"You could tell that she wanted to be around her."
After 11-day-old foal Dusty Lane Dixie lost her mother, Daisy Cutter, to a bout with colic, neither a nurse mare nor a bottle could provide the foal the nutrition she needed. However, thanks to the cooperative nature of the Standardbred community in Prince Edward Island, a second nurse mare was made available to and proved to be the perfect fit for 'Dixie,' and just in time.
"She was pretty worked up, like you could tell, 'Where's my mom? Why isn't she with me?' and stuff. It was not the happiest scene," 16-year-old Alexis Gass, who helps manage the breeding operation of her family's Standardbred farm, Dusty Lane Farms in Cornwall, P.E.I., said in a recent CBC News feature. Thankfully, for all involved, everything worked out in the end for Dusty Lane Dixie.
After Daisy Cutter's bout with colic proved irreparable and led to the mare being euthanized at Atlantic Veterinary College, the foal — without her sole source of nutrition — was distraught ... and the search was on for a nurse mare.
Another Standardbred breeder on the Island loaned a potential nurse mare — one who was producing milk but had just lost a foal — to the Gasses, but she rejected 'Dixie.'
"She probably knew at this point that wasn't her baby, since her baby died a week before that," Gass continued. "But some of them will take right to them and some of them won't."
After the nurse mare rejected 'Dixie,' and the foal rejected a bottle with milk replacement, another offer for a nurse mare came within minutes: John MacKenzie, of Stratford, P.E.I., loaned Pams Pet to the Gasses, and, almost miraculously, mare and foal connected immediately.
"You'd never even guess that they weren't biologically related," Gass said, noting that Dusty Lane Dixie drank willingly from her nurse mare's milk supply upon first meeting Sunday night (May 16), and that the two have bonded beautifully in the days since. And if the successful nurse mare pairing weren't enough, Dusty Lane Farms welcomed two additional foals the following day.
"We had three miracles that day," Alexis said. "It all started to look up from then."
(with files from CBC News)