Well, just got off the phone with her caretaker at the QT. The vet palpated but only felt fluid, and recommended an ultrasound (which they don’t do for some reason). So…we still don’t know. But her eye doesn’t need removal at this point, so she will be on her way home soon.
Can it be difficult to palpate fetuses at a
certain stage? I thought I’d heard something along those lines at one point.
I think you are correct, at some point once it’s dropped below the pelvic rim or something like that, it’s difficult to determine via palpating.
You will have buyers at your door if you end up with a Spotted mule baby!
Depends how many mares the vet has palped… I would try to find a vet who does a fair bit of repro work. Good news about the eye!
More than a few even very experienced repro vets have missed later term pregnancies because they couldn’t reach the foal over the pelvic rim. Some of that is mare conformation, some is foal size.
Blood work until around 2 weeks before foaling is pretty reliable, and so should a trans-abdominal ultrasound.
Thanks everyone. He did say it “felt” like maybe an early pregnancy. Haha. She will be getting an ultrasound as soon as she gets here and settles. No surprises, please.
She definitely has “the look” (which he agreed), but likely she has been popping out babies for a while, too. A 6 month-old fetus (as per the people who brought her to the auction, she was covered for an April-ish foal) would be hard to miss, but also it does seem to happen. It’s never straightforward with some of these auction horses.
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