Week 4 on the ranch

What should have been a summery week was heavily obscured. The strong wildfires in northern Alberta covered the sky with smoke. At first glance, it looked like the sky was cloudy, but the air quality was very poor and everything was bathed in yellowish-orange light.

On Wednesday, the wind changed and there was almost no more smoke above us. The sun was shining and the temperatures were summery. This turned out to be unfortunate for a 22-year-old mare who had colic in the evening. With the help of a veterinarian, we managed to prevent the worst and she started to recover. We tried everything to keep her alive as she had a two-week-old foal.

On Thursday morning, the smoke pollution was at its worst. The sun was hardly visible, and when it did appear, it was red. I went with Robert and Cody to a farm in Saskatchewan, where we loaded around 100 bales of hay onto the trailer. We didn't have enough hay, and because it was too dry, the grass was not growing properly, so we had to supplement with hay. In the afternoon, the wind changed again and the smoke cleared. Together with Robert, I stacked the bales of hay in a small shed.

On Friday morning, the old mare was doing worse. Tanya and Robert took her and the foal to the animal clinic, while I fed the other horses and cleaned the stable. Overnight, the horses came back to the ranch because there was no one at the clinic to care for them. On Saturday, the mare's condition continued to worsen, and when she had another bout of colic in the afternoon, Tanya and Robert decided to put her out of her suffering and euthanize her.

Afterwards, Tanya found a foster mare through Facebook who was a 4.5-hour drive away. Robert immediately drove off with the truck and trailer and met the owner halfway. They loaded the mare and he headed back home. He arrived back at the ranch at half past four in the morning.

On Sunday, we tried to get the foal to nurse from the mare, but she refused to accept it. She kept trying to bite the foal. Tanya led the foal to the pasture so it could see the other mares with their foals. One mare, who had a 4-week-old foal of her own, allowed the "foreign" foal to nurse from her without resistance. We put these three on a separate pasture so the foal can get used to its new mother. Now we have to wait and see if everything works out. We'll have to return the foster mare, maybe she will find another orphaned foal that she will accept.