LSU’s Foal Team Assists with Special Attention
Anne Wooldridge,DVM
Equine Medicine Resident
Lais R.R. Costa, MV, MS
Clinical Instructor of Equine Medicine
Diplomate, American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine

It’s 2:00 a.m. in February and the barn is quiet.  All of the doors are shut, but it’s still chilly.  Most of the stalls are full.  There are colics receiving intravenous fluids, post-operative cases, a horse with diarrhea in isolation, and three foals less than one week old.  One foal that was born with an angular limb deformity has casts on both of her hind legs and can’t stand up on her own to nurse.  Two foals are orphans that are too sick to drink from a bottle and must be fed through a tube.  One of the orphans is also receiving intravenous fluids and oxygen.  With all of the other cases in the hospital and three foals that need intensive care, the veterinary technician who works from midnight to 8:00 a.m. would be stretched very thin, if she didn’t have help from LSU’s Foal Team.

 

The foal team member on the 2:00-4:00 a.m. shift, Justin Gregg, cares for the three foals, making sure that they are warm, fed, and monitored carefully.  ICU is full, so the foals are in the main barn, and Justin is shivering.  The two orphans, however, are quite toasty, wrapped in blankets with continuous heat lamps.  Both foals are too sick to drink from a bottle and are being fed milk replacer through a stomach tube every two hours.  At 2:00 a.m., Justin checks the vital signs on both of the little orphans.  Both foals are stable, so it’s feeding time.  He mixes the milk replacer and feeds both foals.  He has to take care to wash his hands and dip his feet between foals so that infectious agents are not transmitted.  The older orphan is feeling a little better and knows the routine, so she gets a little excited when her “surrogate mom” comes to feed her.  She has almost figured out how to drink from a pan, but still needs supplementation with the nasogastric tube.  The younger orphan has tangled herself up in her fluid lines and her fluid pump is beeping, so Justin fixes that before he feeds her.  The regular night technician comes over to check on everything and helps hold the little one still while she is being fed.  When Justin has just finished feeding her, a piercing whinny rings out across the barn.  The filly with the casts on her hind legs is very vocal when she’s ready to eat.  He runs over there and helps her up, and she thanks him by double barrel kicking with both of those casted hind legs!  It’s almost 3:00 a.m. now, time for more vital signs on the sickest foal with the fluids.  The next break is used to clean up the feeding area and the equipment around the stalls, and then it’s time to start the 4:00 a.m. feeding.  The next member on the 4:00-6:00 a.m shift, Ashley Holm, comes in, and Justin goes home to sleep for two hours before going to class in the morning.

 

LSU’s foal team is composed of first, second, and third-year veterinary students.  Some of them want to be equine veterinarians and some of them want to learn more about horses.  The mentors for the foal team are Dr. Lais Costa, an internal medicine clinical instructor; Dr. Dale Paccamonti, a theriogenology professor; and Dr. Anne Wooldridge, an internal medicine resident.  Foal team is a great opportunity for the veterinary students to learn about responsible patient care and how to handle mares and foals.  The second-year foal team members, Britta Leise and Lorna Millen, said “Foal team is a great opportunity for us to get out into the clinics and have some hands-on experience.  With all of the classroom lectures that we’re in right now, foal team reminds us why we’re really in vet school and provides a light at the end of the tunnel.”  Most of their duties involve feeding the foals, monitoring vital signs, monitoring fluids, and milking the mares (sometimes a dangerous job) for the foals that cannot nurse.  The fourth-year students or the night veterinary technician is always available to help the foal team member on duty with questions or problems.  Neonatal foals are the most critically ill equine patients, so this experience gives the foal team member a real edge when they get to fourth-year clinical rotations.  They get to observe firsthand conditions, such as neonatal septicemia, maladjustment, ruptured bladders, navel infections, and angular limb deformities, often before they have heard about them in the classroom.  Every member goes through a mandatory training program consisting of lectures on different foal problems and a technical lab that teaches them how to work with fluids, oxygen lines, and feeding equipment.  The third-year students help train the second and first year students by presenting cases from previous years and sharing their experiences.  Another job of the foal team is to monitor mares with high risk pregnancies for signs of foaling in the middle of the night.  If she starts to foal, they contact the clinician in charge of the case and start preparing the mare for foaling.  The foal team is contacted if a new foal comes after hours, and they learn about diagnostics and initial procedures for new foals.

 

Almost all of the critically ill foals admitted to LSU last spring survived, and that is largely due to the dedication and care that the foal team provided for those foals.  The clinicians, house officers, and technicians greatly appreciate the work they do and anticipate that foal season 2000 is as successful as last year’s season.