It's A Girl!

For the past 11 months, one of our mares has been due to foal. (In common language, one of our horses has been expecting a baby.)  Penny, our mare, has been getting larger and more uncomfortable in recent weeks as her unborn foal prepared to enter the world. 

My husband absolutely loves this part of owning horses and spends great amounts of time searching out the perfect breeding combination of well-bred stallions to his mares, hoping for the golden foal. The rest of us really only check in to the process in the final weeks before the foal is born. The kids start telling their teachers and friends that we are going to have a baby horse...it is an exciting time!  

So, for the past three weeks, we've been "on alert" as we've kept close tabs on signs that Penny was close to foaling. Some of the signs we look for are: her udders to fill and then we look for wax to form where the baby will eventually nurse. After the wax, we look for actual milk dripping from the udders...this usually indicates that delivery is very close.  We also keep tabs on how she's eating. Saturday we came home at about 5:00PM after a long day of running. I went directly to Penny's stall to check on her as Wade had found wax earlier that morning. When I got to her, milk was dripping from her udders and occasionally spraying as she paced around her stall and pawed at the ground. I got Wade's attention and told him to get the kids outside, Penny would be having her baby before dark - which is very unusual. (Normally, horses foal in the dark of night.)

Sure enough, at almost 6:00 exactly, our mare began the delivery process. She let me sit on the ground in her stall where I was able to video the entire birth...it is always amazing to witness such a miracle. The kids were all sitting outside the stall and got to watch the whole thing, too. (Because the video file is so large, I was unable to post it here.) Here's a look at the new little girl...who still needs a name!

Penny's new foal from Sheila Pettit on Vimeo.