Baby #5

When Dahlia first arrived, she was ribby and thin with a bit of a pot belly.

When Doc first examined her shortly after arriving here, he felt her udder and thought she might foal within a month.  But there was a lot of edema in her udder and he couldn’t tell for sure without palpating her.  Since she was far from friendly at that point, palpation was out of the question.  

This was what she looked like on 5/4. 

After I moved her here to the farm, her tummy tucked up even more, she muscled up, and the edema in her udder went down.  She has the hill of death to thank for the muscle tone!  Doc took another look and agreed that her original pot belly must have just been worms and she didn’t even look pregnant any more. 

Just a few weeks ago, the pot belly returned, but she was still very small.  If she was pregnant, she didn’t look that far along.  Then her udder started filling up with milk shortly after...  here we go again!

Cadence was born early this morning out in the pasture and is doing just fine!

 

Of course, she’s adorable.  Aren’t all foals adorable?

 

Check out those long legs!  Cadence is going to be a pretty good sized horse.  No pony here!

Because of her color, my guess would be that Don Juan is her sire, but there’s no guarantee since we don’t know what other stallions were at that hell hole that died before we were able to save them.

I’m glad little Cadence has finally been born.  This means she and Mariah are only three months apart and can grow and play together.  Poor Mariah hasn’t played much at all for lack of a play mate.  Hopefully that will change soon!