5 week old foal just lost mother.! Questions.

[cherham]

We hand raised an orphaned filly from 18 days old. Bucket fed with Grober’s foal replacement milk supplement. Nice and yummy lukewarm milk…that filly just drank that up like crazy. Fairly easy to get them used to it. But the first month or so of 4 hour round the clock feedings sure took its toll…on the humans not her At 3 months we borrowed a small pony to keep her company and at 4 1/2 months she was essentially weaned and eating regular foal food. Worked for us just fine. One of the best show horses we have ever bred!

Good luck. And these foals are SOOOOO worth it!

[ise]

I am always concerned with bucket feeding because I’ve seen a few full grown horses that were bucket babies and they ended up being tongue suckers.

[DancingFoalFarms]

Two years ago I was in the same situation, but the filly was only at three weeks and wouldn’t take to the bottle, Igloo Mama, etc. Working with our local veterinary hospital we leased a nurse goat. And she was fabulous. The filly finally took to the bottle, but having mama goat around was a real god-send. I also ended up purchasing another orphaned filly to buddy with Phoebe. Mama goat raised both girls until “weaning”, and then went on to her next orphans. I can’t say enough great things about my experience with the mama goat lease.

PS - I know, technically, she was a nanny goat, but the vets always called her “mama goat”