Starving next to its dead mother, the foal who was loved back to life
STARVING and weak, the wild foal was a pitiful sight as she lay forlornly beside her dead mother’s body in a remote valley on unforgiving Exmoor. Just four weeks old, she tried in vain to wake her mother, sniffing at her, and even desperately attempting to suckle.
The foal, a filly, was within 48 hours of death from hunger and illness. Yet thanks to her refusal to leave her mother’s side and her chance discovery by a group of walkers, she managed to survive.
Dawn Westcott was en route with ten others on a guided trek to visit the ruins of Hoar Oak Cottage, an old shepherd’s shelter that has no water or electricity supply. Suddenly, they spotted the dead mare and her buckskincoloured foal among the undergrowth.
Dawn, a horse expert who has written equestrian books with titles such as Wild Pony Whispering, said: ‘The chances of us being in that place at the right time were incredible. It was almost as if the mare had deliberately done her best before she died to get to the only spot where her foal was likely to be discovered.
‘The bracken was high all around and if the mare had laid down 20ft off the footpath, we would never have seen her.’
It is thought the mare had died after becoming tangled in a 4ft-high rusty wire fence — cutting herself and possibly contracting tetanus. She was part of a herd of about 100 Exmoor ponies — one of a few native British breeds that have existed for millennia.
The foal is a crossbreed — its father being a Cremello-coloured pony. Dawn’s experience and affinity with horses meant she knew exactly what to do. After approaching gently with two other ponies that were part of her guided trek, she won over the foal’s trust.
‘The poor little thing was very thin and her ribs were showing,’ said Dawn, who runs the Exmoor Pony Project and credits her ‘pony whispering’ skills — patient handling — for having rescued other horses from the moor.
Dawn says she spotted signs that the foal was in deep distress. In the absence of its mother’s milk, she had been eating bracken, which is poisonous to ponies. ‘She let me tentatively start to stroke her on the shoulder and neck.’ And so began the challenge of rescuing her from the moor.
Dawn and her husband Nick quickly went 20 miles home to fetch a 4x4 utility vehicle.
With the help of farmer Nigel Floyd and a shepherd’s crook, they put the animal on a trailer. Then they gently drove her to their farm — where she spent the night in a stall in a barn. Two of Dawn’s own horses, Monsieur Chapeau and Monty, sniffed noses with her over a gate and stayed close as ‘babysitters’ until dawn.
The next task was to tempt the foal — nicknamed Lady Luna because it was a full moon the night before they found her — to drink ‘mare replacement milk’ from a bottle. It is a powder formula for orphaned foals.
It was slow progress, at first taking 30 minutes to get her to drink half a pint. But gradually the foal got into the swing.
Now, 11 weeks after her rescue, she is thriving at Dawn’s farm near Minehead, Somerset, on the edge of Exmoor. She is even suckling from an eight-year-old mare.
She is very easygoing with people — happily lying down next to Dawn, who explains: ‘Horses know when someone has helped them if they’ve been in trouble. The most special thing about it all is the way her emotional needs are fulfilled by our farm’s mares and another foal.’