Pedigree Query

Anyone have any experience with NI positive mares? We recently ended up with one unknowlingly! Where do you find a muzzle for the foal. How much colostrum must the new foal receive after birth from another mare? Foal must be fed every hour, how much per feeding? How long do you need to milk the mare out? Are there any tests available to tell if the new foal is a problem? Our vet is unfamiliar but is trying to find out more info but I thought I would ask everyone on here who has been there done that!

The only question I can answer is the first one, but you can get a muzzle for the foal here: http://quillin.com/jshop/product.php?xProd=875

There is some good information at these links -

http://www.equine-reproduction.com/boar ... 1204341853

http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=15587

http://www.ca.uky.edu/gluck/q_jan10.asp

http://books.google.com/books?id=5jIcDI ... re&f=false

All the best with your mare and foal.

Tankyou so much

The old way the vets/farm used to test for NI was to draw a small amount of blood from the foal immediately after birth and put a few drops of the blood into a tube with some of the mare's colostrum. Lightly shake the tube. If the blood "clots" you have to muzzle the foal and milk out the mare for ( I think 48 hours, could be a bit off on this number). We gave our foals colostrum (synthetic or banked) every 2 hours, then gave them milk replacer every 2 hours until it was safe for him to nurse the mare.

Do you know if there is any documentation on this method. Seems much easier than all the blood testing etc. Perhaps someone has read more about this or experienced it?

You can get seramune here
http://horsewarehouse.com/cgi-bin/hwc08 ... Oral%20IgG

They also sell the IGG testing kit, although I bought 6 of them last year from Midland Bio for something like $36.

The colostrum is yellow - so you milk the mare until the milk is WHITE. You could keep mixing the blood/milk until there is no reaction, and then you can take the muzzle off your foal. Mare's Milk Plus (Buckeye feeds) is an EXCELLENT milk replacer until the foal can nurse. You could mix a bit with the Seramune to get SOME milk into the baby's gut before it closes. The important thing is to get the seramune in there in the first 12 hours. HOWEVER. Just because you have an NI positive mare does NOT mean you definitely will have an NI foal - it just means that she might have had one in the past.

Jean wrote:Do you know if there is any documentation on this method. Seems much easier than all the blood testing etc. Perhaps someone has read more about this or experienced it?

Double checked the blood/milk/shake-it-up method with our vet today. She said they still do it to check for NI. Easiest way in a barn setting.

Thankyou all so much. Am going to try the milk mix with some mares we know are fine with the stallions they are bred to! Our vet says not to take the chance with the previous NI positive mare

Jean wrote:Thankyou all so much. Am going to try the milk mix with some mares we know are fine with the stallions they are bred to! Our vet says not to take the chance with the previous NI positive mare

If you breed the mare to a different stallion, you may not get an NI positive foal again. I never tested the mare's colostrum w/ the stallion's blood. We just checked the foal's blood with the colostrum. I don;t know that you would get a reaction from mare's milk if she was past the colostrum stage. . If you have a few hands, the first 48 hours are a pain w/ reactive foal, but not unmanageable. I wouldn;t write a nice mare off for this, just be careful and check the foal immediately and be prepared for a couple long days and nights.