The Impact Colostrum I had came to good use today. I tried giving it to her by bottle, but she wouldn't take it, so I grabbed an empty supplement bucket and put the colostrum into it.

Within 5 minutes of gulping, sloshing, licking and head-bumping, she had the technique down and sucked up the whole 300mL in about 2 minutes. Aren't foals supposed to not know how to do this until they are a few days old? No problem for this little one. A few hours later she had her second dose.

I was frantic on the phone all day looking for foal milk and foster mares... no luck on the mares but ordered the milk powder to be delivered the next day. Until then I had to use this horrid DiVetelac **** which they use for "all newborn mammals" which means it isn't specificially for horses. Wasn't long before the foal had scours.

Later on, the vet came out and checked her over and took blood for the immunity test. She handled it pretty well.

The vet offered to do an autopsy on Cody so we had that done immediately. He came back in his car after the procedure and said "I can tell you how your mare died but I can't tell you why."

She had torn her diaphragm in half and partially torn her,abdominal wall, and her liver, spleen and some bowel had been found in the chest, due to her lungs collapsing. He had never seen anything like it before and considered it a catastrophic musculature injury most often seen in things like car accidents and horses that fall off embankments.

Her reproductive organs were in perfect order, and the health of everything else about her was great. The placenta he examined was perfect too.

The next day the results of the foal's blood tests came back excellent. All her immunity was passed on. That was great news. No plasma infusion!

The official cause of death for Cody was acute traumatic rupture of the diaphragm and abdominal wall due to a probable congenital defect and excessive stress to tissues relating to activities after giving birth. In other words, she laid down and over-struggled trying to get up, probably panicking over the foal.

At least we know.