Listen, I would really like to keep things civil. If you aren’t able to because this is bothering you too much, can you please turn off notifications and stop posting. The sniping is not constructive at all, or helpful.
I don’t know why you are being raked over the coals for this. If I purchased a foal in utero and the breeder decided to administer drugs that had the potential to affect foaling without a veterinarian’s supervision, let alone a drug known for premature lactation and failure of passive transfer, I would not be happy. I also wouldn’t be doing cartwheels just because the foal survived.
At this point, I would voice your concerns to the owner and potentially negotiate paying part of the bill, if indeed the drug was given unnecessarily and without veterinary supervision. I think paying half would be a compromise and much cheaper than pursuing legal means.
There are some other groups of breeders you could propose this question to who may reserve the judgment. Let me know if you’re interested.
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And for other posters, I think OP knows they can change the barn name, I think the issue is they feel uninvolved. That’s valid. No need to be condescending.
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You’re being unreasonable about this purchase in a lot of different ways. It would probably be better for all parties to back out of the contract, source your own mare, and breed a foal where you’re controlling every element. Best of luck.
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No one on this forum knows why this foal had such a poor iGG. To state that premature lactation couldn’t have caused subsequent failure of passive transfer is absurd.
It is also standard protocol to check iGg levels in any foal. I think it’s quite unfair to automatically assume that the buyer and breeder only checked iGg because of domperidone. We don’t know their standard protocol.
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Since there is no way to know why it actually happened or assign " blame" or fault, can you not approach the breeder and see if they would be open to splitting the cost?
I would still be prepared to foot the bill but there is not harm in asking. When it comes to finances it seems we all get a little reactive.
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Yes please, and thank you. This is my first time buying in utero, and I do feel a little lost at this point with that aspect of it. Even with with lots of horse experience in general. I’d hate to be an actual new horse person with just questions and having some stuff like this said. I really appreciate the non judgment and validation after all that. It would be nice to have some cordial conversations whether they’re in agreement with me or not. Like, I really do want the other perspective, just not while being belittled.
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PM’ed you.
Snark and judgment do not belong in productive conversations. I hope you continue your education and ask questions in all areas. Contract issues are incredibly common in breeding and these questions should be asked so we can all benefit from the conversation. I really hope everything works out for you and your foal and you and the breeder can come to a reasonable solution. My fingers are crossed for you.
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Yes, absolutely,
Like, I have an email started. I never planned on doing anything legal. It’s so messy and things get burned. And I really would like to keep things cordial and friendly. I want to discuss this with the owner, which is the plan. But I really do struggle with words and didn’t want to end up saying the wrong thing. Hence me coming here for a little help and insight. I didn’t think I was being unreasonable, but I am upset. So wanted to go into it with the other perspective before shoving foot in mouth.
I’m pretty non-confrontational in general, so if it were me asking about who pays, I think I’d just go to the breeder-- “about the foal’s hospital bill, who pays that?” If the breeders says you, I wouldn’t push back. I wouldn’t make accusations. Because from your posts, there is really no way to assign fault.
When I read your initial post, I took your statements at face value and read that the breeder was impatient and tried giving the mare domperidone to see if it would speed things along. I realized after the fact I made a lot of assumptions. I assumed it was a full 2x daily regimen over several days. I assumed you had evidence that the mare unnecessarily lactated heavily.
The story is a little different now. I don’t say that to chew you out or anything.
I don’t entirely understand what the breeder was trying to accomplish with one dose of domperidone. I think there is a good chance the breeder was concerned about a lack of udder on day 350 of gestation and was worried about fescue toxicity/agalactia and said “let’s see if this helps.”
There are valid reasons why a breeder would do this without involving the veterinarian-- a lot of breeders do much of their own veterinary work or have a trusted relationship with a vet where the vet is willing to provide them protocolized medications to have on hand. Yet I also believe that breeders can’t do that type of thing with an in-utero purchase because they are crossing into dangerous legal territory. Regardless, I don’t think that changes the fact that you’re going to have to pay the bill. There’s a good chance FPT would have happened any way the situation would have played out.
With an in-utero purchase, generally the breeder does the decision making while the foal is at the mare’s side. This is for the safety and health of the mare and foal. It also just makes sense-- the foal is basically a tagalong on the breeder’s mare at this point and the breeder has to provide their mare what she needs. Any good business person will hopefully know how to communicate with their customer appropriately, but unfortunately that doesn’t always happen (which is not unique to horses). So you may be asking yourself, “shouldn’t the breeder be communicating this with me?” Absolutely, that would be ideal, and I’m sorry if it’s not happening. It’s frustrating.
