprise. We try to make sure every foal is born in a stall where we can intervene in case of an emergency, but when a mare foals in the day, she's usually outside. And even the best watchmen will get caught by surprise. We were in the middle of stalls when our manager came in, telling us we had a foal in the field. Oops!!

The foal was no more than thirty minutes old when we found him, but we still needed to get him into his mare's stall quickly. All the other mares in the field were running around in a tizzy, either from the huge gusts of wind or from the presence of the foal. Eventually, we got a pickup out in the pasture, laid the highly confused colt down in the bed, and practically sat on him during the ride to his stall. This poor mare, though she could see her foal the entire time, was certain that her colt was going to disappear somewhere without her. Her behavior, as well as her size, made her more of a problem to deal with than the foal!

Once inside, the mare was able to see that her colt was fine, and by the end of the day all was well. He seems to be a very healthy baby, which is lucky for us! I think I might have to nickname him Stormy. Cliche, I know, but it perfectly describes the weather of the day, the whole situation at work, and his silver-gray color. I'll be excited to see what he looks like as he gets older.