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Kápa was added to our motley crew in December 2004 – she arrived from Iceland, via Belgium a few days before Christmas Day and, if you are really bored, tired of living or just a glutton for punishment you can read about her arrival here.
Kápa had previously been kept as a brood mare in Iceland and, thus, had little handling – however she loaded easily in Belgium, allowed us to worm her fairly happily and was fine to trim, pick out and groom – she was in foal to a splash stallion and was due to foal sometime between early May and mid-June.
Following a bit of Hestakaup ( click here for a witty discussion of Hestakaup from Lukka at www.icelandichorse.is) in January 2005 Kápa was now mine (Muhahahahahaha) whilst Drift was transferred to the racing yard owned by the SWMBO. After a little, light work under saddle Kápa was left to grow the foal on..
Unfortunately things did not work out too well with the foaling in June 2005 – we lost the foal and nearly lost Kápa too (full story at the bottom of this page). Kápa was really poorly for quite some time after the event – no wonder (!) By October she was much recovered but still a bit underweight and, with FatBoy here on board, slightly ‘tottery’ when ridden – however Uncle Magnus cast his much more professional eye over her and said that he could see no reason why she could not be brought on carefully as a riding horse. Bad luck Kápa!
We started bringing her on gently and soon found out that she is quite a clever mare – five gaited and wth a lot of tölt (such a shame 
) . Initially we worked on building muscle – lots of hills and scoff! I can heartily recommend Baileys Number One cooked cereal meal as one way of putting weight on (the horse that is – I can personally recommend fermented cereal as one way of putting weight on a human). Now that she has put on the missing weight and muscle it’s just a case of improving her gaits and see where we go from there.
On the 1 st of June I checked her at first light and she looked ’soon but not today’ if you get my drift – wrong! By ten am she was foaling and in serious trouble – the foal was enormous, had one foreleg drawn back and was stillborn.
By relaying calls through Fiona at her work (as the mobile reception is dodgy down the field to say the least) the vet was with me by about eleven am . Try as we might there was just no way that the head could be pushed back enough to allow the shoulders to be rotated sufficiently to get the second front leg fully out – every time we touched the foal Kápa took it as a sign that she should bear down with all her might and she was soon exhausted and collapsed in a sweaty puddle on the ground.
Having already exhausted several gallons of lubricant and also ourselves the vet and I had a group huddle – she suggested that we decapitate the dead foal, pass the stump of the neck back into the mare and pull the stuck foreleg out past it, she was also getting worried that we may be losing Kápa. Well – no brainer really, off with its head. A really spooky thing then happened, Kápa was flat out on her side, I was holding her head and the vet was crouched at the back end with her scalpel ready. As soon as she made the first cut Kápa exploded – vet went one way, I went the other – we started again and the same thing happened. I’m not a superstitious person but it was a bit uncanny that she should react so violently to the vet cutting the very dead foal – in fact it was the most unnerving part of the whole thing.
After her initial convulsions Kápa again flopped on the grass exhausted – the vet finished removing the head without nicking either herself or Kápa which really impressed me as she was working in really tricky conditions. Whilst the vet then carefully guided the stump of the neck back into the vagina so as to minimise any contact between the open end and Kápa I was able to pull the other foreleg fully out and pull the foal out a few more inches – we quickly attached calving ropes to each leg.
Downhill all the way now I figured – wrong, the only thing going downhill was Kápa! We ended up like a two man tug of war team hauling on the ropes and were getting nowhere – the foal was stuck probably due to dilation of the cervix, we were both knackered and Kápa had patently had enough. Team huddle at the back of the vet’s car (can you have a team huddle with just two?) and it was one of those depressing ones – you know – injury time, your team is ten points down, your star player is injured and it’s raining. In this case we did not have Tom Cruise or Orlando Bloom to arrive and save the day – desperate measures were called for.
The vet said that Kápa had the advantage of being a tough pony – if she had been a throroughbred then she’d have been either dead already or shot. The vet had the gun with her but she also had a set of calf pullers in her car – she got them out and started assembling them. I said ‘Oh, I’ve never seen calf creepers used on a horse before’. ‘That’s not surprising’ said the vet ‘neither have I’. Gulp!