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I don’t think anyone, including me, is saying that the dom couldn’t have caused the FPT. But all the info out there, including the few that I posted, strongly support that a single dose, 2 weeks prior to foaling, was so highly unlikely to have been anything but coincidental, which is a total 180 to that the OP is choosing to “feel”
Editing to say in that in reading my comments again, I did say "1 dose didn’t do anything to compromise the quality of the colostrum, nor cause her to stream milk. It is almost guaranteed to be purely coincidence that 15 days later she foaled. "
My intent in all that was to be (as I’d said in some other places), that the changes of a single dose of dom being the cause of the low IgG was so unlikely to have been the cause, as to pretty much just be coincidental. It simply takes more than a single dose to make changes either in antibody levels or in milk production. It’s not like a single shot of Lutylase and boom you’ve induced ovulation.
Apologies for the confusion
I run across a LOT of breeders who don’t do IgG checks as a standard practice. A lot of them are large breeders of stock horses, many of whom simply turn pregnant mares out in the back 500 and sometime in the Spring the mares come up with their week-ish old foals (or they don’t).
But some of them are hands-on breeders, proper vaccinations and all, mares in barns with cameras, who adamantly think that if the foal nurses in 2-4 hours he’s fine, and never do IgG checks unless for some reason the foal doesn’t nurse or the mare isn’t producing milk. There are so many of those breeders that isn’t not valid to assume it’s a normal part of every breeding operation.
Nobody assumed anything about the breeder only checking IgG because of the dom. I said that IF that was the only reason the breeder checked IgG, then be thankful, because for all we know that test is not part of their standard, and the IgG would have been low without dom even in the picture.
And no, we don’t know their standard protocol, which is also a point I made.
I would simply say something like “I wasn’t expecting the plasma, and since that isn’t part of the contract one way or another, I’m wondering who is responsible for that part of the bill”.
It is your assumption, without anything to back it up and still despite several links provided, that the plasma need was preventable.
Your feelings can’t be part of this. Keep it objective.
You probably do have some legal recourse since the “Mare’s owner admits fault per email” - her fault, her bill, regardless of whether it actually caused the bill. But in reality, legal action likely isn’t remotely worth it.
So ask the question above, and if she says “yeah, I shouldn’t have done that, I’ll pay”, awesome.
But if she says “Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that, but I don’t know that it caused the situation” then offer to pay half, or offer to pay all of it, depending on how you read the room.
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I didn’t read all the replies. I can only tell you what my experience is with something similar. My mare was given domperidone after she foaled and had insufficient milk production. Then we started domperidone daily for 2 weeks. The foal had a partial failure of passive transfer because of insufficient colostrum production from the mare. Fortunately, he was a very strong and sturdy foal because I really doubt he received any nutrition at all from the mare those first 3 days of life.
My mare had no exposure to fescue but I have been told that sometimes this just happens for reasons unknown.
When used properly domperidone is a lifesaver, and certainly beats having to raise a foal from a bucket.
I really doubt 1 dose of domperidone was enough to cause this. You would need to give it daily for several days for it to start working.
I would just pay the vet bill, if the breeder asks. Or you can ask to split the bill because you don’t know if this was the fault of the mare for leaking colostrum, or the fault of the foal for not absorbing it.
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Does your contract have an acceptance/rejection clause? Or guarantee of health at 48 hours? It sounds like you’re past any deadline I’ve seen in such clauses but they sometimes include an initial vet check (and sometimes IgG check) at the cost of the seller. It could be argued that if the foal required vet care before it was “certified” healthy as per an acceptance or guarantee clause, then the costs would be on the seller … unless the time the buyer has to reject the foal has elapsed.
Does your contract have penalties for late payment or for default? Some contracts include penalties and/or attorney’s fees to break the contract, so that’s something to be aware of if you want to back out.
I know you said that the contract says that the buyer is responsible for routine vet care but I’d read the entire contract carefully to see if the foal’s condition is addressed in any of the other clauses.
Having said that, it’s unlikely that the domperidone is the cause of the FPT and there isn’t any way to prove that it was. If the owner believes that what she did was the cause, then hopefully she’ll be willing to pay part or all of the costs. But if she isn’t willing to pay the costs, your only practical remedies are likely to be those that are laid out in the contract. If the contract’s live foal guarantee says that the foal must be heathy at 24 or 48 hours, you might have a solid argument.
(But as always, consult a good attorney.)
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I don’t even know for sure that it was only the 1 dose. I just know that it happened and she apparently had great milk. So, if it takes more than one dose for a mare to make milk that well, maybe it was more. She stopped producing afterwards and I believe just had the baby on her own, but who really knows. It wasn’t used with the intent to make milk, though. The goal was to get her to foal. That part seems pretty clear to me based on what was said. Evidence of lactation with a positive test showing she was about to foal. Some sort of test strip. Not something I’ve used before. Only other thing is owner stating mare had great milk. So, she definitely lactated due to the domperidone. And once it was stopped, she stopped lactating. And it was clearly stopped because that was mentioned as well. I don’t know if it was started again later, though. It wasn’t mentioned and I haven’t asked. I assumed it was just the one dose… but maybe it wasn’t?
