New Life

On one of my earlier posts I talked about spring being close and new life would abound. I said the grass will start to grow and turn green and the cows would start to have calves and the mares would have their foals.

I have been seeing that happen all around me these last several weeks. We have already had calves born on the farm this spring and now the very first foal from one of our mares.

Now for you old timers in this business it is an every spring occurrence. After relating our experience with our first foal, a person who had been in the horse business for years told me that he went to bed and got a good night's sleep and got up at the usual time and was sitting at the table drinking coffee when day break came. He looked out in the field and there were two new foals that had been born overnight.

In a way I felt sad for him. Our new foal was a great experience and maybe someday it will be the going to bed and waking up to new foals in the field thing. But for us it was an exciting night.
It started yesterday morning when I noticed signs the mare would be foaling soon. I called every one I knew that would be excited by the news and soon my oldest daughter was returning my call. It turned out today would be her day off and she vowed she was coming out to keep watch with me.


We checked on the mare around 11 PM and she was pacing the floor like she was the expectant father. Satisfied nothing was about to happen in the next few minutes we went to bed. I did not sleep so I got up around 12:15 and she got up too. We both put our boots on and grabbed cameras and went into the barn. She saw him first and he was so new. The mare was standing there over him and cleaning his little chocolate coat like mares have been doing since God put horses on this earth.

We were so in awe of this experience. The new life laying there before us and the proud mother doing what comes very naturally to her. We watched in fascination and awe as she urged him to try those long legs of his. He tried and fell. Then he tried and fell many more times before he made it up on those spindly long legs of his. All the time we were snapping pictures.

We went into the stall with her and the foal. She allowed us to pet him and make over him for quite a while but then she let us know in no uncertain terms, it was time for us to leave them alone. All the while we were with him we were imprinting him. We rubbed his ears and legs and feet. We rubbed him all over so that he would already be accustomed to us touching him. As the days go by and we continue to touch and rub him and desensitize him to our touch, he will learn that we are not about hurting him and he will start to trust us.

Soon he will also learn to be sensitized to what we start to asking of him. The training starts at a very early age and in fact every time we are with him or any other horse we are training them for better or worse.