A lovely wee foal

Met the lovely foal Miranda today and tried (only partially successfully) to photograph her feet.   She’s a 5 day old foal and still has a bit of the soft tissue that covers her feet to protect her mum when she was inside the womb.  Once born, the tissue flakes off and the hooves harden up.

Her mum was very good with having strange folk come and say hello to her foal… and little Miranda was also very relaxed – lying down whilst we were taking phots of her little feet.

So here she is with her mum..

And then having a bit of a lie down (its hard work being this lovely!)

Heres her hoof, its hard to see on this  –  but there is still quite alot of soft fibrous material around her frog. 
 and heres my cheeky dog come to see who’s the new centre of attention!  What a good girl Miranda is – taking it all in her stride..

As Miranda has grown, her hooves have been showing some really interesting features.. Heres her hooves at about three months old… what can you see??

I can see  a change in angle of the hoof wall as it grows down, an event line (I bet you can guess what caused that) and a change in colour.

The change in angle is caused by how quickly little Miranda is growing, as her coronet band grows, the hoof wall being grown at the top is bigger than the hoof wall at the bottom…

The event line is caused by – her birth!!! Quite a stressful time for both mare and foal, so not surprising that is shows in her little hooves..

And lastly the colour change is caused by the difference in being fed via placenta (when she was in the womb) and her mothers milk once she was born.

I think this little hoof is great – there is so much going on, and such a story being told…