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Parturition
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Equinocultura: Gestão e Introdução aos Cuidados Básicos
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Breeding Management
The topics this week will focus on equine reproduction. Breeding is an important component of the equine industry. We will start off this week with some basic anatomy, including what makes the equids unique. Then we will cover the estrous cycles of mares and jennies, followed by common breeding systems used throughout the world. After discussing unique aspects of equine pregnancy and parturition, we will finish out the week covering some management tips for taking care of the newborn foal.
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Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Alright, welcome to our next lecture, and probably really one
of the, the ones I love talking about, and that's
parturition and, in my experience I've, I've, I've foaled out,
personally foaled out over, you know, roughly probably over 100 mares.
In my career so far and, and each one is just an amazing experience.
You would think after the first one, you know, it's
kind of shocking and you see it happen but, it's just beautiful.
It's, it's a beautiful thing that, that's why I love nature so much.
So it's pretty, pretty great.
So that's what we're going to talk about next in th, in this lecture.
Now, just some review again and, and the most important thing
on this is the gestation length in horses is 340 days.
Donkeys, or if they're gestating a mule, can be 360 days.
Now, different factors that can affect the length of those days, there's just
a kind of a small list of em, is the season of breeding.
So, if they're due earlier in the breeding
season, they tend to go a little bit longer.
So, they may not be right on, right on track.
The dam's age, if she's a maiden mare, they
tend to go a little bit longer, not always true.
I just, actually couple of weeks ago talked to our fore manager
here at Florida, we had a maiden mare go two weeks early.
So, that, that's not always a 100%, but generally they go
a little bit longer, because that uterus hasn't stretched out before.
Just the first time that's happening so that sometimes takes a little bit longer.
The environment, there's a thought that if it,s cooler in
the year, long winter, means mares tend to go a little
bit longer, earlier spring they'll, they'll foal out a little bit
earlier that we definitely know colts take a little bit longer.
Even my research, I found that, that
fillies come a little bit earlier than colts.
And genetics, you know, at when I was doing my graduate program
at Texas A&M we had a mare foal out three weeks early.
She was a mare that was, usually two weeks early every year.
This week, this year, she came out three weeks early.
It was like January third, so we were scared because
we didn't want to get into the previous year, because if she
was born on, say December 30th, she would have been two
days old and considered a yearling by the Quarter Horse Association.
So we lucked out with that one.
and, so she just was always early.
Foal was great, big filly.
I mean everything was fine.
It's just they were always kind of early on their gestation lengths.
Now, we're going to talk about some of the signs leading up to the gestation and,
and you'll hear me say this a couple times, that the, the physical changes that
the mare or the jenny goes through leading up to parturition are the [UNKNOWN] the
most important to monitor, because that, they're
going to tell you physically when they're getting ready.
To foal, because obviously, they can't say, hey, baby is coming.
I mean, so they have to show you physically.
So, so here is some of the things that are going to
change and I put tail head, because that hind area, you know,
that birth canal has to really loosen up to pass this large
foal, and actually their, their pelvis does stretch during the birthing process.
So, it gets really relaxed.
And, it's always neat to, and I always teach this to
my students, to check the tail head of a mare that's pregnant.
And you'll notice, like if you go to any horse, you know, go to
a gelding or a stallion or a mare that's not pregnant or, or nearing parturition.
Lift their tail and it's like [SOUND] you know they fight you.
There's a lot of resistance.
Well, as they get closer to parturition, that loosens up
and it, really the [INAUDIBLE] I mean that thing is rubber.
It is like a rubber hose.
It is so crazy how loose they get in that, their hind end.
Now the udders is going to fill out.
The nipples are going to start filling out, and they have
this, what we call asymmetrical view, so really what you're
looking at, and it's really hard to kind of detect, but
this side she's bulging out just a little bit more.
So, that's where I would think the, the foal's resting.
You know, that's the, the her left uterine horn
is, is really where that foal grew and develops.
So it's kind of resting there.
So, you'll see as that changes, you know as they get closer to parturition.
So, within a couple days, you know, that, again that tail becomes really rubber.
Their vulva's going to get longer.
It, it's going to stretch and get longer as they get ready.
And then, their udders are really distended
and, and you'll be able to see that.
Now, they get this thing called waxing.
And we call it waxing, but it's really
just kind of dripping milk, right there on the teat.
And, it, it, it kind of either drips out or dries there,
so you get this little drip of what we call wax.
It's like, you know, like she almost put a little bit of wax right there.
So that, that's a sure sign that she's getting
really close, because her udder's getting ready for a lactation.
So, you'll see that.
