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  Discussion on Dystocia-head and one front leg advancing
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Posted on Thursday, Apr 4, 2002 - 9:22 am:

Hi Dr. O

I have been a lurker here and not posting too much lately, actually in almost a year i think! I had to share another foaling that we had last night that could have been a disaster. We have finally hooked up our foaling cameras to the house yesterday so that we could watch in the early evening hours before sleeping in the barn, but my husband didn't have enough wire for sound so it was just a picture. The mare was overdue 9 days with her second foal and had been dripping milk intermittently for three days when we both fell asleep watching her on the TV. I jumped up at 12:00am realizing we had nodded off for almost two hours(BAD BAD BAD) Anyway I glance to the TV and the mare is down so my husband and I run out and I see a front foot and muzzle out of the mare but they were COLD. I quickly stuck my hand in without a glove to find its right knee back and down. Now our vet is at least 30 minutes from us now and I knew we had no time so I proceeded to push the foal in to give me some room to reposition its leg. By grabbing its pastern and pulling up and out very forcefully(i know i should have cupped its hoof to prevent tearing but i didn't have the strength or forethought at the time)it eventually gave way and we proceeded to get the foal out as fast as we could. The foal was obviously in need of vigourous rubbing which we did. Immediately after birth its right leg was SO bent at the knee that I thought it was deformed. After an hour of so the leg seemed to straighten out to be normal. They are flexible little guys thats for sure! We had the vet come out to check the mare for tears as well as check out the foal to make sure all was well(which it was except for a huge umbilical hernia and the need for an enema). We seem to be having these dystocias more often than other farms that I know(one dog sitter, one breech, three with one front leg back and a minor slightly sideways foal that needed to be repositioned in the last 38 foalings over two breeding seasons so far) I see in the above posts in these discussions that two are my posts from last year!! I am shocked(yet also relieved) that no one here has had these types of problems! We have had a nutritionist and our vet reevaluate our care and with some tweakage of calories in the last two trimesters(we now feed more calories in the second and less in the third trimester) we seem to be doing everything right. I wondered if there was a drug we could administer ourselves or another method for getting out a malpositioned leg in these cases before the vet manages to arrive?

Thanks, any advice would be appreciated


Katherine

Posted on Friday, Apr 5, 2002 - 4:53 am:

Hello Katherine,
No there is no drug available or other method to straigthen the leg other than manual repositioning. If you are talking about giving the mare something to quiten her while you work, xylazine or detomidine is combination with torbugesic is used but should be avoided if at all possible because it will sedate/depress the newborn also.

4 problems (we will give the sideways delivery the benefit of the doubt) in 38 births may be a little high but really not that far off of normal. Though I have not seen any published numbers I know within the last 50 births here we have probably seen a similar number of problems a few a little more serious than these I am afraid.

Concerning management to decrease the incidence of malpositions, I am not sure there is much you can do after you have made sure that the mare care is excellent and that you are not overfeeding. But even overfeeding has not been clearly shown to result in a higher incidence of dystocias in horses. The one thing that does occur is that some mares may be prone to the problems so if you have a repeat offender replacing her will probably help.

Sound is the most important component of monitoring mares at night so we recommend you get yourself a baby monitor (run a search on this for more discussions) if you have any more delays with getting yours hoooked up. Good job on getting the baby out!
DrO

Posted on Friday, Apr 5, 2002 - 7:54 am:

Thanks Dr. O

I should add that we do have sound and two cameras in the beDrOom attached to our foaling barn but for us to have a semi-normal evening in the house together we have hooked up the cameras through technology through the phone line so that we can watch a TV program and easily flip it back and forth. About 5 years ago we used those Fisher Price foaling monitors but threw it out when we got the cameras in the barn. I do have another Fisher Price monitor as we have a year and a half old son that we don't use it for anymore. It would be pretty easy to rehook it back up for sound in our house. From what I understand, phone line video connections can never have sound, only video so using Fisher Price technology is a much cheaper fix!


On another note, we have been up last night again with a blessedly normal foaling so that one will help our ratio!!

Thanks for the great advice as usual, I appreciate the reassurance of normalcy on our farm.

Sincerely

Katherine
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