Sylvan Lake mare gives rare birth to twin stillborn babies; becomes new mother to an orphan foal

Debbie McGauran moved to Alberta in 2016 with just one of her horses, Iris, a thoroughbred breed with a bay base coat. She is one of the few left of her kind in the continent as she has a dominant white sabino strain, shown on her legs, face and stomach.

McGauran bred her with a warm-blooded black stallion, receiving no indication that Iris was pregnant with twins as various ultrasounds showed one fetus.

She said the twins shared the same placenta, rendering them identical, potentially causing them to be missed on the ultrasound.

Katchuik explained that horses typically aren’t allowed to carry twins as there is a higher chance of complications such as retaining of the placenta, post-partum infection, entanglement of twins during birth and lacerations in the pelvic canal. He said the twin rate in horses is eight per cent at its highest.

McGauran added that a twin is typically pinched off when noticed during an ultrasound as carrying them to term is highly unusual.

When the foals were born at around 7:30 a.m., she says they first believed the cause of death was lethal white syndrome, a disorder causing an all-white coat and internal colon failure. However, McGauran noticed a brown spot on their heads and ears, making them Medicine Hats.

According to Wild Horse Education, Medicine Hat-colored horses in Native American legends have magical powers to protect their riders from injury during battles. McGauran foals instead, protected their mother.

Katchuik later determined it was early placental detachment that caused the calamity.

One deceased foal was left in the stall with Iris to soften the blow.

“She kept licking the dead foal and pawing it because she didn’t understand. She was trying to get it to get up to nurse,” said McGauran, adding her mare looked visibly depressed.

“There was another mare with a foal beside her and she kept nuzzling her foal and making nickering noises to the other foal.”

She says after losing their foals, mares can grieve for a few days by refusing to eat and protectively attacking those who enter their stall to retrieve the foal.

McGauran says she immediately took to social media, reaching out to the horse community for help, including Darrell Glover, President of the Help Alberta Wildies Society, whose Facebook page has over 355,000 followers.

She had seen pages for matching nurse mares with orphan foals and felt it was the right thing to do for her Iris.

In Blackie, Rick Praud’s mare died following the birth of her foal, Rath De’ Ort, meaning ‘Grace of God be upon you’ in Gaelic. The owner attempted to pair Rath with another nurse mare before, however, was rejected by the mare with physical aggression.

“This was his late wife’s horse that died so he was quite emotional. This foal meant a lot to him. The foal was about two and a half, almost three weeks old and he had been bottle feeding it every two hours. It’s a lot of work and you don’t get much sleep and horses need horse moms to teach them manners,” said McGauran.

Praud gave it another shot, bringing Rath to McGauran Sunday morning. Katchuik grafted Iris, a process to induce hormonal cascades through cervix massages and other techniques, making them believe they just birthed their foal, so they are more receptive to an orphan. He says at the end of the day, however, it is up to the mare to decide if she will nurse a foal.

McGauran said when Iris met Rath at the noon hour, it was instant; her eyes brightened, she began to nicker and sniff the foal, and quickly allowed him to drink from her milk. She says Praud in particular, got very emotional.

Filming the event and posting it on Facebook, she says it has already received over three million views. In just under five hours, a happy ending and a new relationship were found for both horses.

Iris and Rath meeting for the first time. (Supplied)

“You couldn’t have done this 20 years ago because social media was so fast. It’s really a bittersweet story but we have such a fantastic horse community, and not just the horse community but other people that read it and shared it, here in Alberta,” she said.

She says Rath will grow with Iris until he is weaned in about six months.

“It helped me too; it was really hard to deal with but I didn’t do it for me, I did it for the mare and then the foal. It’s nice that this sort of double tragedy for these animals, and of course the other owner and myself, that there was a rainbow at the end of it and there’s something good that can come out of it,” she said.

Katchuik says this pairing process helps nurse mares move past the grieving stage, taking new foals as their own, and can prevent complications such as mastitis, a breast tissue inflammation which can be caused by lactating without a foal to nurse.

“For the foal, it’s absolutely crucial. We can raise them in an artificial way and provide them with milk replacer but those foals never do quite as well and, behaviourally, they need to be a horse.”

Iris and Rath. (rdnewsNOW/Alessia Proietti)

by Alessia Proietti

Sylvan Lake mare gives rare birth to twin stillborn babies; becomes new mother to an orphan foal

What's Trending