Foaling Time. 49 



few days, and, needless to say, her approaching parturition 

 was awaited with much apprehension. Prompt to time, 

 and after all the usual preliminary symptoms, labour pains 

 commenced. At each throe the mare shaped as if she would 

 lie down, but seemed to recollect the previous difficulty she 

 had experienced in getting up, and thought better of it. 

 When it became apparent that the mare would be delivered 

 standing, one assistant went to her head, another slipped 

 on his linen apron, and caught the foal in his arms as it was 

 finally expelled from the vagina, holding it thus while the 

 author swiftly ligatured the navel cord in two places, severed 

 it between the two ligatures, and ordered the assistant to 

 take the foal round to the mare's head and deposit it gently 

 on the straw. The mare's subsequent progress was satis- 

 factory, except that it was fully a fortnight before she 

 ventured to lie down for a much-needed rest. 



The author has many times seen a ranche mare foaling 

 in a corral, surrounded by a circle of deeply-interested com- 

 panions; and in every case, in spite of embarrassing atten- 

 tions, the foal was expelled while the mare was down. 

 Although the question whether lying down or standing up 

 is the natural and usual position for the mare to assume 

 may be considered a trivial one, it is clear that the lying 

 down position is the one most conducive to efficiency in foal- 

 ing operations for at least two good reasons. Firstly, when 

 it is remembered how frequently the navel is the " port of 

 entry " of infection, it naturally follows that if the navel- 

 cord can be tightly ligatured before it is severed, the chances 

 of microbes and bacilli gaining admission to the foal's 

 system are much fewer than when the navel-cord is ruptured 

 by the foal dropping from the standing mare on to the more 

 or less unclean bedding, with which the unligatured bleed- 

 ing arteries in the stump come in contact. Secondly, in the 



