I’m sitting on needles , my mare is 2 days OD , has heavy wax and could go at any time … after checking her 3 times throughout the night and no baby I’m considering a monitor or Foalert or something ! I WANT to be there should problems arise.
What are you all doing or using ? Tips for timing it or some type of affordable monitoring method …?
Have you checked the pH of her milk? It gets more acidic (lower pH) within 12 hrs of foaling.
To answer your question, if you only have one foal coming, I’d just get up every couple of hours to check rather than go to the expense of purchasing a system.
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Milk pH , no never heard of that . Is there a certain level or does it vary from horse to horse ? Also what type of a pH test do I use ?
Horses don’t really go “overdue”: http://www.equine-reproduction.com/articles/overdue.shtml
Here’s an article about when to tell she’s about to foal: http://www.equine-reproduction.com/articles/predicting.htm
This might also be worth a read: http://www.equine-reproduction.com/articles/Foaling.shtml
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At that stage, you may want to sleep in the barn if you REALLY don’t want to miss the birth. Sleeping bag? Just be unobtrusive or she may wait.
If she is waxing up then it shouldn’t be too much longer. Hate to say it but either sleep in the barn or do the dreaded multiple middle of the night checks. No matter what you do you won’t get any sleep until the foal is here and thriving:D
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Yup, I worked at a breeding farm for three years and we used to take turns sleeping in the barn during foaling season (and by sleeping I mean we hung out in the apartment above the barn and went down to the stall every 15 minutes). One year the owner of the barn swore (!!!) that he had been gone for only 15 minutes and the mare foaled out in that time, but we all suspect he fell asleep and missed it. Either way the mare and foal were fine.
You could probably jerry-rig a webcam in the stall if you have an internet connection in your barn, but honestly you will fall asleep trying to watch a monitor. You are better off forcing yourself to get up and go check as that wakes you up. I speak from experience!
320-370 days is very normal. 340 is the average-ish, and plenty, plenty of mares go over a year. So if your mare is 342 days, she isn’t remotely overdue
has heavy wax and could go at any time … after checking her 3 times throughout the night and no baby I’m considering a monitor or Foalert or something ! I WANT to be there should problems arise.
What are you all doing or using ? Tips for timing it or some type of affordable monitoring method …?
What does her belly look like - anything like a V from the side? How relaxed and “droopy” is her vulva? How much muscle tone (resistance) when you try to lift her tail? How squishy (or not) are the muscles beside her tail head?
Go to Walmart/Home Depot/Lowes and get some pH pool test strips - the pH needs to go down to at least 6.2, as that’s the magic pH for foaling. It doesn’t mean she’ll foal the instant she gets there, or that she’s got weeks if she’s at 7.0. It means the closer she is to 6.2, and the faster the milk trends down there, the sooner she is likely to foal.
But with heavy wax, I would be sleeping in the barn, if you don’t have a good camera and hopefully some help watching it. I would not be leaving her alone.
Wow, you are way more laid back than I would be! If I had a pregnant mare I would have been madly searching for answers (and probably scaring myself silly with all the possible complications) from about the second month on. :lol:
So it is a good thing I dont have a broodmare!
When is foaling imminent?
When you walk away for a minute to brush your teeth or take a shower.:lol:
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endlessclimb is right… imho. We have a ‘peekaboo’ window in the foaling stall. Might as well have put in a solid wall. It didn’t matter how sneaky I was - all the mares waited until I was gone before they dropped their foals. Oh well, those beautiful new foals made up for missing the action.
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Test strips help a lot. People used to do very technical process with calcium and milk diluted with distilled water but I put the milk straight on the strip and test PH only and it works really well. Thing is, she can drop from 7 to 6.2 in a matter of hours, so when she looks close in other ways then definitely check every few hours, when the PH drops then you need to stay up with her all night for sure. There is a great article about how to do this and how it is just as effective to not test calcium and to not dilute the milk if you google it. I buy rolls of test strips off amazon.
I’ve had mares wax for at least a week or more before foaling. If she is losing a lot of milk, you should milk her and freeze the colostrum, that way the foal still gets some. Sometimes if they are dripping milk for weeks before foaling, they lose all of their colostrum before foaling.
So true, I was watching a mare once and had just put her out in her paddock. We knew she was close but didn’t’ show any imminent signs.
A friend drove into the yard and we were chatting outside, for maybe 15 minutes, like 50’ away from the paddock fence in full sight of the mare. I glance over and wonder when the dog got in the paddock… then I look more closely and realise it’s a foal, already standing!!!
Restlessness ,pacing and lack of interest in meals or other horses can be reasonable indicators in some mares, as well as a slight rise in body temperature.
But my best suggestion is a cott and sleeping bag either in the tack room or stall next to her depending upon how comfortable she is with your presence paired with a high quality baby monitor camera system with a nice high Def screen. It will trigger when she moves so you get lots of false alarm time but it is invaluable to not having to disturb her possible labor by continually peeking into barn. Worked wonders for me and I never missed a baby, and best of all I did not have to get out of my warm sleeping bag too early 
