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I am doing a poster report for our
middle school science fair this year on foals. I am working on the part
about what they can do at each hour and each day after they are
born. I read somewhere that it takes a couple of days for a foal to
learn how to go to the bathroom. The book said that when a foal is
standing like he wants to go, that's when he's learning how to push out
the pee and poop. My mother thought that sounded silly. She has always
thought that sort of behavior just happens without any learning. She
thinks that if they push a lot trying to poop, it's because the first
poop is hard and sticky. She has never seen a foal have trouble while
urinating.
My mom is a small animal
veterinarian, and she has loved horses all of her life and has seen some
newborn foals. She helped me write this because she thinks you will
agree with her and not with what the book said. Kelly
You are the third or fourth person
I know now who read that book and inquired whether foals really need to
learn how to defecate and urinate. So I am going to answer you in the
magazine. I think your mom is absolutely right! Urination and defecation
in foals (and all newborn animals and baby humans) occur spontaneously.
In other words, just as your mom said, no learning is required. In
foals, urination and defecation usually occur within the first few hours
after birth. If you see a foal pushing to defecate, it is almost always
for the exact reason your mom said. The first feces (meconium) is
usually pasty, and might require some obvious straining to push it out.
Many farms try to make the first defecation easier for their foals by
adding a little special liquid (called an enema) to soften the poop
(usually called stool) a bit and help flush it out.
For your project, I checked with a
veterinarian colleague, Pam Wilkins, DVM, PhD. She is a medicine
specialist here in our neonatal intensive care unit at the New Bolton
Center. She thought you might be interested to know that the first
defecation typically occurs soon after the first nursing, because the
nursing stimulates a reflex to initiate movement of materials through
the digestive tract. So in most cases that would be within the first
couple of hours after birth. The first urination in foals typically
occurs within the first six hours for females and the first twelve hours
for males. Like defecation, the first urination in foals very often
occurs soon after the first nursing. She also agrees with your mom and
me that elimination behavior in a neonate is simply automatic, requiring
no learning.
She wanted to remind everyone that if
you see a foal straining to urinate, he should be checked out right away
by a veterinarian. There could be a problem, such as an injury, an
infection, or a bladder dysfunction.
Thanks to you and your mom for your
question. Unfortunately, sometimes funny interpretations of horse
behavior get printed, even in books. This point has become more
important with the development of the Internet. Most good books in print
are reviewed by more than one expert to catch mistakes like that,
but unfortunately, the Internet is mostly not reviewed at all. There are
a lot of mistakes everywhere, and you need to be careful to pay
attention to the credentials of the authors.
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