I knew an old gentleman who had trained more horses that I’ve even seen. He would carry around an old whiffleball bat or a kid’s plastic pail like you’d use on the beach. If the foal experimented with kicking, it got a noisy but painless reminder not to. Once was usually enough. And compared to some of the corrections the mares handed out, it was not a big deal to the foal who was otherwise well socialized with humans.
Can’t tell you how many days I wished that would work on teenagers (JK!)
I was going to suggest a whiffleball bat. It just happened the first time for me in a stall while I was mucking and it instantly worked. The short sweet instant correction while so young should be the message here for human children also. Altho I draw the line with the pitchfork’
When some would come and wanted to walk around the mares and foals, some were owners we kept their broodmares and foaled and trained their foals, we learned to always remind them that the fun of scratching foals here and there, especially on their butts and laughing when they reacted and repeating it for more laughs was not appropriate.
You wanted to interact with foals so they learn good manners, not just react to human’s touch.
We modeled how to, how to touch and retreat before foal was too excited with a new plaything, that interesting human.
Especially with haltered foals, never grab the hater or tab if one and offer resistance for one to pull from, always very gently guide them to find the release of following willingly, not pull against any such feel of confinement.
Those sent to us to start and train we could tell who had been in good hands, who spoiled by clueless handlers, by the way they would respond to any we did.
Our farrier and vets loved our foals and how bidding their were.
I bet these foals will be like that, already learning so well early their roles as good citizen horses in the human world.
Anyone looking for some cute foal content should check out Stacy Westfall’s FB page. She has an orphan foal from her husband’s mare, and she adopted a rescue foal of the same age to play with it. Lots of really stinkin’ cute videos.
I let them out into the corral this afternoon and have some photos and vids. I’ll download any of the videos are any good.
This is their second trip out the door…nice short vid. Most of the others i’m probably going to need to put into youtube. What’s amazing is they kept moving around for 55 minutes before Hazel finally plunked down and took a nap in the barn. So…i guess he’s feeling pretty good. 
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Here is Brenna and Hazel’s maiden voyage out and about in the world together
This video turned out to be pretty cool, but i have NO IDEA how it all the sudden became slo-mo lol
They both look great, soaking in that sunshine, making lots of Vitamin D!
Look at the match of stride on the photo! And SURPRISE she turns around and goes right back in.
And oh she’s being a MOMMIE!!
just did evening chores and decided to leave them as-is. I was going to turn them out completely and close the barn door and let my other mare, Rizada, have their room…BUT…little Hazel is snoring away. While i was down there he awakened, got up, nursed…and i put his little halter on (sheep halter…because ‘foal’ halter is too large for him) and we had a one minute session. Then he nursed again and plopped down for more snooze. So they can have in-and-out for tonight. He was charging around outside with Brenna watching over him like a hawk for almost an hour, non-stop. That’s a lot for a little booger.
Does he seem to be getting enough milk now? Because it did sound like you were worried about that yesterday but I haven’t seen you mention it today, and I really hope that means it turned out to be OK!
oh gosh…well, i was worried he was not getting enough. I thought mare had mastitis too. I believe i was wrong on both counts. I had the vet snap-test him for immunities…when he was about six hours old and he tested midway btwn Lo and Good. So we tested again next morning and he was still blue-dot-in-between. WHICH it turns out could be anything less than the GOOD quantifier of 800. Low is 400, Good is 800…and ANYTHING inbetween rates middle. So vet wanted to give him a plasma infusion (as it was then too late for colostrum)…and we did that yesterday morning. We also milked Brenna and her milk was good, but the stream …gosh (and i’m used to milking sheep and cows mindyou) was so…thin! But he is verrrrrrrry active, and has been since birth, so i think he probably got all the colostrum he needs and i’m pretty sure he’s getting enough milk. Brenna’s udder has lost a LOT of it turgidity and seems more…baggy now. Thanks for thinking of me/him.
Does he still have the catheter in, just in case he needs another bag of plasma, or is that just a bandage?
just vetwrap over a bandaid. my abundance of caution. Which i took off this morning. No swelling at his injection site and it looks like it’s healing up nicely.
I took some photos of the herd today and was sure to get a few of the sire of these foals, Quigley is four in May.
Scritches
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Ohh, the curliness!!!
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