Remember when we didn't have cameras

[Shortpig]

Jasmine was getting real close to foaling. She was at a stable a few miles from home so I decided to sleep at the Barn and watch over her.

I found the easiest way to do that was to pile some straw up against a wall in her stall. Grabbed a sleeping bag and pillow and knowing she would be very careful with me proceeded to crawl into bed. I fell asleep easy enough. But then there was a loud boom of thunder and heavy rain on the tin roof of the barn. I felt something on my face, rolled over opened my eyes and there is Jasmines face right in front of mine staring at me like "Did you hear that"? Yep! Heard it and we are fine, can I go back to sleep now please? So she starts to relax while I am talking to her. Get out of my nice warm bed and go to walk around a little, I come back and she has stolen all my straw and pawed it into a pile away from my bed.

Once again I pile up my straw, place my sleeping bag on it and crawl back in. The heavy rain has now stopped and no more thunder or lightning. Jasmine has calmed down and so once again I drift off to sleep. I wake up and turn to rollover and check on her, Yep! There she is within inches of me, stretched out on her side beside me and all I can see is a large, black blob snoring away. It's at this point I pray she doesn't roll over in her sleep as I have no where to go. Boy could she snore. So I roll back over and drift back to sleep. When I woke up again she was standing over me just looking at me. Somehow she managed to get that huge belly up without even stirring me.

However, No foal so had to repeat this episode until the night I decided I was desperate for a cup of coffee. Went home and when I came back to bed down. There was a pretty little foal eating and happy. Healthy so I made sure all was well and went back home to my own bed.

How much easier it would have been with a Barn Cam and a nice soft bed to watch it from.

Marie

 

[rabbitsfizz]

Amira (Arab) was due to foal and she had lost the last one as we could not get it out in time, that had been her first foal. So, there was no way we were letting her foal on her own!

The plan had been to take her up to my friends place just before her due date, so the kitchen the bed and the stall were all in the same area, but Amira moved the goal posts and we found ourselves bedding down in the foaling box with her, at my place, seven miles from a kitchen (and a bed!!).

I remember finally getting comfortable in a corner, and at that point I was not aware where my friend was as it was dark.

As dawn broke I woke and said the the mare, who was standing at her manger eating, "Are you ever going to foal?" and she said "Well, not today, anyway".

I was very tired and I was only half awake, but even in that state of mind I knew it was fairly unusual for a horse to answer your questions.

So....I said to her "When did you start talking?"

Whereupon my friend lurched into a sitting position up in the manger, covered in hay and called me a few things that I would blush to repeat anywhere, let alone a family forum.

"Silly" was one of them!!

Oh, and the mare foaled three days later, with me in attendance, all on my own, but she was absolutely fine.

In all her breeding career Amira always waited for me to arrive before she had her foal!

 

[rcfarm]

TOO FUNNY

 

[Linda K]

I can remember when Erica first got into mini's ( Years ago..................) We were raising Limo cows at the time, and only had a few horses. We did have a barn, but we would just kindof treat them like our cows. They just foaled outside. NOW....... another barn ,maturnity pasture, 6-8 maturnity stalls , cameras, mon. system at house , online, and at my beauty shop so we can always be watching them. They are the cats meow around here !! unreal how things change. Of course there are about 60 miniatures now, and she has worked hard to get the pedigrees she wants, so we talking alot more money into them now. We have our first baby on the ground "filly". Hope all goes as well with the rest that are going to be having babies. Good Luck to everyone !

Linda Killion

 

[lilmiraclesfarm]

Well I've yet to of had a camera system, but then again I've only bred 1 horse. But I ended up putting a cot in the stall and sleeping with her. I slept with her for a week straight. She had such a full bag 4 weeks before she actually foaled. I would find myself waking up to her standing next to me, or stareing at me. Then every single morning I would wake up to her butt in my face sitting on my cot.

YES SITTING! She would back that big butt of hers into my cot and procede to sit. Woke me up pretty darn quickly and I think she realized that

After a week of that I decided to start sleeping in the house again. Her bag kept going down during the day. 3 weeks later it was huge again, and this time I slept in my car outside the barn with my baby monitor in hand.

 

[MindyLee]

I dont have a camera system still!!!

So my funny stories are repeats each year with all bundled up sleeping in the barn under a heat lamp covered with a blanket and purring barn cats.

PS: Cause my barn is about 400-500ft from my house, what would be a good system to use?

 

[Reble]

Well, sorry I did have a camera, but watched night and day, day and night, than finally needed to do an errand, it was just after lunch, so checked her with those pool stripes and it said put the coffee pot on. Had never used these before, so I thought, oh I do not believe it, she is just eating and standing there.

So jumped into the car, and was back within an hour, you guessed it, ran to the stall and for sure a cute little foal was standing with mom..

 

[Miniv]

This story is not my own, but belongs to some friends of ours who lived a few miles away from us. They had minis before we did and taught us some things.........

For starters, they taught us what a wise investment cameras were.

They didn't have them. Instead, their foaling stall was right next to their tack room in the barn which is where Charlene would bunk down on a cot with a sleeping bag. Also, handily enough there was perfectly sized knot HOLE in the wood that divided the stall from the tack room. It was placed just right, so all Char had to do is raise her head off her pillow and peek through the hole to check the mare.

Char kept telling me how important it was to stay quiet while watching at night because the mares would not foal if they knew she was right there........ But then, one morning I stopped by and her husband, Frank, was laughing his head off. He could hardly wait to tell me........

The night before, Char quietly set up her bed just under the peep hole and made herself comfortable. And since she couldn't hear anything she raised up and looked through the hole, screamed, and fell off her cot! What she saw was a great big eye staring right back at her!

