So, Belinda has had her foal!
Melody is a bay filly with a white star and a white hind sock, who was born on Friday 14th May at around 6 in the morning. We had moved Belinda out to our vets to give birth as she was due whilst Sally was away, so she had the best of care for her labour!
Melody is a full sister to Aria, so we were expecting a foal around the same size, but Belinda got bigger and bigger as her pregnancy developed - she had a very "good" winter chomping on great haylage and hard feed and obviously put a lot of time and effort into growing a big foal.
Melody is around a hand (4 inches) bigger than Aria was when born and has very long legs and big knees and hocks, which can be used to guesstimate her adult height, which we suspect will be a bit bigger than Aria, who stands just under 15 hands at the moment as a 2 year old.
Because Melody was a big big, she was born with slightly scrumpled up legs from where she had been squashed up in the womb. The vets kept her and mum in for a couple of days until her legs had straightened out a bit and she is happily cantering around the field with mum now.
We took her home on Wednesday 3rd June, which was certainly an experience. Belinda has never been brilliant about loading - it takes her about 40 minutes to work out that once she gets up the ramp, there is room for her to turn round, so after 45 minutes of running in and out of the trailer on one of the hottest days of the year, both her and Sally were a bit sweaty. She went in happily eventually and little Melody wondered what all the fuss was about - she just followed her mum up the ramp in a very brave fashion.
They are now both happily sleeping in the sun in their own little paddock at the back of the school and are happy to have visitors as long as they dont' feed them titbits!
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