Orphan Foals Part 2

to be turned loose with the foal so the homemade muzzle is on a plastic flowerpot with a hole in the bottom to allow eating of treats! She has just been clicked for accepting him drinking without turning to bite and later we work on rewarding her only when she has her ears forward positive attitude. We also used the clicker training method to teach the foster mare to accept this foal which she did within four days. From experiences related to me it takes up to a week or so to get a foster mare to fully accept a foal that isnt its own so dont expect it to happen overnight!
When the mare is reliably accepting the foal and shows no signs of biting or kicking then its safe to keep them together without supervision. We provided a safety escape for the foal just in case by putting a rope across into his section of the stable so he could run under it to safety if she got mean with him.
Just because the mare tolerates the foal being near her dont assume she will feed the foal when you are not there. The mare pictured would only feed her foal when we were visible we gradually got to the point where we could stand at the gate and tell her to feed him by working on a longer rope then at liberty all the time using the clicker to reward her.
In the meantime the foal who was still being bucket fed every 2 hours to supplement his mothers meagre milk supply had learned to drink his formula from a dog water dispenser so he could access his milk whenever he wanted it. This was a great benefit to us and freed us up from virtually living in his paddock! When a foster mare became available he was three weeks old and bonded with his mum so we had to gradually wean him off her. We put the foster mare in the stable beside the foal where she could see him and his real mum was outside in a yard where he could see her. Fortunately we realised the presence of his real mum was distracting the foster mare from wanting to accept the colt so we took her way with not even a backwards glance from her! and from that moment on the foster mare focused on the foal