Determining Delivery Time

I have two horses I have purchased not knowing they were pregnant. How will I know that they are close to delivery? Will they lose their appetite like my dogs do, or will there be other signs I should look for in the last month of pregnancy?                    via e-mail <HR

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I have two horses I have purchased not knowing they were pregnant. How will I know that they are close to delivery? Will they lose their appetite like my dogs do, or will there be other signs I should look for in the last month of pregnancy?                    via e-mail


There are several ways to help you tell where your mares are in their pregnancies and when parturition is imminent. First, your mares can have an ultrasound examination by a veterinarian to help determine the size/age of the fetus. A table of fetal orbital/eye socket measures for comparison can be found in Veterinary Reproductive Ultrasonography by Wolfgang Keahn.

There are also physiologic measures you can check to monitor gestation. There are commercially available kits that allow you to monitor changes in the calcium and magnesium levels in your mare’s milk, which can be used as an indicator of impending parturition. There are also inexpensive ways to monitor you mares’ gestation. In the New Bolton Center Behavior Lab, we use this short checklist, twice daily, when evaluating mares with uncertain due dates. We make careful notes and even drawings, especially if multiple people are checking the animal from day to day. Some of these things have been more or less useful than others for our situation, but each mare is different and careful monitoring for changes seems to be the best overall approach

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Written by:

Elkana Grogan is a senior animal science major at the University of Delaware. Since 2001, she has been a horse behavior research trainee with Sue McDonnell, PhD, Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist in the Equine Behavior Lab at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center.

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