today's video is all about our foals first time nursing now I know a lot of
you have been waiting for this and I'm so excited to finally share it with you
but I have to tell you it was a little bit more complicated than we had kind of
hoped it would be so it just took a little bit to get this video out there
if you're new here my name is brandi and this channel is all about horses in my
journey with horsemanship so if you want to learn more about horses or follow my
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you're if you're just tuning in I would recommend heading over to my equine
reproduction playlist and watching the videos that lead up to this one so you
don't feel like you're missing out on anything
foals first hour they should be standing second hour they should be nursing third
hour the plants placentas delivered okay well when it came to nursing our little
guy had some struggles basically when he was born I have not seen this before and
I was very concerned I actually was afraid that he might be stillborn
he had his tongue hanging way out on the left side I could see it as soon as his
muzzle started coming out I could see his tongue hang you know and it was
really dark so I honestly thought that he might be dead when he came out and
was breathing everything seemed to be normal the little guy was right on track
and standing within an hour like he's supposed to and but when it came time to
nursing nikka really didn't want anything to do with him and she wasn't
afraid of him or acting aggressive towards nothing like that she just kept
walking and you know honestly that's kind of normal of her cuz she's a horse
it just wants to be moving all the time and she's just kind of like well I don't
know what this little thing is but it's following me and I'm just gonna keep
walking and see if it leaves so basically she's walking around and
around and around the stall and the little guy is just following her around
and um you know she would stop and he would put his he had his tongue was
still hanging out at this point so he'd had his tongue you need be rubbing it on
her shoulder and he'd be you know licking her knee and he
have it on her belly and then he'd have it under Hawke and then he'd go to her
tail and then he'd go to her nose and then he's licking the wall I mean the
little guy was all over the place I tried to stay out of it
Jason I really didn't want to get involved unless we absolutely had to so
at this point Jason had brought our daughter into the house so he could put
her back to bed because she was out with us for the whole birth and after I
watched this go on for a while I was I was getting really concerned because I
knew that it was important for him to be nursing as soon as possible after
getting up this is what was going on before I decided to put a halter on Nika
to get her to stand still there was just a lot of meandering around that was
happening and I felt that it was taking too long here you can really see how his
tongue hangs out of the left side of his mouth I think that also made it a little
bit more difficult for him to nurse at first
I put a halter on her to see if I get her to stand still and that really
helped because he was able to be with her but again he can't figure out where
he's supposed to nurse from so and she was getting kind of irritated with him
because like I said he was you know licking her knee her nose her belly
everything so I was kind of struggling on my own and when Jason came back out I
had him take nica's lead and I kind of tried to corral the baby in the general
direction that he was supposed to be now we didn't catch any of this on video
because we both had our hands full and I video with my phone so there was just
nothing that we could do we did have a camera out there but it was turned off
so we didn't get footage of any of that part but you get my drift if you've
never handled a brand-new foal I'm talking like two hours old you have no
idea how strong those little buggers are so here I am trying to any still you
know he's still kind of wet and I'm trying to - I'm trying to wrangle him in
the direction and he's just pushing back against me so I'm trying not to put too
much pressure on him but yet kind of just sort of like guide him over there
um it didn't take too long and then he finally did figure it out and started
nursing and you know Jason and I had like you know we were so excited but
anyway so this video is all about his first few moments of Nursing on his own
with mom so this was after we took nica's halter off and got out of the out
of the way and just kind of let them have their moment so but I wanted to
make sure to get a little bit of that on video to show you he was just on it
see Garnica yeah she's got a past that
it was worse than I thought
Mika's milk is coming out in streams springing everywhere he's like wake up
you have to eat
just needs to lay down and he'd be able to get in there good look at he is
nursing is he yeah determine little bugger he just he just had a lot of it
just fell on my mama why he's determined
okay seriously wasn't that just the sweetest thing ever for those of you who
are really enjoying this journey thank you so much for being involved and for
all of your kind comments I read each and every one of them and I just think
it just makes my day I think it's really awesome to share this and to feel like
others are a part of it too if you've been through situations like this please
leave me a comment below let me know how your story went I would love to hear
about it and I think it would be really great for others in the community to be
able to to see it and learn from your experiences too so leave me a comment
below thank you so much for watching and stay tuned because next you're gonna get
to see the placenta and everything that went with that and and I did get to
inspect that placenta and I got all that on video to show you thanks for watching
bye