Protecting Your Newborn
Giving your foal a healthy start to life
By Dr. Paula Valeria, Great Lakes Equine Wellness Center, Inc.

Nothing is more beautiful than seeing a fuzzy newborn foal nuzzling and playing with it’s mother in early spring. However, foals like newborn humans are delicate. They can quickly deteriorate and become very sick. Proper nutrition and preventative care of the broodmare are essential to having a healthy foal at delivery.

Mares should be vaccinated with their spring vaccinations (usually EEE, WEE, Tetanus, West Nile, Rhino and Flu) 4-6 weeks before foaling. This is more for the protection of your foal than for your mare. Having your mare’s immunity boosted helps ensure the foal gets the highest level of protection is can for its first months of life.

Unlike people and many other animals, foals are born without any protection to bacteria and diseases in their environment. There is no placental transfer that occurs. A foal gets all of its initial protection through the colostrum or “first milk” of its mother. A foal will not develop its own immunity or protection from disease for months. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that the mare produces good colostrum and does not lose it (have it drip or leak out) prior to the foal nursing. The foal must drink that first milk and get enough of it within the first 12 hours of life.

A normal newborn foal has the ability to absorb the antibodies in its mother’s milk, but it can only do that well in about the first 12 hours of life. Once the foal starts nursing it needs to get most of that colostrum in 6-8 hours. By the time it is 24 hours old it will no longer be capable of absorbing the antibodies even if they are present. A foal that does not get any colostrum is unlikely to survive without treatment. A foal that doesn’t get enough immunity will often become very sick within a short time of birth.

So how can you make sure your newborn foal is protected? There is a simple blood test that should be done by your veterinarian when the foal is 12-24 hours old. This is part of a newborn foal exam and makes this first veterinary visit essential. The test will tell you the level of IgG, or immunoglobulin, in the blood. Your veterinarian will recommend treatments depending on the level of IgG. Failure of a foal to receive or absorb enough IgG is called Failure of Passive Transfer (FPT). If your foal has very low IgG, it will need to have plasma administered intravenously through a catheter. This plasma contains high amounts of IgG.