And then, talking about that abdomen, is as this foal repositions, which I have in,
in this image here, so as that
foal repositions, getting ready for parturition, it's going
to drop in the belly, so you get this dramatic drop as you can see
in this pony mare, that, you know, she's getting ready to foal out, that, that.
That foal has repositioned, getting ready for, you
know, the, the, the three stages of parturition.
Now, there, there is kits out there to help you, kind of
guide you in, but again I, you know I do, we do
use these on our farm and every farm I've been on
that, we, we do use these they're a good tool to use.
But do not become dependent on them.
The most important are those physical signs that, that they tell you.
But these do are available.
You can go online and, and they're relatively inexpensive.
And basically what it's looking at is, you can
see the days from foaling here in this chart.
And this is looking at calcium.
So right here the, sorry, I'll just make a little note there.
So, calcium, so as they get closer to parturition.
That calcium increases, and so these milk strip tests, actually as looking and
monitoring the, the calcium changes, that they go through with their milk.
So this is one of the commercial kits that, that we had and.
You're looking at these strips, these, these water hardness strips or
Baker Test Strips you'll, you'll see 'em, and they're change in colors.
So pink is no change in color here, and then as we
go down, we get more and more green, so with, with a five.
Stripping a five, this company is claiming that there's a 90% possibility
of that mare foaling within 12 hours, or jenny foaling within 12 hours.
My experience, you know, doing this anywhere from
a three to a five, you're in that zone.
Mares cant foal up here.
I will warn you there, sorry, that's a, that's a messy slide.
[LAUGH] Sorry, but they can, you know, not
even striping and foal that night, because they
can change relatively quickly, but generally, you know
a three or greater, they get pretty close.
I've had a mare strip a five for a numbers of days
and not foal out, and then all of the sudden, bam, foal out.
So, again, it's a tool, but that, those physical
signs are the ones that are really going to be telling.
Now, I already said the three stages
of parturition, so we're going to talk through 'em.
Alright, so stage one is the, really what we call the labor
stage, and, it can last anywhere from 45 minutes to six hours.
And, again, you remember these animals, you know, going back to behavior.
Is animal's hide pain really well.
So sometimes you can't, can't even tell that
a mare is in labor until her water breaks.
I mean that's, that's how you can kind of don't know sometimes.
They really surprise you, but, the best way to describe this phase is, this is
where the horses are, are acting colicky, so, if we go back to that colic lecture.
You know, they're sweating, they're nipping at the
sides, so you have, you know, bits of hair.
They, they, they defecate a little bit, they urinate a little bit.
They're a little restless.
You know, those are all the signs that, that
she may be in labor or getting close to parturition.
Now, this ends as soon as her water breaks.
So, as soon as you see that water breaking or that amnion here,
which you're going to hear me talk quite a bit about in this lecture
and the next one, you know, that amnion sticking out, then you know
she's left stage one and now it's stage two, which is the delivery stage.
Now, I put this in here just to kind of show you the, the compartments.
And I know in the last lecture.
You know, I had that, that alter sound, trans-abdominal alter sound.
Well, this is what we are looking at in the equid, equid placenta.
So you have the chorioallantois.
So, tho, those are kind of together, and that's
kind of a purple layer, or red layer.
So, you know, we're, we're going to talk about in the next lecture, why that's
important, and then the amnion is this white opaque, white layer, okay?
So the amnion's what you want to see first, because
the, the placenta has broken through what we call
the cervical star, and it's pushing out with the
amnion, because that's the layer that's surrounding the foal.
So that's we want to see.
Now, this is normal presentation, of what you'll see and typically, you see one
flip forward followed by the other one, and then the muzzle is right on top of it.
Now, this is how I tea, I teach my students.
You know, especially we get to dystocias and, and we are
going to talk a little bit about that in the next lecture.
You know, if you have a mummy or Frankenstein, or
whatever with, with, you know, shoulders or arms straight out.
You can look at my shoulders, and I've got kind of big shoulders.
You know, it's in like what we call a shoulder
lock position, and there's really nowhere to go for that
foal, but when you shift it, your shoulders shift, and
you're able to squeeze through that birth canal a lot easier.
So, that's why, you know, you want that
presentation with that foal, so, they can get out.
Now, this shouldn't take any more than, than 20 minutes.
And, you know, if, if it takes longer, you could have a, a dystocia problem.
Now, again, you know, showing you another image of that, here
in this picture, I've already got it kind of highlighted for you.
But you can see, amnion, that big white, opaque white sack, looks a little yellow
too, the, with the amniotic fluid, and then
there's the muzzle, and then the two feet.
So, this mare's starting to strain a little bit.
Starting to push that foal out a little bit more.
