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Inducing abortion in filly NEW UPDATE March 10

Seeing the pictures - she’s SO CUTE! :heart_eyes:

These pics aren’t good to tell what’s maybe some weight gain, vs potential baby bump, especially if she’s “maybe ~6 months along”

The vulva wouldn’t start changing until foaling is days away.

Do you have a well-lit side view of her today, like the August pic?

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Has she been dewormed? Sometimes a worm infestation can cause belly bloating.

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At 6 months possibly bred you won’t see any difference.

Looks more like to me ( from the current pics) that she is just growing and filling out which is common for horses in the 2-3 year old range. I see nothing abnormal about her shape.

Doesn’t mean she isn’t bred, but looking at her I bet she would foal without an issue and most likely have a decent, sellable foal.

She is nice and long legged for a pony. Very cute.

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I don’t think she looks pregnant, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t - most mares don’t seem to show until farther along…

However, at this point (if I were you) I’d get it confirmed or not, get vaccinations etc UTD, and then find a clinic or vet hosp that will do the actual foaling out. I have minimal experience with foaling when there were no issues (like…six, total, ever) and have no desire to deal with even a problem-free birth at this point.

Also, she really is stinking adorable.

Good point about the deworming - what’s the history that you know of?

I don’t think she looks pregnant either. Young horses can go through some pot belly stages when they’re getting ready to have a growth spurt. Know one 2 yo gelding that looked similar until recently now he’s very butt high with a partial pot belly. And obviously not pregnant ;). Eventually the front end will catch up and then he’ll probably look gangly for a bit.

I do know someone who bought a mare with a surprise foal, and poor girl we thought she was just fat (she was not just chunky in the belly) until her belly started to take on a more triangular shape. That was pretty late in the pregnancy.

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I don’t think she looks pregnant, either. It could be a very small foal, but . . .

I once bought a 3-year old Arab mare, who was (unbeknownst to us) in foal. Counting backwards from when the foal was born, she was five months pregnant when we bought her. It was hard to tell then, but within a month, it was far more clear. Undeniably clear.

I think your filly looks a little fat through the belly because she has no topline yet, and might still be a little wormy/putting on weight. But you should get the blood test, just to be sure.

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I also agree she doesn’t look pregnant. But she could just not be far along. Any time I get a mare from with a mysterious background I always check them for pregnancy. Many times unscrupulous sellers will dump their mares when they suspect she may have been accidentally bred and they don’t want to deal with the financial consequences.
Luckily none of the ones I have gotten have been.

As others have said, while breeding to a direct family member isn’t ideal, it’s unlikely to result in any major defects and it’s not uncommon for a coming 3 YO to be bred.

@Caol_Ila bought a filly who ended up being in foal as a 2/3 year old. Quite a similar situation, actually, if this filly is indeed pregnant.

Perhaps she’ll chime in.

Does she eat hay off of the ground? Could she have a belly full of sand?

Hah.

Hah. Yeah, I did. I bought a 2.5 year old PRE filly from a reputable breeder this past March. The horse did not appear pregnant, and I wasn’t suspicious because one assumes a reputable breeder is not an idiot. The filly had a bit of a potbelly when the weather began warming up but again, didn’t think anything of it. Fresh grass, plus youngsters can look a bit funky. Fast forward to start of June – I went to the yard, and there was something about the shape of her belly that made me think, “Oh… shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.” I checked her udder, and it was swollen. I posted a thread on the Horse and Hound forum (the UK equivalent of this), titled, “Should I hit the panic button?” A couple posters suggested that it might be a reaction to clover in the field. I prayed for clover.

Vet came out two days later. Took one look at the horse and said, “Not only is this horse in foal, but I will eat my hat if she doesn’t foal this week.” I burst into tears. I had put my 28-year old horse down two days beforehand, and I did not want a foal. And I was at a livery yard, which understandably did not have the perfect set-up for foals. But at that point, the foal was coming no matter what. Yard owner and I just had to make it work with what we had. The vet, at any rate, did not think her age greatly increased the risk of complications. And about two weeks shy of her third birthday, my filly popped out a healthy colt.

It wasn’t all fun and cute foalie games, though. The Andalusian breeder would pet and fuss over her youngstock, but she didn’t halter break them or anything like that. Maybe due to her age and the fact that she’d only been halter broken since I’d bought her in March, the filly became very foal proud and totally lost her mind. She was feral and uncatchable, for like a month. None of the usual tricks worked, so we had to set up a mustang race in the field and herd them into it in order to get halters back on. I was panicking about the mare panicking and hurting herself and the foal, but the YO knew how to use a race, and my filly actually had a good brain underneath new-mom-postpartum weirdness. Once everyone was contained, normal service could resume. The mare remembered that 5000 years of domestication had really happened.

I think with a mature, established horse, or a youngster who was actually handled and halter-broke as a foal, the mustang race would not have been needed.

The colt is five months old now. Both of them are now very civilized horses. He’s cute, but I’m still selling him as soon as he’s weaned. His mom is young and obviously unbroke, and I need two babies like a hole in the head.

As for how we got into this situation in the first place? The breeder, for reasons known only to herself, had stopped separating her colts and her fillies (and she doesn’t geld her colts – that’s apparently a PRE thing), so all the youngstock were running together, like teenagers in Ibiza. What do you think is going to happen? The sire is my filly’s half-brother of the same age. Linebreeding, right?

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This is my filly about six weeks before she foaled. I had no idea she was pregnant.


This is my filly about three weeks before she foaled. I still had no idea she was pregnant.

This is my filly the day I suspected that she might be in foal, two weeks after that previous photo.

This is very much not clover.

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LOL did you name the foal “Very Much Not Clover?”

Wow, I would never have suspected she was in foal.

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Me. Neither.

I did think about calling him that, but I went for a play on my old horse’s name. Discovering his existence on the same day that I put her down was the weirdest part of the whole bloody soap opera.

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“This is very much not clover”

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:
Oh but he is CUTE! Sorry he came at a bad time, but what a sweet ending it sounds like.

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:rofl:
So did you name him Not Clover?

ETA: I see I wasn’t first :smirk:

I called him Caso de Sorpresa (Caso being his barn name). The Spanish-English translation being “Case of Surprise.” My old horse was called Gypsum, and the chemical formula of gypsum is CaSO4. And he was very much a surprise.

In hindsight, I should have called him Caso de Cerveza. Case of Beer, because that’s what I usually feel like I need these days.

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Hi, All:

Apologies for not updating sooner–holidays plus general funk based on developments (see below) but thanks for all of the helpful feedback + compliments for this cutie patootie + accounts of personal experiences. She got checked by a vet late last week so now have complete update.

2 1/2 weeks ago I ran the at-home pregnancy test – checks estrogen in urine – came out screaming positive for at least 6 months pregnant-- see results below–and she kept eating voraciously and bulging more so there was no doubt by then. Vet confirmed pregnancy but said she’s healthy and should have no problem foaling out despite being ~2 1/2 or so years old. He also said she looks due in only six to eight weeks, so at least she won’t keep getting bigger for several more months.

Poor little thing, she still romps and plays and has some baby behaviors but now is going to be “Teen Mom.” :frowning_face: , all because of poor management on the ranch she came from, probably the result of not separating out the colts in time.

Test results 11-17-21:

Today:

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She will be fine! Jingles for you both.

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I’m glad you have a pretty definitive answer, even though I know it’s not the one you wanted

Can you update us (or tell me again, I’m sorry!) what she’s eating?

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