How big is the Anglesey Lodge practice?

It’s probably one of the two biggest equine practices in the country. We’ve got about 25 vets and over 50 staff, in total.

Are all your clients local or do you travel far?

The bulk of our work is in Kildare. There’s two components to the practice. There’s what we call the ambulatory aspect, the calling out to stud farms and racing yards, and people’s ponies and so on. That is based predominantly around Kildare and parts of Laois, Wicklow, Meath and Dublin. The other aspect is the hospital, where we do surgery, and we have specialists in internal medicine. We would take referrals from all over the country for that, including from other veterinary practices.

Are stud farms a large part of your work?

Studs are a big part of our practice, particularly at this time of the year. The majority of our team of vets on the road would have stud farms among their mainstay clients.

What advice can you offer to breeders preparing for foaling?

Ensure that your mares are well vaccinated – for EHV, rotavirus and especially for the herpes virus, because that is a significant cause of late-term abortion. Have your facilities ready to go. In other words, your foaling boxes should be cleaned and disinfected and bedded down. Make sure you are able to monitor your mares, whether that’s by using foaling alarms or CCTV cameras. It’s important to have all that in situ in case the mare goes early.

Talk us through a normal foaling.

There are three stages. The first stage is when the mare goes into labour. They start to sweat up and look a little bit uncomfortable. They might have some contractions and can even run a bit of milk for anything up to four hours. Usually, they’ll do that just before foaling.

Some mares might show those signs for a couple of nights before they actually foal, so you have to watch them very carefully. But typically, they’ll do that for one to four hours before foaling, and that first stage ends as soon as the waters break.

As soon as you get white amniotic fluid passing through the vulva, that’s typically the time where a foaling alarm will go off, if you’re using one.

Now you’re into the second stage, which is the actual delivery. That usually will last anything from 15 minutes to a maximum of 45 minutes. So, if a mare’s waters have broken and she has entered that second stage, call the vet if nothing is happening within 30 minutes.

The other thing to watch out for is a ‘red bag’ delivery. This is a premature separation of the placenta, and that’s characterised by a football-sized red membrane appearing at the vulva. That’s an emergency. If somebody sees that, they need to call the vet immediately and get the foal out themselves as quickly as possible.

The third stage of labour is the passing of the placenta. Assuming the mare foals normally, the foaling process hasn’t completed until she’s passed the placenta fully, which usually takes place in the three hours after foaling.

If a mare hasn’t passed the placenta by about four hours, ring the vet because that has the potential to cause various problems, such as uterine infections, and it can potentially lead to toxic laminitis or metritis. So it’s a potentially life-threatening situation if a mare retains the placenta for too long.

If the foaling has gone well, when should a breeder call a vet for the foal’s first veterinary examination?

Ideally, a foal should be standing within an hour of being born and they should be nursing within two hours. If a foal isn’t nursing within that period of time, the breeder needs to contact their vet to get colostrum into the foal. Colostrum is vital in the early stages.

But, assuming the foal is nursing and seems to be doing everything well, then typically the next morning is when you’d call your vet to examine the foal, within the first 24 hours.

What’s your final piece of advice for breeders?

I would reiterate the need to have really good hygiene around the whole foaling process. Have the foaling boxes really clean and very well-bedded with straw rather than shavings. Keep the mare’s tail in a loose wrapping so that, if you have to intervene, it’s easier to get in there.

Washing the mare’s perineal area and her mammary glands before the foaling process is an important thing to bear in mind.

There’s also the pre-foaling vaccinations and the good monitoring systems I mentioned earlier.

And, if in doubt, call your vet.

Pat O’Sullivan is also President of the Irish Equine Veterinary Association.