Tinkerbell is by BJ Bandera and out of our mare
 BRS Kool Jewel (Scottish Bart x Kings War Remedy)

Wow, what a pretty filly! Born at 12:30 AM on February 17, 2003. Her dam Jewel was purchased by us after she was checked by the vet and declared open. As the months went by, we were amazed at how she was so much the same when she was cycling -- we didn't even notice her heat periods!

After a few more months we were really amazed at what an easy keeper she was, even when in very hard work with a working cowhorse trainer. A month or so after that I had her vet checked, and she was declared not open, but in foal. Hmmm. Come to find out, at her old home she had been running with the stallion as recently as a day before the vet check that proclaimed her open. So she was too recently bred for the vet to have caught it.

Some of the pictures are not very good; my digital camera does not take good pictures in dim light. Sorry!

The pics will be loading while you read the story... So, Jewel had waxed up about 3 weeks earlier. We were very unsure of the due date because of the confusion over the breeding dates. I've not been getting very much sleep, that's for sure! Mostly, though, Jewel had her routine and never seemed (from her behavior) like she was going to foal on any night prior to last night. There were days when she was bagged up more than others, and there were days when she was dripping milk more than usual, but from her behavior, nothing was obvious until yesterday. She started really dripping milk at about 1 PM. She started getting a bit agitated at about 4:30. She would kick once or paw the ground.

At around 8 PM she started looking toward her belly, biting it, kicking and pawing more. She had a couple of periods when she calmed down, but then she would start up again. She was still eating and passing lots of urine and manure, so we weren't worried about colic.

Finally at about 10:30 she got more agitated, and it was pretty obvious the baby would be coming that night. She began tossing her head, pacing with more energy, and kicking harder. At 11:45 her water broke. At 12 AM a foot emerged -- white. Then the second foot right behind it, both facing the right direction! She was pretty upset at this point, and she got up and down at least 12 times. She would lay down and have a contraction, and then get back up. After about 20 minutes it seemed like the contractions stopped, and she was laying down looking very tired. We called the vet, as you are *supposed* to see progress with each contraction. At this stage the foal's head might have been turned backwards.

While waiting for the vet, she had a period of 7 or so minutes with no obvious contractions. I was at her head, hoping to keep her from getting up and laying her butt against the wall like she was very happy to have done many times already, blocking the path for the foal. Allison came to her rear end and grasped the foal's feet to be ready for the next contraction.

Sure enough, that seemed to stimulate things to get going again, and contractions started. Allison pulled downward with each push, and as I was standing there with my cell phone at my ear waiting for the vet, that foal was born. How exciting for Allison! When the foal was out to her shoulders, Pat tore the membranes from around her face and she started gurgling and trying to breathe. Then she came out to her hocks. Mom and baby stayed still for a while with the foal's back feet still inside the mare.

Then the foal was shivering and trying to get up. She was amazingly different from the last one we worked with at birth... She was very sensitive, jumpy, more alert, more afraid of us. She was shivering, so we were rubbing her with towels. I lifted the tail and asked Allison, one hole or two? A filly! Iodine to the umbilical cord stump while she was still relatively immobile.

Jewel was a peach at this point, probably because she was exhausted and in pain. She nickered to the filly and smelled her but was very calm and didn't move. After 15 minutes or so the filly was out all the way and the umbilical cord broken. The blood had stopped pooling, thank goodness. She worked on standing up for about 15 more minutes and then mastered it, preferring to shove her nose into the corner of the stall, I assume for stability. Jewel was unconcerned, but eventually stood up. Allison and I worked on tying up the membranes so she wouldn't step on them and rip them out. Remind me to find something better than baling twine for that! Slippery, and heavy, and difficult to tie up!

After about 15 more minutes Jewel delivered the placenta. Into the bucket it went for the vet to examine, and for me to hopefully not forget about for 2 weeks like I did last year, causing us to all wonder one day what the heck was that horrible smell...

The foal was still shivering, so we rubbed with some more towels... pretty soon she was trying to nurse. She managed to suck all the cobwebs off of one corner wall of the stall before deciding to try on her dam. Jewel wasn't standing very nicely, and after it had been 2 hours since the filly's birth, I haltered her up to try to get her to stand still for nursing. That worked well for our maiden mare Annie last year, but in Jewel's case, it just seemed to make it worse. So I unhaltered her and we all stood quietly without talking, and in about another 45 minutes the filly was finally nursing. After she got some food, we did a better job of dipping the umbilical stump in iodine, and I put my greyhound's blanket on her -- an almost perfect fit -- and we all went inside.

Today I got confirmation that I was right about her temperament. Our vet had never seen such a struggle for a blood sample. I figure she'll be a good performance prospect with all that sensitivity and energy! :-)

I'm not going to try to tell you "Jewel throws color!" because Jewel is a bay mare with no white - she only had a colored baby because the sire was homozygous for tobiano!  BEWARE of people who try to sell you breeding stock and who say the animal throws a color that the animal does not carry.  For more info on equine color genetics, read the color section of our stallion's page. 

Update after Jewel's second foal was born in '04:  Jewel is much better at this now.  Calmer, not concerned.  Very interesting!  See her '04 filly here.

OK, here she is!

The next day:

Six days old: