asilarabians:asilarabians:sandetigerr:asilarabians:asilarabians:PLEASE NOTE, this post will be used

asilarabians:asilarabians:sandetigerr:asilarabians:asilarabians:PLEASE NOTE, this post will be used to solicit funds at the end. Please read to the end and find out why.Meet “Paladin,” one of the newest additions to the Al Khamsa preservation community.I wish I had better news to report, but here we go.My Kuhaylah Haifiyah / Davenport mare, Aureoles Amala, gave birth to this chestnut-going-grey colt on Wednesday, July 7th, 2021 at 2:50am. It was a cool, rainy 43*F. The foaling itself was textbook – quick and easy. The mare passed the placenta within 15 minutes of having her foal, no retention or tears. The foal was ready to stand almost immediately. He was contracted in his back tendons and lax in the front, so he needed some help getting up. We bottle-fed him colostrum and then had him up and nursing – he couldn’t get up on his own, but he could stand on his own, so it didn’t seem like an immediate cause for concern, and he otherwise appeared very healthy.As the morning wore on, however, it became apparent that something was wrong. He was making gurgling noises, and partway through the morning he began dripping milk out of his nostrils after nursing. It was clear then that he was aspirating milk. So off we went to the nearest emergency veterinarian, who declared that the aspiration was the least of his problems, diagnosing him with CONGENTIAL HYPOTHYROIDISM based on his general dysmaturity, the knuckled tendons in the back legs, and the presence of monkey mouth (an underbite.)This was news to us, as our nutrition program should have been adequate for the mare’s gestational needs. For those unfamiliar with CHD, here is an article about it.Antibiotics were prescribed, casts were applied to the hind legs to stabilize the legs and hopefully help the colt stand, and we were sent home to do around-the-clock care – helping the foal get up 2-3x every hour to nurse.Through my connections in the Davenport Arabian horse community, I was put into contact with Dr. Claire Card, a researcher and expert in CHD at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (out in Canada) who gave us an extremely detailed crash course on CHD, a comprehensive list of environmental factors that we needed to check, and a clear pathway forward to determine what would be done with the colt. She offered to review all diagnostics that we run on the mare and foal, and to help come up with a specialized treatment plan for the colt based on his individual physical and metabolic needs. (Seriously, what a cool person. Don’t be afraid to reach out to her if you or someone you know has something similar happen.) The very first thing she recommended was getting radiographs of the carpal and tarsal joints (the knees and the hocks) to see if they had ossified. A lack of adequate ossification meant that a foal would be crippled by arthritis by the time it was a year old – no quality of life – and was immediate grounds for euthanasia.So, off we trundled to a more local vet, who did the radiographs. We lucked out, and the colt had quite well-formed ossification in the joints – just a little undercooked, with the prescription to limit movement in order to give the bones more time to develop properly. We discussed the aspiration, the difficulty defecating (but easy time urinating), and I expressed concerns about the way the umbilicus looked. The vet reassured me that the colt was fine, just to wait it out, particularly as he was on antibiotics and that could sometimes “stop them up.” Also upon the advice of Dr. Card, we took blood samples from the mare and the foal, and a hair sample from the mare, to be sent off to the University of Michigan for testing – the blood to assess the current iodine, selenium, copper, zinc, and thyroid levels of both; and the hair to give us a history of what her levels were like during pregnancy and prior to.So we went home again, and then upon a later inspection it appeared that the colt may have begun to herniate his umbilicus. So off we went to the vet again, but this time we bypassed all of the local vets and want straight to the University of Minnesota-St Paul to hospitalize the colt at their teaching hospital. While there, he was diagnosed with pneumonia and lactose intolerance, and was being monitored for signs that his umbilicus did, in fact, require surgery. He was given plasma, selenium, vitamin e, IV antibiotics, lactaid to help with the lactose intolerance, and he was ultrasounded upon intake to examine for further possible internal congenital abnormalities. The good news is that they couldn’t find any. They did discover that he has an enlarged thyroid, which can be palpated and which you should not be able to feel in a newborn foal.We are now here, Monday, and he is much stronger. He is pooping regularly, his legs are straighter, he’s drinking more and for longer periods of time, he’s gaining weight rapidly (he weighed 88 lbs on Saturday and 91 lbs on Sunday, for example), and his ability to walk is better. The casts are off, his tendons and ligaments are no longer contracted, and he’s really just thriving. He does NOT have a herniated umbilicus, and thankfully does NOT need surgery! The care team believes that with good management in the early life, he’ll grow up with strong legs, and he shouldn’t have any lasting metabolic problems from the CHD. We are still waiting on the blood tests in Michigan to come back and give us a clearer idea of what we are looking at, but his prognosis has gone from being very guarded to quite positive.This has been a hell of a learning curve for me, and a very expensive one. I’ve been out of the workforce for the duration of the entire last school year to help the kiddo with distance learning during the pandemic, and my significant other hadn’t had much time to rebuild the “emergency” funds since it was depleted back in February following an emergency abdominal surgery to repair a severe hernia. We’ve been able to pay for most of his hospitalization, but are about $1k short at this time.I generally hate soliciting donations, but I’d really hate for the baby’s care to be limited because we got hit hard with medical bills earlier this year while he was already halfway to being born. However, if you are feeling generous, particularly given his status as a preservation colt (see further down), you can donate the following ways:Cashapp: @moiraofthekiltsVenmo: @moiraofthekilts Paypal: stallionmay@gmail.comElsewise, I am happy to do art commissions or pedigree analysis commissions and work for funds. I can draw horses and dnd characters, and will be able to provide samples of my work. Please contact me directly if this is something you are interested in. For the pedigree analyses, I can do purebred Arabians (asil or not), or the Arabian ancestry of your horse.Edit: follow this link for a non-exhaustive, quick and dirty sampling of my artwork, pulled from what I had uploaded to various places. Need to go back to the farm and get my drawing tablet and laptop.Please note: I did not breed this foal for personal gain, I bred him to further the bloodlines and contribute to the preservation community. I will not be making money off of this horse, including if he is used as a breeding stallion later in life. The Craver Farm / Davenport tradition is to offer their stallions without a stud fee and simply have mare owners cover vet costs - and I intend to honor that if we come to that road.Edit: See this ask / response for the likelihood that this colt would pass on his problems to future foals. (The answer is ‘no.’ Per the most recently research. It’s an issue with nutrition during gestation.)For asil / preservation context on this colt:He is Core Haifi, which for the Davenports is really important in terms of being able to replenish all of the breeding groups. Read this post to learn more about the Davenport Groups. He is the only surviving, intact son of his sire Porte CF, who is the only son of his sire Portico to have bred forward (there are two other sons of Portico still alive, and both are available for stud, but they have yet to be utilized. Funnily enough, one of them is a maternal half-sibling to Amala.) Portico’s sire was among of the first generations of Davenports that Charles C. Craver III bred.This colt is just 6 generations back from the desert / the original 1906 importation by Homer Davenport, going back to *Hamrah and *Deyr in the same generation, both 1904 stallions. (That’s 117 years ago.) He is also just 8 generations from desertbred horses born in the 1800s, the 1898 mare *Urfah and the 1899 war mare, *Wadduda. (122+ years ago.) This is old, old blood.The Davenports are all Code Red or Code Orange bloodlines for the Preservation Task Force.And, as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to DM me. Today’s (7/14/2021) Midday Update:P/D: An email from the attention veterinarian that says: “ I am sorry I did not get a chance to visit with you -  I am going in a lot of different directions these days. Paladin is doing well and his bloodwork yesterday looked great - no evidence of inflammation, which indicates his pneumonia is resolving. We discontinued the IV antibiotics and switched him to oral antibiotics (TMS). We will plan on taking radiographs Thursday or Friday and will do a quick repeat ultrasound again to make sure his lungs and belly button still look good. Will you be visiting today? If so, I will try touch base with you when you are here as well if you have any additional questions.“ 7/18/2021: Paladin is home. He is on stall rest / confinement while we track his joint development via radiographs. Not great, but he is otherwise here with a clean bill of health - he is getting up and down on his own, and is quiet enough at night that he doesn’t need close supervision – so I can sleep! (I mean, I still wake up randomly in the middle of the night and end up trundling to the foal camp to check on him for my own peace of mind, but whateverrrr.) His next appointment is this upcoming Friday, we’ll do rads and another CBC to make sure his pneumonia stays gone. Right now he’s on 2x daily oral antibiotics and an oral Vitamin E supplement 1x daily. Whoops, accidentally reblogged to my main! Updates on Paladin:- 07/23/2021: radiographs, cbc - link to post- Ask on how Paladin is doing - link to post- 08/04/2021: Good news! We took Paladin to the University of Minnesota for a scheduled farriery appointment and vet checkup. Structurally, he is much improved, and it was decided that he didn’t need a heel extension and that we could just do a trim. The trim made a marked difference in how he was walking and the alignment in his bony column. The farrier was impressed by how independent Paladin was at 4 weeks old (on the dot!!) and he liked the colt a lot. One of the vets that had been working with Paladin when he was hospitalized in July came not-quite-running to say hello to him, and she was so excited to see him and scratch his neck, and commented on how tall he had gotten.In fact, he weighed 134 lbs when we put him on the scale during the intake process.Bad News! He has pneumonia. Again. It’s unclear if it’s a recurrence or if he just never completely kicked the pneumonia that he had when he first went into the hospital on July 10th. We are doing a course of two different antibiotics this time, which hopefully will do the trick. He is still aspirating, which is likely due to his dysmaturity and his lack of muscling from being in confinement from day one. It is also possible that his underbite is contributing, so we are exploring the option of weaning early and switching to milk pellets as well as hay and grain. He’s already eating hay and some of his mom’s meals, so it wouldn’t be too tough of a transition, nutrition-wise. For now, we’re treating the pneumonia and will revisit in a week.All things considered, his bloodwork was very good given his pneumonia; he was bright and inquisitive, and playful.- 08/05/2021: We had radiographs done to see how the trim changed the alignment. GOOD THINGS HAPPENING. See the image below for the right fore with the tendon injury.The vet and the tech were both in love with this boy. He’s adorable, and they thought that he was well-behaved for how old he is and how cooped up he’s been. Might be the pneumonia, but he is also just a very tractable young man.The new rads were released this morning, and forwarded to the surgical team at the U of M. And he has been cleared for 5 minutes of guided walking every day. Excitement! Quick reblog because I forgot to add this:The vet team that did Paladin’s radiographs yesterday and I had a really long conversation about his condition.  She ended up requesting that I send Dr. Card’s contact information to her so that she could set up a conference call with Dr. Card and her entire veterinary staff to discuss it and how to better prevent it and/or treat it. Apparently, this year in this area has been highly unusual in that she personally has seen quite a few foals this summer that were born with CHD. Usually, she said, it was just one here and there throughout the years, not multiple in a single summer. It does suggest a wider environmental concern rather than specifically just the pastures/hay/water on our property and/or the nutrition that I was giving the mare while she was pregnant.We are still waiting on the results from the bloodwork and the hair sample that we sent to the University of Michigan for testing. I am hesitant to speculate too much, but I do like having more information to make a more informed action plan for future foals. I never want this to happen again if I personally can prevent it. -- source link

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