Now, like I said, these are the dys, some of the dystocias ,which
means basically you've got malposition, the, the,
the foal's not in the proper presentation.
Now luckily, this is a pretty rare
occurrence, but again, this is why we manage
them so, so closely during the parturition process, so, when these do pop up we're
able to respond, hopefully saving the foal's
life, and the mare's life, or in instances
where the foal can't be saved, at least we're trying to save the mare's life.
So, we'll talk a little bit about that in the next
lecture because I, I really feel like it's important to, to address.
Now, a lot of people like to help.
It's an exciting time.
I mean, it's amazing, and we think of, you know,
humans and, and how the doctors are there pulling out
the babies, and I was there for the birth of
my son, and it was just such an amazing experience.
You can let these mares, most of the time, do the work and they're pretty good
about it and it, and it's an amazing
experience to watch them because, they're really quiet.
They grunt some.
Because these animals have evolved to, to be
quiet, so predators don't come around and you know?
Gobble them up and the baby so.
Anyways, most mares give birth at night, about
70% of the mares give birth after, between
the hours of ten and two really is when they, they give birth so, very, very
rare for them to, to give birth during the day, now there are some instances when
you do need to get involved, again, those
instances where we do have some dystocias or.
Here, you know, if you can't see it, the foal's nuz, muzzle is clear.
But you want to make sure that amnion is cleared away from the face.
So, if it's not, go in there, feel free, rip it,
get in, and then just get out, and watch mom and baby.
But, you want to make sure that foal can breath because I've, in my experience, if,
we actually had a foal born in pasture
that suffocated with the amnion, so very tragic.
So those are some of the things that do that.
Now, I put these images in here, and I'll number 'em.
So one, two, three, four, so you can
kind of see the progression of a foal being born,
and, and there are some videos on, on
the class website that you can watch this process.
But I do this because, you know, as the
foal does kind of start off going straight back, but
then it starts to curve down with the curvature
of the back, which you can really see well here.
Okay, so if you're ever in an instance where you have to help and assist
pull 'em, pull a foal out, you don't
want to pull straight back, you want to actually, I
always tell students to pull out and down, so, you know, you kind of want to go with
the natural curvature of the spine, so you don't injure the foal, or injure the mare.
So, so that's kind of natural for them to come out.
Now, as soon as the foal's out that ends stage
two, and then you enter the stage three, which is
really, easiest to say is the passage of the placenta,
and that can take anywhere from one to three hours.
If you're really lucky it takes less than an hour.
If you are there for a while, it takes three or four hours.
So you can imagine, during foaling season, you don't get a lot of sleep, especially
when you have to foal out 30 plus mares like I have in the past.
And some people foal out hundreds of mares on their
farms, so, you can imagine it's a busy time of year.
So things are going to happen here too, is the
placenta is going to, going to pass through smooth side out.
So, this is that Cory and Allen toy that I talked about, that's kind of red-purple,
and then this is remnants of the amnion, that smooth side out, should be about 11%
of the total foal's weight, you know, to make sure you had a, a natural, or
you know, gestation, sometimes those placentas are really
big, and that might be a little abnormal.
Now, the umbilical cord is going to break naturally, or it
should, so, like a mare getting up in this image where.
She's gotten up and the umbilical cord's going to break and, generally
you want to let the mare do this on her own.
In instances where the placenta comes out when the mare stands up,
and that umbilical cord is still attached, you know, I always tell
students to, I always put my hand on the, the stomach of
the foal around the umbilical stump, and then try to wrap my arm.
You know, way up high, and then yank it like I was the mare walking away.
If you cut it too close, you'll run into what we're going to talk about in
the next lecture [UNKNOWN] where that doesn't
heal normally so, so try to avoid that.
And, if the placenta doesn't get passed within three
hours, then I would call a veterinarian or, or somebody
that, that's dealt with this before, because you need
to, to help assist that mare get her placenta out.
And, I did include an image here where this is tied up,
and that's pretty nat, or regular management, you want to tie that up.
You know, I, I just tie it in knots and, you know, some people use string.
I think it's easier just to tie in knots.
It's very slippery.
Wash your hands when you'are done but, you know, it helps the mare, because it's
kind of a natural weight there, and, the Vet will tell you, you know, how to
treat that horse to get that out, because, you need all that placenta out, or
it can lead to uterine infections, which is
endometritis, can lead to laminitis, or even death.
If there's any remnants of it le, left in there,
so you want to make sure that, that does come out.
So, once that's out, that's it!
I mean, that's stage three, and now you have momma and baby.
And then, we're going to talk in our next lecture, some of the things
you can do to, to give those youngsters a, a great start in life.
And I'll see you then.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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