# Best milk/creep pellets to get??



## koeffee (9 June 2011)

As title, foal not getting enough from mum now, as she is not doing well, vet been today and foal has to be on supplement feed by the end of the month as he is not waiting any longer to put mare down! she is horrendously lame and in severe pain. She is allowed out on grass to see if she will produce some more milk in a very small paddock, and foal needs to go out to strengthen his pasterns. He is very weedy but amazingly sweet.


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## Maesfen (9 June 2011)

I reared the foster boys on D & H Equilac (milk powder) in a bucket; they also had D & H Suregrow as a feed (nothing else added to it) plus hay when they were in and as much turnout as they could have too.
How old is foal now (mine were just a fortnight old and had taken to it straight away).  They didn't scour or grow too quickly/slowly and it taught me that they can do just as well without mare's milk if absolutely necessary.  They stayed on Equilac until nearly five months old but were only on two feeds a day of it at the end.  I defy anyone to be able to point out my boys as being hand reared, no difference whatsoever.  The only thing you must watch is that the foal doesn't get over familiar with you and if you can give it company in the box of some sort, so much the better; it will play with that rather than use you as a punch bag!
Sorry about your mare but you've done well to get her this far on; at least foal has had all the first few days on her.


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## velv (9 June 2011)

You have my sympathies, My mare is badly laminitic at the moment too, due to cushings so hopefully by upping her pergolide it should help, but she has had rotation of the pedal bone. Her foal is 6 weeks and due to the increased dose of pergolide her milk is drying up so we have supplemented the foal with feed and may have to start bucket feeding with milk. Im worried his growth will be stunted but will do any thing to get the mare better!


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## koeffee (9 June 2011)

Maesfen said:



			I reared the foster boys on D & H Equilac (milk powder) in a bucket; they also had D & H Suregrow as a feed (nothing else added to it) plus hay when they were in and as much turnout as they could have too.
How old is foal now (mine were just a fortnight old and had taken to it straight away).  They didn't scour or grow too quickly/slowly and it taught me that they can do just as well without mare's milk if absolutely necessary.  They stayed on Equilac until nearly five months old but were only on two feeds a day of it at the end.  I defy anyone to be able to point out my boys as being hand reared, no difference whatsoever.  The only thing you must watch is that the foal doesn't get over familiar with you and if you can give it company in the box of some sort, so much the better; it will play with that rather than use you as a punch bag!
Sorry about your mare but you've done well to get her this far on; at least foal has had all the first few days on her.
		
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Foal is 8 days old today, he wont take a bottle but we are trying to get him to take milk from a bucket now, trouble is he will only suckle from mum, but he is copying her so im hopeful he will take to it.


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## Revena (9 June 2011)

Baileys do foal creep pellets, national foaling bank recommend aintree milk powder.  Somebody recommended using milk powder in a mares feed to stimulate milk production, I can't vouch for this myself as have never done it.
I'm so sorry to hear that your mare is suffering so much, I really hope that she has a miracle turnaround (I'm ever the optimist). I'm sure that you'll make her comfortable for the month, 
x


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## koeffee (10 June 2011)

Revena said:



			Baileys do foal creep pellets, national foaling bank recommend aintree milk powder.  Somebody recommended using milk powder in a mares feed to stimulate milk production, I can't vouch for this myself as have never done it.
I'm so sorry to hear that your mare is suffering so much, I really hope that she has a miracle turnaround (I'm ever the optimist). I'm sure that you'll make her comfortable for the month, 
x
		
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Been putting milk powder in the mares feed from day one almost, not sure it works although she looks shiney!!!!, we are also trying to stimulate my other mare to come back into milk? she still has some from when she lost her foal so we are going to see if we can get him to take from her?? Joanna Vardon has been great.


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## Revena (10 June 2011)

Another one I have just thought of is seaweed. You HAVE to make sure that nothing else you are feeding contains over a certain amount (I'm sorry to be vague, you can check with a nutritionalist or your vet) of iodine. There are also herbs which help stimulate milk.  Look up 'equus health' they can advise any herbs which would be of value l, not only for the milk production but to help her.  You could also look up carob, this is extremely high in antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and helps milk production. Sorry my brain wasn't in gear last night!


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## welshsporthorse (10 June 2011)

Having read the topic lower down the page on bucket milk reared foals , and having had a student do work experience on a large Newmarket stud in the early nineties which took the foals off the mares after they had the colostrum and bucket reared them en masse so that the mares could travel safely usually in their case to ireland without risk to the foal, it obviously can be done and maybe could be done more often if it is of benefit to the foal or mare.  Farmers have special multiple calf/lamb milk buckets with special teats on them. In fact we once had a whole bunch of orphan lambs off the local farmer  and we were loaned a machine off Denkavit milk powder manufacturers where you attatched it to a water source and just put in the powder. The powder and water was mixed and it was heated to body tempereature and they did really well on it. It makes you wonder if this could not be done more in specialized centres around the country for foals. They could then be creep fed and so on. 
The rep from the company also on being quizzed about the mare milk replacer they made , told me that it was in fact the same formulation as the lamb powder but different name, different bag , different marketing and hugely bigger price. We as horse people always seem to be taken for a ride - no pun intended !  
its hard work rearing an orphan foal and the less contact you physically have with  it the better . Really sorry to hear of the mare being so poorly, We had a little show pony mare here earlier this year, she was six weeks overdue, no milk and stuck in with lami,  the owners took her away to another vet as ours would quite rightly not induce her , the other vet also refused , she eventually gave birth to a dysmature weak foal, she had no milk, it had frozen colostrum and was fed by another mare alongside her own foal, on checking the bloods he needed a serum infusion and the little mite died just after it. ! 
You have some hard work ahead of you unfortunately but it has been done many a time successfully.


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## Maesfen (10 June 2011)

koeffee said:



			Foal is 8 days old today, he wont take a bottle but we are trying to get him to take milk from a bucket now, trouble is he will only suckle from mum, but he is copying her so im hopeful he will take to it.
		
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TBH, I think it would be far worse if you put him on the bottle as then you'd have to wean him off that too, far better straight onto a bucket IMHO.
They seem to like light coloured buckets and are easier at first if you use something like a mixing bowl/ice cream container as it's not so high, they don't like putting their heads 'into' a bucket at that age.  As to a feed, if you have any bran, add a small pinch of that damped to a pinch of Suregrow and damp it then let him lick it off your hand; it's surprising how quickly they come around to it and you can gradually wean them off the bran and he will have had so little of it, it won't even register in his system.  It's most important that you get him a friend though whether that's a sheep or another pony, it doesn't matter but it'll make all the difference and it would be very helpful if you could get him used to your other mares and foals before his dam goes so that he gets used to interacting with them before he is without his protector.
Best of luck, it's such a long haul with feeds every two hours for a month but very much worth it.


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