Anyone ever had a foal with neonatal isoerythrolysis?

[Formosus]

How did you deal with rebreeding the mare?
Looking for people to share their experience.
I will let others better then me explain the problem but if you've dealt with it you know what it means.
Thanks

[Gustav]

Treat subsequent foals as NI positive. It's not that difficult to deal with just labor intensive. Muzzle foal for 24 hrs. Bottle feed appropriate amount of colostrum and then milk replacer. Milk out mare for 24 hrs and discard milk. Foal and mare will need to be supervised, just in case foal manages to somehow get the muzzle off or mare gets grumpy from not being nursed off. Feed foal every 30 - 45 min and milk out mare at the same time.
The hard part comes after 24 hrs. Foal has to learn to nurse off mare and realized that you are not it's mom after all.

[Formosus]

Thanks Gustav,
My question is not so much how to treat the foal but how to consider the mare's future as a broodmare considering that she is at risk for having more NI foals.

I will not be breeding her again if I cannot reduce the chance of this occuring in other foals, it is too labour intensive and quality colostrum (4 to 5 pint of it) is very hard to find and the I don't think I can take that stress (will the foal fare ok, will the mare let me do all this, will she accept the foal after, will it learn to nurse off her, what if I miss the foaling (sneaky mares!)-aaarghhh!.

So for all those reason I'm looking to prevent rathen cure.

[clint]

I have a friend who has dealt with two NI foals and is breeding the mare again this year with an eye to never having to deal with this again. She had the mare blood tested at UC Davis, and had her stallion of choice blood tested as well. The blood tests show any incompabilities and the likliehood of an NI foal.

[jdeboer01]

Hi Formosis,

Mares that have produced an NI foal can certainly have a "normal" foal. You need to have the blood groups tested for your mare, and ALSO the stallion. This is different from today's usual DNA test, so whichever stallions your considering, you will need to ask the owner to have his blood analyzed. NI is caused by an incompatibility between the mare & stallion.

Here is an in depth article that will help with your questions:

http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~lkaspere/(NI).pdf

May I ask what breed your mare is? NI is common in Friesians.

J

[Formosus]

Thanks Clint and Thanks jdeboer01
The mare is a saddlebred actually.
We are talking blood test here? And what labs do those test?
That is what I'm looking for!
Thanks for the link!

[jdeboer01]

UC Davis can do the testing.

http://www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/services/horse.php

The stallion MUST be tested too!

[columbus]

What has happened is the mom in a previous pregnancy...not necessarily resulting in a live foal...had contact with the stallion's(via the baby) blood...blood exchanges with the mare/foal during delivery. The foal's blood, in the instance of hemolytic disease of the newborn(neonatal isoerythrolysis), matches the stallion and the dam made antibodies to that blood. When the next foal comes along from a rebreeding to the same stallion(assuming it is also the same blood type as the stallion/previous foal) the dam has active antibodies to the blood of the foal she is carrying. The antibodies are in the colostrum as well as circulating in the mare. A healthy foal is delivered and nurses taking on the antibodies in the colostrum during the day or so they can absorb the antibodies. Those blood antibodies attach to the babies red cells and hemolyze them. The baby will become jaudiced and can die if they get a strong dose of great colostrum and absorb it like any strong healthy foal would. Yellow scleras, yellow poo, white markings can have a yellow cast. It is not necessarily a death sentance at this point but an exchange transfusion is needed. You do not transfuse with the sire/baby blood type but with the dams washed cells plasma removed or I am not sure if there is a universal type in horses or not. The mother will not have antibodies to her own type and the baby has a pretty passive immune system at this point...hense the importance of colostrum to provide immune antibodies from the mother til the baby makes it's own. I am a human blood banker so while I have been involved with a foal HDN it wasn't handled correctly so my horse blood banking is not very good. In people we give the blood of the universal donor...type O neg. Likely there is an equine equivalent if there is access to a horse blood bank. If not perhaps you would crossmatch the plasma of the dam against several donor candidates cells. Either way it will be an exchange transfusion.

It would not happen if a different stallion were used who had a different blood type from the original stallion...though she could make antibodies to that stallion as well, it would affect the second foal from the pairing. It would not happen if the baby inherited the mothers blood type even if there were antibodies to the stallion. Sometime you don't get good transfer of colostrum and you never know the situation existed. Test the plasma of the mother to the cells of the sire you wish to use...for "fun" you can test the actual father(or the foal who has the sires blood type) of this foal and see in a test tube what has happened...the mothers plasma will clot or hemolyze the cells of the father/foal. Because there is a window of time the foal can absorb colostrum you keep the foal from getting THIS particular colostrum...you could save the colostum for another foal(not by the same sire) in need. PatO

[Equine Reproduction]

Muzzle foal for 24 hrs.

