Mother mare I: Horse adopts orphaned foal
By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian
Watch a video of Charm and the two colts she is raising
ARLEE - She's gentle and strong, generous and forgiving, a perfect mom and a gorgeous piece of horseflesh.
Her name is Charm, and for the past month she has raised Rico precisely as a good mother should in a spacious pen at Kelly and Buck Lake's quarter horse ranchette.
At midweek, in a spitting May rain, white-faced Rico nosed up to his mother to feed. Along came Talonno and stuck his own little nickering nose in the way.
“He's more outgoing than this guy,” Kelly Lake said. “They play a lot, but (Talonno) is the instigator of things.”
Rico, right: has seemingly been happy to share his mother with Talonno. Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian
That's a sight for Lake's tired eyes. She and Buck, with help from horse friends and family, have been on constant vigilance of this special threesome. The story, maybe the miracle, is that less than three days earlier Talonno, at the age of 33 1/2 hours, had lost his own mom.
He was born in the wee hours of Saturday morning, May 3, at Claire and Norm Buresh's foaling pen over on Jocko Road.
His pending registered name of Talonno is to honor his dam, Two Fox Talonna, an 18-year-old Register of Merit show horse with a pedigree and demeanor that make Kelly Lake's eyes well up.
Talonna came off the storied Birdtail Ranch in Simms.
“She was one of the last true Birdtail Ranch horses and one of the last Two-Eyed Fox mares,” Lake said. “Just a beautiful mare.”
A divorce and then the death of Talonna's owner, Leonard Rains, left his prized horses to be dispersed. The Lakes felt honored four years ago when Talonna was offered to them.
“We ended up with a 14-year-old mare that I never thought I'd ever own, and we got to know her and love her,” said Kelly, who shows pleasure horses at American Quarter Horse Association shows.
The birth went smoothly. Claire Buresh has an electronic monitor on her foaling pen, and by the time she noticed Talonna's time was nigh and got to her side, Talonno was on the ground.
It was 3:30 a.m., and mom and baby both looked good. But by Sunday morning it was clear something wasn't right. Buresh called the Lakes and said Talonna was lying down and looking uncomfortable. A local vet, Dr. Carolyn Cosgrove, checked her out and could find no signs of colic. But the mare wasn't getting any better.
Talonna and little Talonno were loaded in a trailer and rushed to Blue Mountain Veterinary in Missoula, where Dr. Dick Richardson and Dr. Angela Langer met them and recommended surgery.
“It looked like it was going to be a twist in the large intestine due to the size of the uterus pressing on it,” Kelly Lake said.
The as-yet unnamed colt was given a final meal from his mom at noon, then led away from the surgery room. The news got worse.
Talonna's uterus was found to have a massive rupture. The tear was so extensive, and the tissue was of so poor quality, there was nothing to stitch together to repair it.
“They couldn't do a thing,” Lake said.
Talonno was without a mother.
Raising an orphan foal by hand has been done before, but it's fraught with pitfalls. Besides the weeks or months of sleepless nights, you have to be sure the kid is eating right at each stage of development. And then there's the danger of over-mothering.
“A lot of trainers think orphans can be raised by humans, but they say you have to be careful not to spoil them because it may ruin their ability to become truly competitive, successful show horses in the future,” said Kelly Lake. “We were encouraged to try and find a horse mother to take care of him, because he'll be treated like a regular horse, not this creature that has had such a rough row to hoe.”
Richardson knew of a mare that had recently lost her first colt. The owners readily agreed to try to pair up the two, so the Lakes trailered Talonno to Bearmouth, 35 miles east of Missoula, and gave it a try.
“At first the mare nickered to him, and we thought, ‘Ah, this is going to work,' ” Kelly said. “He got a good meal off her. But the minute we tried to let things be kind of natural, she aimed a kick and it was clear she would not accept him.”
The Lakes headed home with Talonno, who was still just a day and a half old.
“We were pretty much resigned to the hourly bottle feedings that you do for the first seven days,” Kelly said.
But Claire Buresh had one other idea. Charm was back at the ranch with Rico. Why not see if she would take in Talonno as well?
“I did it once years ago with a mare I had,” Buresh said.
In that case, the mare named April had a 4-month-old colt and the Bureshes acquired a 2-day-old from another Arlee family, the Myllymakis, who were barrel racing on the youngster's mom.
April and Claire had “a great relationship,” she said. “And I got the mare to take the foal.”
Buresh knew that Charm has an affinity for Buck Lake, who doesn't know quite why.
“Animals are just different than people,” he said. “They sort of decide who they like, and they do it right away. It seems like from the time we got her, she just kind of gravitated toward me.”
“I foaled (Charm) out over here a month ago, and when Buck and Kelly would come over and visit with the mare, when they'd leave, the mare would nicker at Buck,” Buresh said. “You kind of knew the mare had bonded with him. I know that bond because I had it with my mare.
“That what I put to Buck: If he could convince the mare that's what she was supposed to do, I felt it would work.”
At 8 p.m., near the end of a long Sunday, Buck held Charm and crooned gentle instructions to her. The hungry colt to be named Talonno was introduced to Charm and Rico. Richardson had supplied a sedative for the mare, but it wasn't needed. Buresh recommended a lip chain but the Lakes decided no.
“No force whatsoever,” Kelly said. “It was almost instantaneous that she took him. I know it brought tears to people's eyes.”
It's hard to imagine a more natural equine triad.
By Wednesday, gangly Talonno seemed to have forgotten the travails of that traumatic Sunday. He sniffed out everything - fence rails, the water trough, a photograph, the camp chair in which Kelly sits to keep an eye on digestion successes and the like.
“Big brother” Rico is an easygoing, strapping snuggler. Scratch his butt and he's yours forever.
And Charm? The sorrel beauty lounged placidly while human and horse activity swirled around her. If the foals competed for her milk, of which she has proved to have an adequate supply, Charm seemed not to notice. She's there for the both of them.
The irony, said Kelly Lake, is that Charm had a bit of a bad reputation around other horses.
“She was the alpha mare in our group,” said Lake. “We used to get annoyed with her because she was kind of nasty to (Talonna). She was just real bossy. She'd make everybody move because she wanted their oats.
“When Claire suggested this, we were kind of skeptical because she's a good mom, she's great with her own baby, but she's kind of particular in what horse is allowed to be around her.”
No one's out of the woods yet. The Lakes pulled their live-in horse trailer alongside the corral the first night and set up housekeeping. They take turns waking - every hour at first, now every two or three - to check on them.
They monitor the bowel movements of Charm and Talonno, to be sure both digestive systems are operating properly. Talonno needed an enema at one point, and that worked magnificently.
Their humans probably still haven't recovered from Sunday - from the shock of losing Talonna and the desperate search for a surrogate. The Lakes can't thank enough the people who helped see them and Talonno through the nightmare of a day, including the veterinarians; the Bureshes; Buck's parents, George and Joy Lake; and Kelly's folks, Bob and Kay Sheridan.
Among the many advisors they've tapped through the week is a woman in Seattle, who makes a profession of raising orphan foals, many of them for high-end ranches in western Washington.
“She said this just doesn't happen,” Kelly Lake said. “She said you have a million-dollar mare to do this and do it so easily.”
A million dollars? Pshaw. To an 8-day-old kid named Talonno, Charm is priceless.
Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at kbriggeman@missoulian.com
