REARING FOALS BY BOTTLE

Southland Times, Issue 23610, 10 September 1938, Page 19

REARING FOALS BY BOTTLE

PRECAUTIONS ARE NECESSARY If, for any reason, a foal has to be reared without its mother’s milk, particular care must be taken with its first bottle feedings. Give it first a dose of castor oil in a little cow’s milk warmed to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Guard against scouring, by feeding little and often, and by keeping the bottle scrupulously clean and the milk fresh and always at blood heat. Intervals between feeds should not exceed two hours during the first 10 days (says The New Zealand Herald). To make a pint of cow’s milk suitable for rearing a foal, take three-quarters of a pint of fresh milk and add a quarter of a pint of lime water. To this add half an ounce of sugar, preferably milk sugar. Finally, add two teaspoonsful of codliver oil, shake well and feed at 100 degrees.

At three weeks to a month, give the foal a supplement of equal parts of crushed oats, bran and linseed meal, and encourage it to graze on clean pasture. As soon as it is taking this supplement and grazing freely, reduce the milk feeds to three a day, then to two —morning and night—and finally wean completely when the foal begins to lack interest in the bottle.

Throughout the milk-feeding period, and until some weeks after weaning, the most serious threats which must be guarded against are constipation and scour. The best remedy for either is a fast for 12 hours and then a liberal dose of castor oil.