So much for her mare not knowing!

 

[HGFarm]

Oh Miniv that was funny!!!! Yep, I too have taken a sleeping bag out into the yard- I can see right into the foaling stalls as the fronts are easy to see into from any direction..... I bedded down in the yard- with the sleeping bag and the dog thought it was some kind of funny game. By 3 a.m. it was very windy and cold- I couldnt sleep and had tossed and turned all night anyhow. No foal. This went for a couple of nights but then since the foaling stalls could be seen from my bedroom window, I had the great idea to set my alarm every few minutes round the clock. Ok, after the 3rd day of that, I looked in the bathroom mirror to see something that resembled a strung out heroin addict looking back at me. This mare just was not going to give up that baby.

I checked on her one evening about 8:30- she was quietly munching her dinner without a care in the world. I walked from her pen the few feet to the back door, came in and took off my shoes in my room and just being the paranoid type, stood up to take one last look out the window. I swear she had waited til she knew I had just walked in the house- she was already down and pushing, so back on went the shoes and out the door I went! I had not been away from her pen for 2 minutes!!! She seemed embarrassed at being caught.

The next year I had a camera and now feel blind without one!

 

[AppyLover2]

Cute stories ladies. Hopefully others will tell us theirs.

 

[txminipinto]

Last year, my favorite mare was approaching her due date. We watched religiously. On the night of due date, she went into labor. I ran out there full expecting a foal but was puzzled when she stopped and went back to driving me crazy. Finally after another 10 days of watching and scratching our heads I took her in for an ultrasound. She wasn't pregnant! False pregnancy with a false labor! This year, I had her preg checked so I KNOW she's pregnant.

 

[ohmt]

Gosh...still no camera here so there is absolutely ZERO sleep at this farm come April-May all the way through August. We have all sorts of great stories. My favorite is this one:

We have an older mare that a personality as big as our old cattle barn. She is too funny and always up to something! I had her in the barn for 2 months before her due date because she is a bit older and the foal she was carrying was by the late Double A Apache so it was extra special. Anyway, during the two months of her finishing cooking, we had a few other mares that were due and I spent hours sitting on a bucket in the dark watching. I would bring a bag of potato chips with me and snack. Vanessa would constantly beg me to share. One day, after her nosing me and snorting at me enough times, I gave her one...she was hooked. So she and I spent the summer together eating potato chips and mare-staring. She was a great little helper

On a sadder note, she ended up losing her foal. About noon one day, I was mucking out stalls when she came running in. She came up to me and I figured she was just being her helpful self. When I tried to shoo her away she layed down and I saw she was foaling. I knew instantly that something was wrong because she was a mare that liked to foal by herself. It was a breech. Called the vet-Vanessa was fine, but he couldn't save her gorgeous little black appaloosa filly.

Sweet Vanessa came and found me when she knew she was in trouble.

 

[Shortpig]

Sweet Vanessa came and found me when she knew she was in trouble.

How great that she knew you would make it all ok. I'm so sorry you lost your much loved foal however.

I think it's great when our beloved horses trust us enough to seek our help.

Marie

 

[Ellen]

Our Arab mare, Sue was sure to foal any day. Her udder was tight and we had wax. In years before, she went that night. The previous year we had lost her colt, found it in the stall. So this year we were not taking any chances.

I slept right outside her stall. And I use the term slept loosly. In the wee hours of the morning she went down, I got up and watched thru the bars. She pushed and pushed, and HERE HE CAME! SHE STOOD UP! I had to run in the stall and catch this 100lb, wet colt! Mind you I am 5'6" and 110 myself! Thankfully Sue and Yo-Yo were fine!

What we do for the love of horses!

 

[ohmt]

Oh gosh Ellen! Your story made me think of another one!

We had a mare named Quepie that was due with her first foal. During the day we let the preggers out on the house yard so we can just look out the window to check on them. One day I was helping my grandma do the dishes and all of the sudden she screams out "What the H***?!!". I look out the window and there's Quepie walking past the window-baby half out! 2 second later, baby was on the ground and Quepie just kept on walking. She literally just popped the colt right out. Luckily we caught her and she accepted the foal, no problems.

2 years later she was heavy in foal again. My uncle was coming to visit and he opened the gate to the farm to drive in. Quepie was standing in the way so he honked the horn twice to get her to move (no-he's not a horse person!) and she ran to the side and popped out a gorgeous filly. We named the filly "Beep Beep".

 

[chandab]

2 years later she was heavy in foal again. My uncle was coming to visit and he opened the gate to the farm to drive in. Quepie was standing in the way so he honked the horn twice to get her to move (no-he's not a horse person!) and she ran to the side and popped out a gorgeous filly. We named the filly "Beep Beep".

"Beep Beep" That is too cute and so funny. Glad it all worked out.

 

[Joanne]

Had cameras but....

We have a LOT of daytime births here. Therefore it is never really safe to leave when a mare bags up. We put our mares in a barn stall at night when they are about 300 days gestation. We check them am and pm and make a decision if they have enough of a bag to warrant their going outside for the day or are on 24 hour watch.

One day we checked all the mares in the am as usual and they were all released. We went about cleaning stalls and doing our normal chores.

A couple hours later my husband comes to the barn and says we have a new foal on the ground! We all go running to see a beautiful baby (cord still attached) and her mom.

My husband says he was out gardening when Lacey cam up to him. As she turned around he saw what he thought initially was a small branch sticking out of her butt. As he went to investigate he realized she was foaling and when she laid down he assisted her to birth. Then he came to find me.

The joke is that my husband is a OB/GYN doctor. So we figured that Lacey had found the right person to help her through her labor and delivery.

We named the foal Mercedes as the birth was so fast!