How a rejected foal and a brokenhearted mare saved each other on a Paris farm

The little guy must have felt like a foundling.

He was alone. He was confused. He’d been taken from his birth mother in late February after she kicked at him every time he tried to nurse.

Then, a most wonderful love story began unfolding. A Thoroughbred mare, Maizelle, who had lost her foal at birth two days previously was shown to the little guy’s stall at Machmer Hall Farm near Paris.

To the amazement of many, the two bonded instantly.

“She walked in and she was like, ‘Oh, you found him. Great,’” said Carrie Brogden, recounting how the substitute mother appeared to think the new foal was her own — a baby she never really saw because it died during its birth.

Her foal had died after Maizelle’s blood pressure dropped during foaling. Deprived of oxygen, the foal was undergoing seizures and not breathing when it emerged.

She’d been looking for her foal since then, nickering and wondering where it went. When she was shown the new baby she fell instantly in love.

So did the baby, who wears his love on his forehead for all to see. His white facial marking looks nearly like a heart with a bite taken out of the upper left corner: perhaps a reminder of the bite his birth mother took out of his own heart when she rejected him.

Mother and adopted son, who are both of the same chestnut (reddish) color, have been doing great since they were paired. The colt’s real mother is also doing fine but without a foal by her side — which seems to be the way she wants it.

“In 17 years she’s the only mare we’ve dealt with that has flat out rejected her foal to where we had to remove the foal for its safety,” said Brogden. She and her husband, Craig Brogden, are part-owners of Machmer Hall, where about 90 mares will give birth this year. The principal farm owner is Carrie’s mother, Sandra Fubini.

The foal is a son of Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom. His birth mother is A Taste of Red, a 5-year-old daughter of Street Boss bred in Canada who did not race.

His adoptive mother is 15-year-old Maizelle, a stakes-winner sired by Seeking the Gold and once trained by Todd Pletcher.

Machmer Hall bought Maizelle in a partnership at Keeneland, following her track career. The foal that Maizelle lost at birth was sired by Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner and Eclipse champion Runhappy.

If this mélange of family names seems like a complicated maze it wasn’t to Maizelle. She only wanted something to mother. Maizelle had been moping like a lost soul after giving birth on a Saturday evening.

The following night, a Sunday, the farm welcomed A Taste of Red’s colt. Craig Brogden said they were alarmed to discover A Taste of Red wanted nothing to do with her foal. Veterinarian Bryan Boone gave the colt colostrum through a stomach tube. Colostrum is a mare’s first milk and important because it contains all the antibodies to disease that a new foal must receive immediately. The farm stores colostrum in case something goes wrong. A local colostrum bank also makes this milk available to farms if they are caught short.

Craig and foaling attendants worked with A Taste of Red into Monday, hoping they could persuade the mare to allow the foal to nurse. When she continued to refuse they had two options: rent a nurse mare for about $2,000 for the season or bottle-feed the little guy for at least six months until it was time to wean.

Thoroughbred farms almost universally opt for nurse mares. These substitute moms not only provide milk; they teach their adopted foal how to act like a normal horse.

“There’ve been some really good racehorses that were on nurse mares,” said Boone, the veterinarian.

Craig was about to phone a nurse mare service when he thought of Maizelle. He had no idea if she and the rejected foal would take to each other. But it was worth trying.

“She nickered at me when I went in the stall to grab her, like she was still looking for her baby,” Craig said. At the baby’s stall, where he was lying alone in the straw, “she looked in and instantly it was like, ‘this is my baby.’

The pair will stay together until weaning this summer. Once he and Maizelle accept weaning they will forget about each other. The colt’s lineage always will be listed according to his birth mother, A Taste of Red.

Machmer Hall will foal about 90 Thoroughbred mares this spring, always hoping for another like Tepin, an Eclipse Award alumnus of this farm and considered the world’s best “miler” on grass in 2015. Among numerous other stakes-winners, the farm bred and raised Vyjack, a 2013 Derby alumnus and multiple stakes-winner of more than $1 million.

“I was riding before I was walking,” Carrie Brogden said of her early years, growing up in Virginia. Later, her family was sending broodmares back and forth to Kentucky when they decided it would be easier to buy a Bluegrass farm. Machmer Hall is named for a famous family member, William Lawson Machmer and the academic building named for him when he was dean at University of Massachusetts Amherst.

And speaking of famous family members, Carrie Brogden said her great-grandfather, Guido Fubini, was the Italian mathematician who developed Fubini’s Theorem. His son, her grandfather, was Eugene Fubini, assistant secretary of defense in 1963 for the President John F. Kennedy administration.

This story was originally published April 20, 2018 at 10:05 AM with the headline "How a rejected foal and a brokenhearted mare saved each other on a Paris farm."