3 Days early and a perfect birth – not that either of us saw anything. We’d been checking her every half hour since midnight and I’d got up at 4am to see if there was any chance she might be inclined to birth this foal… apart from a slight agitation in temperament she was non plussed so by 7am I figured she would foal later in the night and left for work, she wasn’t even due yet so why panic. Dale went back to bed (shift worker).

I got the email at work to tell me to head home again as Dale had checked Duchess on getting up 8.30am and he was looking at this very mobile foal trying to work out how to suckle. I got home and it was pretty much all over, Kytan had just worked out the milk bar thing and all that we were waiting on was for the placenta to pass, which it did and the vet (Louise Cosgrove) eagerly collected it for the university of Queensland to assess for their ongoing research into pathogens present for a normal local birth.

For her very first foal Duchess has been such a great mum. She is very calm and protective when she needs to be but let’s Kytan roam a lot further than Pearl let any of her two without a speedy appearance to ward off perceived trouble. Kytan however is nothing like our other two foals he is very strong, very insistent and pushy and this was evident at hours old let alone on his 5th day today. You can’t turn your back on him for fear he’ll gallop up and crash into you for a play. He’s either grey or black, too hard to tell at this early stage and he has one black/grey leg and three white with big black streaks through each hoof and his blaze has a big bite out of it.

We’ve slowly introduced him to the rest of the gang. Pearl is non plussed and even threatened to kick Kytan when he mistook her for mum. Salazar however is super curious and as he is just too big (8 months now) he hasn’t been introduced without the safety of the fence in-between. Duchess, whilst strongly bonded to Salazar prior to the birth has of course spurned him and he’s quite confused about who this little thing is that has her attention.. Rebel of course has been left out of all the proceedings as we don’t want any unplanned serves happening so he’s been running up and down the connecting boundary wishing he were a part of the situation.

So next up we’ll have the two mares scanned in a couple of weeks to see where their cycles are at and depending on that we’ll be trucking them to Southbrook for AI (Arclid Minshull Monty). We now have the two colts up for sale and Kytan too once he’s old enough, hopefully the girls will produce a couple of fillies next year.

With the beautiful green vista all around it’s a magic time at Deacons Gate Shires, wishing others well with their foaling season.