This message is from: "saskia schoofs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dear Pamela,
thank you for your mail. > First: a heat lamp. very good idea! I hadn't thought about that yet! As I go to the horse-shop later today (they just phoned me to tell me a book about foaling arrived), I will inform if they sell those lamps. > Buy a foal blanket, by all means. You > may not need it, but if you do need it, it is good to have on hand. yes, I will. But as I understand, I have a good chance that the foal will be born with a winter-coat! Still, it's better to have a blanket at hand if the foal should need it. > When the baby > is being born, have lots of clean dry towels handy to dry the wet baby off > (mom will do most of it, but if it is super cold, it's nice to do. haha! you should have heard my mom when she asked me this morning what I wanted for X-Mas and I answered I would be very happy if she could miss old towels (as long as they were soft, of course! :-)! > Our foaling stalls are > adequate size. 24 x 12. I almost asked: is that inch? :-))) But after a bit of calculating I think it's feet? That's good, because the stall I intended for foaling must be about that size. > I also bought a baby monitor so we could hear > signs of impending birth. yes. My farrier informed me I can rent in the nearest city's horse-shop. > Sent my husband out to the barn that night, he didn't believe me that she > would foal that night, I won a $20 bet! :-))) > Good luck and have fun with the new one. He may be one of the first > Millenium Fjords! Thank you!!! But he will only be half a Fjord, I hope you don't mind (Kitty is a Haflinger). I followed the discussion about cross breeding on the list, but we have a different approach here and there are a lot of cross-bred horses in Belgium and Holland (though I never saw a Haflinger x Fjord). But I have to add that I wanted to breed Kitty to a Haflinger stallion last year, but she didn't get "in heat", so vet and I concluded that Sybren (then 18 months old and "improbable" to could have done it, also because he was very small then) did it anyway. And she did get very large and thick, but when I called the vet again, because I thought she would foal in a month or so (that was in May of this year) he pronounced her belly to be caused by good food only... and found in her womb a very little foal of 3 months old... to be born in January! Now she's really like a balloon and I see the difference now between a very well-fed horse and a very pregnant one... (one learns by practice!) So, I'm sure the foal will be a funny thing, and as I have place enough, it can stay with me for ever and I won't breed it. And as Sybren and Zeno will be gelded as soon as possible, this will be the only Half-Fjord. Because I believe Fjords are perfect and can't be improved! Still, I'm glad (for strictly human and sentimental reasons) that the Kid (Kitty) and Sybren will have a foal, because they are so "in love" with eachother, always standing side by side, nose to nose, or heads on eachothers backs... so I imagine they really wanted their milleniumbaby :-))) merry X-mas and all the best for 2000! Saskia
