Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2011 - 10:00 pm:
While waiting to find out if my mare is actually pregnant I'm doing lots of research - I was wondering about giving extra colostruem routinely? Can they get too much? Reason for asking is that the foal has such a short time to get enough colostruem and my vet's don't have on site testing facilities so I don't think they'd be able to do the IgG test within the time frame so I was wondering if I can give colostrum by a bottle as well as what the mare produces to ensure the foal gets enough or can giving them too much colostrum cause problems?
Its not a practice I've come across. We would only give colostrum if the foal was sickly looking or outside the normal time parameters for suckling. If he wasn't nursing at 2 hours post-partum then I give them another 15 minutes or so then go mix some up...Murphy's Law usually comes into play...while you're away mixing the bottle the foal will be nursing by the time you get back. To get a truer level of IgG, bloods are taken 12 to 24 hours after birth, which is well after time for absorption of colostrum has occurred.
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