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Condy's Story

Here is Condy with his mummy, Babbling (that's me on the right, by the way), just a few hours after he was born. You can just see the afterbirth still tied up between Ba's hindlegs. Babbling didn't 'clean' until 8 hours later, just as the vet arrived to give her a hand. Over the following fortnight, the vet saw her three or four more times to wash her out, as she had developed a uterine infection while Condy was still in situ. The infection turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the foal came a week early. Even premature, he was too big to make it out on his own. Luckily, Ba was kind enough to wait in her field until I returned at lunchtime (I had taken her up to the barn to foal the night before but she walked all night and made a run for it in the morning back down to her chosen but inconvenient field at the far end of the farm, in which there is no water). She took one look at me and lay down. However, she couldn't get Condy's forehead out, but a wee tug from me at the right moment and out he popped!

The weather turned nasty the evening that Condy was born, so we had to bring them in. Ba then impacted, but we hand picked rich grass from a silage field for her for two days around the clock and she pulled through. Being a week early, Condy found it difficult to maintain his body temperature, so wore a little rug for the first week, which my local saddler, Bernice Mone, converted from a waterproof exercise sheet I had. Even with the extra help, it became clear that he was having trouble breathing as he lay down, and he was spending too much time on the ground. He was treated three times for pneumonia before he finally was strong enough to shake it. We piled the probiotics into him to counteract the antibiotics, and everything came out ok in the end.

Condy is a very open, curious foal, but his innocence and at times sheer witlessness has gotten him into the odd spot of bother. He had cut his hind cannon before he was a week old - how, I'll never know - and will always have a few white hairs there. He doesn't panic however, when things go wrong; he just waits patiently for me to spot his predicament and pull him out!

At about seven months, Condy developed an abscess in a hind foot. This was opened, poulticed, covered, and treated with antibiotics three times, and still kept coming back. Hoof abscesses are the most painful things. The pain was so bad at times, that Condy would sit on his bum like a dog, and he colicked on one memorable Christmas Eve night - as if my poor vets had not seen enough of us in 2001. Rubbing the inside of his ears helped reduce the pain, but eventually we bit the bullet and shipped him to the yard which broke Bi & Ba for me two years previously and jumped Bi, where he was stabled with his mummy for four weeks to allow us to open the foot completely. When the vet was happy that the infection had been cleared, he was shod with a pad to keep it clean. The Warmblood temperament once more came to the rescue - Condy stood 'like a Christian' through all the poulticing and shoeing, and came out of his stable sojourn in fine form, none the worse for the experience, and quite happy for mum to go off to the indoor arena without him for an hour or so - he was even happier to get out to the indoor on his own without mummy telling him he couldn't talk to the other horses and spoiling his fun!

Introducing the two mares when Condy was a few weeks old was a bit of an adventure. As the sheds are all arranged around one central farmyard, to allow the foster mare and Chinny access to a side shed, I had to build a  barricade with double width (so they couldn't reach each other over them) cattle feed troughs along one end of the yard to allow them to come in from one field, while Ba & Condy had the front field, the yard and the barn. Many threats were made across the barricade, and after a week they had not lessened in violence. Eventually Condy settled the matter in his characteristically witless way, by attempting to jump the trough and ending up underneath, where as he patiently waited for granny to upend the trough again (no harm done, thank God), the foster mare and Chinny came scooting across and in to Babbling. After much galloping and threatening gestures, the mares decided they could tolerate each other for the sake of the children, so they stayed together. Ba never settled to the foster mare in the 9 months she stayed with us - she still violently threatened her at every feed time. However, Ba decided early on that Chinny was acceptable - or was it that Chinny just ignored her threats?- so he was allowed to eat and sleep in the barn, while the foster mare ate from a hay net at the door.

The funny thing about the whole group dynamics thing was that Ba was always the bullied mare - she waited last in line for everything, and jumped out of the way as soon as Bi, Chinny's mum, flicked an ear in her direction. However, with Bi gone, Ba became aggressive towards the other horses, and fought her way to the top. The foster mare briefly was allowed to be boss with the arrival of her foal in February. This was more because she was forced to follow the foal into Ba's territory (ie the Inner Sanctum of the barn on a rainy day) and defend it from allcomers. But after a week, when the new arrival had enough wit to mind itself and get out of the way, its mother let it go into the shed by itself and at its peril. Interestingly, Ba and the two boys allowed it to take normally unpardonable liberties, and it slept with the two boys and Ba on the comfy shavings while mummy stood outside the door in the rain. (there was another shed provided for their use, but he wouldn't entertain it at all, so his poor mummy had to take the bad weather)