Calf pullers (or creepers) are a ratchet device similar in shape to a broom – you plant the ‘broom head’ against the back end of the cow and attach two ropes from the front legs of the calf onto the ratchet device on the ‘broom shaft’. You then ratchet this down the shaft away from the cow and creep the calf backwards out of the mother – they are powerful bits of equipment and can put up to 500kg of pressure onto the calf.
Meanwhile, back in the field….. Kápa was now motionless, eyes turned up in her head and not looking like she was having a good time – the vet got the head of the pullers against the back of Kápa’s legs between the hocks and tail so that we would be pulling downwards in the correct direction and started to crank. Kápa suddenly sprang back to life and there was a confused melee of humans and horse that rolled in a cartoon blur across the field. Three or four times this happened and I was really starting to think that it was time for the captive bullet when Kápa just flopped again.
This time there was no objection from her to the creepers and we got the foal started – once the chest was free then it started to slide out nicely, inch after inch after inch – it was enormous. Then more disaster – the foal got hooked up by its hips this time – it really did seem that nothing was going right! Fortunately with a few more handfuls of lube, me twisting and the vet pulling we finally disengaged the foal’s hips and it just slid out onto the grass – a bay, splash filly – pants! That would have been nice.
Kápa was totally sparko – a shivering wreck on the deck – as it were. The vet gave her some antibiotic, left me some extra antibiotic injections, a course of bute and advised me to cover her up to try and keep her warm. She really did not know if Kápa would make it or not and suggested that I leave her undisturbed for a few hours and ring the vet if there was no change.
Having seen the vet out onto the road I went back to the top of the hill with a New Zealand rug that I spread over the unconscious Kápa. I sat on the tail of the rug and surveyed the mayhem we had created. During the wresting and convulsions we had flattened a huge area of what is meant to be our hayfield, there was blood everywhere, a headless foal, a knackered owner and a possibly dying mare.
Marvellous.
Then the heavens opened and it started to pour.
Bloody marvellous.
So there I am, all wet, dejected, miserable – I’d rung up SWMBO at work and updated her on what was going on – needless to say she was not over the moon either. Suddenly the rain stopped and a warming ray of sunshine beamed down on us through a gap in the grey overcast.
I could hear the strains of ‘Jerusalem’ being sung by a cathedral choir in the background as a voice rang out in my head
‘Chin up there my man, England did not become the great nation she is today by allowing her menfolk to sit around feeling sorry for themselves.’
The choir notched the singing up a decibel or two.
‘The world is a greater place because of the steely determination of the English to fight on against the odds, when others would give up and Englishman tightens his girth and carries on’.
‘Hang on’ I said ‘I’m Scottish’
‘Are you called Sir Ranulph Fiennes?’
‘No I’m Graeme Tyson’
‘Oops, wrong person – sorry’
Sound of record needle scratching across the platten, choir abruptly ceases, sunbeam fades and it starts raining again.
So there I am, all wet, dejected, miserable – again! Suddenly Kápa rolled off her side onto her belly and looked around – next thing she starts pulling at the grass in front of her and starts munching away. Within minutes she had staggered to her feet and was standing there, very shaky, eating away – this was less than an hour after the vet had left so things were looking up.
Bit of a problem with the bute though – Kápa has not been in the habit of partaking of a bucket feed so, when presented with one I fully expected her to ignore it. Nope! Straight in there and wolfed the lot – a hungry girl. A second repast was swiftly offered up with bute as a condiment – flat refusal, no way she was going to touch it. Baffled I told SWMBO and she suggested that I try the route to every girl’s heart – what?
Diamonds?
George Clooney?
A week in Mustique?
Nooooo – marmite sandwiches!
Worked a treat – two slices of brown, a scrape of butter, smear the whole shebang in marmite and then sprinkle bute over the beast. Kápa wolfed it down.
She was very shaky for the next two or three days – barely able to stand and patently quite weak. However we were blessed with mild weather, two feet high grass and nothing wrong with her eating habits. When I went up on Day Three to give her the final penicillin jab she proved how well she was feeling by taking one look at the needle and legging it across the paddock.
Two weeks on she is back in with the other horses and looking well – her back left leg is a bit turned out but is coming in more each day – she’s feeling good enough to play with Tinna and even breaks into canter until the dodgy hip gives up on her. Time will tell I guess – at least we’ve managed to keep Kápa which, at the time of foaling, I seriously doubted.
Click here to see Kápa’s gallery