I’m really not interested in backing out of the contract. Or doing anything legal. I was thinking about it for a half second but that was before I came here.
The IgG check was standard. Sorry, that one slipped by me with everything else that was going on. That check is part of the wellfoal check.
“Make milk” is a long way from the streaming that would have any chance of effecting IgG. Were you ever told that she was actually streaming milk?
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You aren’t making any sense. Colostrum isn’t lactating, it’s what comes before they lactate. They only make colostrum for a max of about 24 hours then it is gone and the milk comes in. Giving one dose or a million doses of domperidone doesn’t make them foal any faster than they would if you didn’t give domperidone. Milk testing to judge foaling readiness has been the norm for a decade or more.
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Yeah. And it should be well known that “abnormal” lactating mares (either placentitis or domperidone-induced) MAY NOT give reliable results testing pH and calcium for foaling prediction. And dom absolutely doesn’t “induce foaling” in any way. It takes several days of twice daily dosing for the udder to show effects. Oxytocin will cause immediate let down if there is milk; domperidone doesn’t work like that.
My maiden mare in 2013 was slow to build an udder with minimal development at 330 and “may” have had fescue exposure 90 days from foaling. My vet recommended domperidone, not a “must use” but “if you have it, you may want to give it.” So I gave it. 5 days later she had a bag; 7 days later she was streaming milk (and I quit giving dom). She foaled at 343. Foal’s IGG was poor and we gave plasma. Same mare foaled again 5 years later, no dom needed, not streaming milk, no wax even, but again foal’s IGG was low. Sometimes it just happens.
OP, I understand you want to blame the breeder. But essentially you bought an embryo, and signed a contract with someone you must have trusted to a satisfactory degree of knowledge/horsemanship. All embryos don’t turn out “normal”, regardless of the good/bad things a breeder may control. At the time of foaling, a breeder may be making immediate decisions without involving you (especially if you lack the experience to properly assist in those decisions). I have not sold in utero, but I did sell a 2-week old foal this spring. I kept the owner informed regularly, especially regarding any vet concerns, but largely the owner’s response was “I trust you, please do what you think is best.” The owner didnt just want this filly for her pedigree/parents, she wanted her because she was raised under my guidance and she completely trusted my judgment and skill in raising a healthy foal.
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I don’t really have any opinion about what you should or shouldn’t do re: your contract or paying the bill, but reading through the thread it makes me have some questions about your breeder’s knowledge base. Hopefully if you decide to do whatever needs to be done to take full ownership of the foal all will be well, but if I were in your shoes I’d be a little worried about how this breeder will respond if anything else goes wrong.
I am fresh off an experience with a very long-carrying mare and we discussed domperidone because she was taking so long to start developing any sort of an udder (we were worried that we had somehow missed fescue exposure). In the end we had the domperidone but didn’t use it and finally she did make a bag and things went pretty much according to plan after that.
Domperidone doesn’t induce foaling, though, so I’d view it as a concern that your breeder thought it would. You should count all parties lucky that it doesn’t, because inducing a mare is generally a terrible idea and if this foal had been induced two weeks early you’d have much bigger fish to fry. If you need to use domperidone, best practice is to test the colostrum if it is produced and have high-quality frozen colostrum on hand to give the foal (and of course test the IgG). If you are using it because you are concerned about fescue poisoning or some other problem preventing lactation, you don’t just give one or a couple of doses and quit (I guess unless you have regrets about what you just did without the input of your vet?). If you use domperidone, you can no longer count on milk strip testing telling you when foaling is imminent.
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I don’t know. I haven’t used, nor would use domperidone without the vet telling me to do so or at least recommending it. And yeah, I do see that it’s for lactation, not induction. I figured the “may cause premature labor” was why it was being used in this way. But I don’t have experience with that. And I also see where it causes false positives on the milk strip testing, so I don’t know why she was testing, but she did.
As far as trust goes, yeah I did at the time have some trust that she knows what she’s doing. It’s a bit shaken at this time, however. Which started when she started doing things the vet didn’t recommend. Not a whole lot to be done about that, though.
Yes, this was the conclusion I came to after reading about and looking into domperidone. And if it was my mare and I was instructed or recommended to use it, this is what I would inquire about with the vet.
Alot about her using this has me confused and not very happy.
I think there is a lot of missing information. I’d would ask the breeder more questions about what their protocol was. Even difficult conversations can be navigated if questions are asked respectfully and for the sake of a better understanding. I would want to know what drugs were given, why, for what duration, and if under the guidance of a vet if you are still interested in potentially paying part of the bill. If the foal is healthy, you could pay the bill, cut your losses and move on. Depends on what you want out of the situation.
And FWIW, there are some mares that bag up late, even 12 hours prior to foaling and they lactate without issue. Frozen colostrum should be kept on hand any time a foal is born.
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