48-72 hours is recommended for withholding nursing directly from the dam. Allowing the foal to nurse at 24 hours may result in some foals still developing NI.

Bottle feed appropriate amount of colostrum and then milk replacer.

Just for clarification, bottle feed appropriate amount of colostrum from ANOTHER source other than the foal's mother.

Another good article can be found at http://www.vet.uga.edu/vpp/clerk/Bouchelle/index.php

Hope this helps.

[Formosus]

Thank you all.
I will get my mare tested and a few selected stallions that suit my mare tested also (at my cost if need be). Who ever comes out with the most compatible bloodtype will probably be this mares stallion of choice for a foal or two!
Great articles all of them.
Thanks a bunch!!

[sid]

Yes, what Equine Reproduction said.

I've had 3 NI foals (from the same mare, bred to 2 different stallions). It is time intensive post foaling, but I felt worth it as she was a lovely mare. This was 15 years ago.

Instead of muzzling the foal (ain't that easy!), we opted to partitian the stall immediately post foaling. The dam could nuzzle and hang her head over the foal, but the mare's udder was out of reach. Baby was given donor colostrum as well as donor milk that we eventually blended with Foal Lac, then only Foal Lac. We would milk out the mare every time we fed the foal. One baby did wind up with a meconium impaction that we treated.

BTW, it was over 60 hrs. before we let the foal nurse. We would pull a small blood sample from the foal and put it in a petri dish and add a few drops of the dam's milk to see if the blood was "clumping". Only when it amalgamated, would we let the foal on the mare. A bit old fashioned, but that worked for us.

It took very little to get the foal to nurse as the mare was a seasoned broodmare and "helped".

[ponygirl]

Having never experienced this but with it always on the back of the mind, how was your foal diagnosed?

[Grande Isle Farm]

Hi Formosus...

I have an N.I. mare, who I purchased knowing full well she was N.I.

I have had 2 foals from her thus far, and will be breeding her again this year for a 2010 foal.

Everything everyone else has posted is correct. I have always attended the foalings, muzzled the foals, fed alternate supplies of colostrum/milk replacer, and milked out the mare for a 24 hour period (we usually milk out about 6 litres of milk) it's alot of hard tiring work, and this is truly when you know who your friends are, but it is a wonderful and rewarding experience. I haven't ever had a problem with the foal not wanting or knowing how to nurse from mom. Basically, everytime the foal starts nuzzling around the mare, we know it's time to feed....As soon as that muzzle comes off in 24 hours, baby has always gone straight to the "bar".

We always have the foal checked within 8-12 hours of delivery to make sure it has received enough colostrum from another source. We also check the mares milk to see if it "was tainted".

In my case, my mare is very well bred, and throws exceptional foals, so to me, it is worth all the time it takes to bring that foal into the world. I would not breed if I had anything less than a perfect mare.

I should also say that in my case, my mare is an absolute angel, and certainly knows the drill. We don't even need to halter her while we are milking her, nor does she panick when we are feeding the foal. She nuzzles and licks the foal, and the foal always knows who's mom.

I've looked into picking stallions based on "blood type", but to me, I'd rather breed for conformation and temperment, than what blood type the stallions have.

Hope that helps a bit
Betsy
www.grandeislefarm.com

[Formosus]

Having never experienced this but with it always on the back of the mind, how was your foal diagnosed?

Foal was born vigorous but declined fast. We pulled some blood to do a IGG and blood analysis. When they got to the lab and centrifuged the blood the plasma was pink indicating lysing of the red cells.

Foal was also septic and was not suckling much after that so the results and the outcome (foal did not make it) make it unclear what the impact was of the condition. It was a bit of a "unperfect" storm-combination of things but the tinged plasma is a warning flag.

In "typical" cases the foal's health start to decline hours after birth if it is suckling vigorously and the mares collustrum is rich, then the mucosa take on a yellow tinge (from the jaundice), if not treated and removed from the dam the foal usually dies.

[Donella]

What breed is this mare if you don't mind me asking? NI is quite common in Friesian mares so we have always made sure to blood test prior to breeding. Like everyone else says, the mare is completely capable of having a normal foal, just don't breed her to an incompatible stallion and you will have nothing to worry about at all.