The second day of Freedom

posted in Blog, FSHR Horses, Horses, Mares & Foals | Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

Freedom chats with Princess

Freedom began his second day of life with a nice drink from the milk bar. At the same time, Mama Liberty was enjoying a drink from the water trough…a perfect exchange of fluids?

Sharing the wealth

After a quick check to make sure all was well with the rest of our horsey world, I reattached myself to Liberty’s foaling pen to keep a close eye on the little black foal.

Out of all the foals we have had, we’ve lost only one (years ago, to patent urachus, which we’d never heard of and the vet missed on neonatal exam). This was so horrible and traumatizing that we instituted The Rule.

No Foal Is To Be Named Until It Has Survived For Two Weeks.

Erin, Conor and Freedom

And yet, somehow, between Facebook friends and volunteers, it became quickly obvious that rules or no rules, this foal had been born with a name, and though we tried not to address him by it, “the foal whose name will be Freedom if he lives” was just too cumbersome to say.

I took his and Liberty’s temperatures twice that day (a ritual that would continue for the first week of his life) and cleaned the pen three times, searching for foal poo. Eventually, I did find some.

Junior smells Freedom

It took Mary’s insightful logic to point out that Junior was probably not following Freedom around because he was lunch, but because in all likelihood, Freedom was providing lunch. Eew.

Freedom seemed to be doing pretty well, and so in the afternoon, we opened the gate to see if Liberty wanted to take him out visiting. She declined. But later on, during my second (or third) cleaning of the pen, Liberty pushed her way out and Freedom scampered after her.

By the hay barn

At first, they hung out right by the pen, in the space between it and the hay barn. But in moments, Princess got into the action, eager to begin tormenting her “little brother.”

Princess introduces herself

After that little incident, Clover introduced herself, and then the little group wandered down the hill to browse near the fence that separated them from the “40″ herd.