Sadly, we sent Misty to the big horse pasture in the sky yesterday afternoon. When she was down we could see just how badly her shoulder had been broken- this wonderful, strong old mare had done her very stoic best to stay up and eating to give Scratchy a few more days of her milk. I then spent a very long ( and frustrating ) night last night trying to get the colt, Scratchy, settled and eating. He went nearly 13 hours with no food. Refused to nurse from a bottle, refused to drink from a bucket, refused to swallow when I used a large srynge to put formula in his mouth. I read countless articles online, have been given great advice from dozens of colleagues and friends, all seemingly to no avail. He simply refused to eat. Finally this morning ( after what was basically a sleepless night) Erin relieved me of foal duty ( I really needed a shower- had been doused in formula numerous times throughout the night) After a bit ( much to the relief of all of us ) she managed to get him to drink some formula. I decided to bring London and her foal Charlie down- I just had to make sure that we would be able to get enough food into little Scratchy. We got them into the stall with him and restrained her so that he could drink. He took one look at her udder and was on her lickity split. We did end up having to tie, blind fold, twitch and tranq her for a few hours- but then could relax a bit. Thee is not a lovely temporary partition up in the foaling stall. 5-6 times a day we will let him in to nurse off of her ( she still has to be pretty strongly restrained) but he is also eating the formula very well- so things are looking much better than they did at midnight! Well- I'll post more later- for now I need to head back down to the barn to feed him, and I'm going t0 try to get some rest- did not get but 2 hours of fitful sleep last night!

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