The Essential Foaling Kit for the First-Time Mare Owner
Since your mare will likely foal in the dark, you don't want to be messing around with a lid or a neatly, tightly-packed box. Give yourself room to grab around. Dig out that psyllium bucket and let's fill it with useful stuff.
This is the first self-adhering veterinary tape I ever used - and it still sets the standard for quality. It's the same type of tape used for humans. I rely on it for a variety of uses around the house and barn, whether it's to wrap a horse's tail; bandage an injury; keep an E-collar on a dog; or even bandage up an injured wing on a chicken. In an emergency you can use it as a tourniquet.
Self-Adhesive Veterinary Wrap or Cottontail Wrap
Technically described as "self-adhesive bandaging tape," you'll probably know it as simply "vet wrap." Toss a couple of rolls of this
brightly-colored tape into your kit. When your mare starts giving signs that foaling will soon occur, use it to wrap the base of her tail to keep it from interfering with delivery, collecting fluids and filth, or preventing you from easily seeing what's going on beneath her tail.
You may prefer to use a traditional cotton tail wrap. I actually use both—a cotton wrap to neatly secure the tail (it's washable) and I keep the vet wrap on hand to quickly replace or secure the cotton wrap. On mares that give you false alarms again and again, you may wrap with the cotton wrap only to have several days go by before she actually
foals—and by then the cotton wrap may end up falling off into the muck of the paddock or being chewed up by the gelding next door. Just in case … keep that vet wrap in your foaling kit.
