I did revise the window a bit after speaking to the previous owner and she could have been covered as early as late September apparently. Previous owner checked her records and updated the date she purchased her once I asked.
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I am still logging in daily to see if there is a baby pic!
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If the mare is pregnant, you should see signs as the pregnancy progresses. You can sometimes feel the foal move and kick. You can see the belly becoming more and more dropped. Absolutely may see some changes in behavior prior to foaling. The udders will continue to enlarge and fill with milk. You may see some waxing prior to foaling. I think if she is pregnant, she will tell you with just close visual observation. She may have a change in her usual behaviors that is out of the ordinary. My mare may itch her tail on the fence, but she only every sat pressed up on the fence while pregnant.
Or she could just be a chubby TB. It does happen. My friend’s arabian gelding certainly looks pregnant at certain times of the year.
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On the topic of feeling the foal - at some point, the foal can be big enough that there’s little to no room to really move around. It’s not uncommon to not feel movement in the late weeks.
Some foals move into foaling position weeks before, and the mare’s belly gets the V profile. Sometimes that doesn’t happen until just days before. Sometimes, the V doesn’t happen.
Not all mares get a “real” udder until right before foaling.
In other words, presence of things can be a strong indicator of pregnant and closer to foaling.
BUT, absence of those things doesn’t mean not pregnant.
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The dilemma with assuming she’s just fat is I hate to restrict calories if there’s any chance she’s growing a baby. Vet says no baby so I’m going with that. But rather than putting her on a reducing diet I’m going to try to remove things like soy that could be contributing to her appearance.
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I have nothing to add regarding whether or not the mare is in foal (but I am eagerly following along!!!)… but I will say my mare carries all her weight in her belly and until she scaled 1520 at the hospital and got put on a strict diet was often mistaken for being preggers… (she’s about 16.2 and an Oldenburg - so, that weight was a shock!) Even now, post-diet and post-Potomac Fever weight loss, she manages (in the words of a barnmate) to look both ribby and fat at the same time… even after she has gone down two sizes in girths.
AND want to add that she is my fourth mare and this thread taught me I should be cleaning her udders, which I did today. (Full service barns of my youth never taught me that!) So, thank you! I was slightly horrified that I didn’t know they could get beans or smegma up there, but barn manager assured me that she’s been doing it for me. Still embarrassed. I thought I was a better horseman!
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You can feed calories to increase or decrease weight, but nutrition shouldn’t be sacrificed. You can feed her nutritionally as if she’s pregnant, with a lower calorie intake, with a ration balancer.
In your case, if I remember right, she’s getting 2lb of Sr and 1c of a ration balancer. That’s more calories than 2lb of a ration balancer, and 2lb of a ration balancer is more nutrition. But even then, that’s not a whole lot of calories.
Switching to a soy-free ration balancer, fed as if she’s pregnant, would at least work on the soy angle. You can muzzle her if she’s on grass, which wouldn’t be the worst thing even if she is pregnant.
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You’d be surprised how many even long-time MOs don’t know about cleaning between teats, let alone about mare beans! That’s just not all that commonly talked about, the geldings get all the hype! 
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Truth!!! I thought maybe it was because I only had geldings before I moved up to the As and full service that I knew about cleaning sheaths… but now that you mention it, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t have heard about it SOMEWHERE if it were as widely discussed. My trainer, vet and barn manager all credit me with being pretty knowledgeable. I like to learn. To add to the embarrassment… I did clock today that I had previously noticed (and apparently ignored) that the “sheath cleaner” in the wash rack supplies says it’s also for udders on the bottle. Lol.
If it redeems me, I do clean the beans out from under her tail and the wrinkles there.
PS, I would consider 4 mares over several decades (90s/00s and now to be a “longtime” MO. So, count me in!
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Since you’re feeding Triple Crown but looking to cut soy wherever you can, maybe switch to the TC Gold line?
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Just remember/know that Perform Gold and Senior Gold still have soy, it’s just the hulls, no soybean meal. It’s only the Balancer Gold that’s truly soy-free. It also has lower protein, which for horses eating enough reasonably good quality grass/hay isn’t an issue.
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I picked up the Balancer Gold yesterday and giving that a try.
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There are many family run dairy farms where they don’t have the cash and people around to install cameras to watch 24/7. They work hard and take excellent care of their animals and produce a good product.
Many a heifer has freshened on a big dairy farm with a blind quarter because she was unknowingly sucked on by another calf because you can’t see everything. They do all they can to prevent that but it happens.
That is my whole point. Just let the “average” mare owners who may not be aware, the risks involved when handling the mare’s udder because nothing is foolproof. Even when you do everything right.
Dear candyappy,
You are attempting to tell someone who has worked on both small family farms and large farms equipped with everything from parlours to tie stalls to robots with and without cameras how dairy farms are run.
You are all wet.
- Smaller farms do the eyes on cows things themselves.
- Blind quarters on heifers can be caused by any sort of trauma or injury and possibly by being suckled unknowingly by other calves. But, there are zero cases of that on any decent dairy farm. Calves and heifers that want to suck don’t run behind a bush. They are quite ok with being watched and they tend to exhibit the behaviour very often.
By now, I think we all get that you have some weird gross out perversion about nipples and touching being bad. It’s ok that you have such a perversion. It’s not ok to spread it forcefully all over creation as being the word of your god.
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Your implication here is that you advocate strongly against a practice with very little risk, and therefore discourage anyone from doing everything they can to make sure a foaling isn’t unattended, where things can go wrong in a huge hurry.
I’ll take the teeny tiny chance of causing mastitis over the alternative.
You seem to think the plug is there until the mare foals, and then the spigot is wide open. It doesn’t work like that. Expressing a few drops of milk from a mare already dripping milk isn’t a problem, and I have no idea how you’d introduce bacteria into the nipple that way.
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Believe what you like. I am sorry OP that my expressing my concern about safety in udder handling has caused so many people to go off the deep end.
I hope your mare gets back to normal soon.
It really actually should since I worked on some of the top classified farms (yes, they get measured for all sorts of things from production to financials) in the region of the country that is most dense in dairying for about 20 years. But carry on, I know nothing of dairying.
I’m glad you’ve owned your own cows. How rewarding. Good for you. That doesn’t come anywhere close to milking literally hundreds of cows daily, and taking care of those cows daily. How many vet-run upgrading/educational hours do you have per year? I averaged 20+ and all the on-farm learning that happens when the vet is there, the university is doing another study, etc.
I mean this with all the respect you deserve, YOU are the one off the deep end. Your back yard cow owning and knowing people who have cows makes you an expert on absolutely nothing and you only make yourself look more and more bonkers by carrying on and on about something about which you know just about nothing.
And to be clear, I don’t care that you know nothing. You can be as wilfully ignorant as you like, but I do not take kindly to the spreading of that nonsense to people who don’t know better and could be easily influenced to the detriment of their horse’s health by taking up your “warning” as gospel.
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I regret the way I answered the post above. I can’t take the words back but I can at least take them off. ( Unless someone quoted them below) Talking to someone like that isn’t who I am. Even I have human moments of bad judgment I suppose.
Senior Gold has soybean meal (and hulls and soybean oil–like the Perform). I think it fits in the Gold line because it also has some whey in it and it has the same ingredients for GI support as the other Gold feeds. Only the Balancer Gold is soy free.
I am afraid that this is a case of not knowing what we don’t know.
Is remedied with more learning, that happens when listening:
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