It's hard to find good horse milk

I am looking forward to spring, though I did enjoy the storm last week.

Timmy and I were hunkered down in the house, but we had to shovel our way to the woodpile. Fortunately the wood was under a tarp so it stayed dry. The wood pile is very low this time of year, and now with all the snow, it is difficult to get out and cut more. But it will warm up soon.

There are many changes in the air and now with this season of rebirth, people's energies will soon be renewed. I am surely ready to be renewed. My son, Dan and his wife, Mary will be having a new baby any day now. It is great to see their family growing. They have one son, Tommy, who will be two in April.

This season of rebirth reminds me of an April 21 years ago, when our draft horse, Nancy, gave birth to a filly. On this day, Tom had been out planting oats with the horses. He had returned to the yard with Nancy and the other draft horse, Sadie. Tom put the horses in their stalls, still in their harnesses, and came into the house to get something to drink. Our neighbor John was visiting, and we were sitting in the kitchen having a snack.

Dan was 8 years old at the time, and he burst into the kitchen all excited and said that Nancy had a baby horse lying behind her in the horse stall. We all ran out to the barn, and sure enough a very wet filly was laying in the straw behind Nancy. Tom and John quickly took Nancy's harnesses off while I dried the filly with towels. The filly was strong and alert. She got on her feet to nurse and was nuzzling for Nancy's teat. We were all watching for her to latch on to start sucking when John said, "Oh no! We've got a big problem."

It was a big problem. It turned out that Nancy's bag was ruined from having mastitis. We didn't know this when we had purchased her. She had gotten bred by a two year old stud that we had sold the fall before. We called up our other neighbors who had horses on to advise us what to do. Our neighbors, Dick and his wife Ada drove up right away to take a look at Nancy and advise us on how to feed the filly.

Dick said, "Yeah, her bag is ruined. But the filly's got to get colostrum. You can't feed her straight cow's milk. That will bind her. Mare milk is very rich, but it is thinner than cow's milk."

I asked, "Would goat's colostrum work?"

Dick said, "Yeah, that would be a good start."

"Okay, I know where to get some," I said.

My neighbor Shirley had goats, and she was in the midst of kidding. I drove to her house and she had only a small bottle with fresh goat colostrum left over from the latest goat to give birth. I took the colostrum home and added it to watered down fresh cow's milk along with molasses in a large bottle with a nipple attached to it.

The filly sucked the mixture right down. She wasn't out of the woods yet, as Dick told us that we would have to feed her every two hours. We were milking a cow to have milk for the house, but this wouldn't give us enough milk for the filly. We brought up another cow from the pasture and began milking her and also bought one of Shirley's milking goats.

The filly did get a naval infection the second day, but we had the vet out right away to give her penicillin. For the next six weeks, Tom slept on the couch and fed the filly every two hours. We named her Blaze because she had a small white strip on her forehead, and the rest of her was coal black. Blaze knew when it was time to be fed and she would come to the kitchen door every two hours for her bottle.

She grew fast and was extremely gentle and friendly. She grew to be one of the largest draft horses we had. She in turn gave birth to three mares and had no trouble nursing them. We were really proud of Blaze and all the effort we put into keeping her alive. She was a great addition to the farm, and we kept her for a while even after we kept farming. It was a sad day when we sold her, but she needed to be worked, and our interests were elsewhere. Happy Easter to everyone in this time of rebirth and renewal.