What is a Red Bag Delivery and the sad loss of our Arabian colt, Pegasus

The story of the birth and death of our Arabian colt due to a Red bag delivery and bad milk from the mare.
DISCLAIMER: We are not Veterinarians or trained professionals, we only wish to share with you our experience, so when others find themselves in the same situations with their beloved horses, they will have to act more quickly, and the chances for the foal's survival heightened. *The information about Red bag delivery is sourced from websites, and all links will be shared below.
Please consult with your Veterinarians first.
Parts from the post. You can read the whole post here:
www.southarabianhorseclub.com...
At the beginning of the foaling, we noticed that it was all red, we had never seen this before, nor had any experience with what they call a
Red Bag Delivery and this resulted in that we had to learn about it the hard way...
Know we know that reason why we saw the red bag first, was due to that a portion of the placenta had detached from the uterine wall prematurely, in this situation,
the red bag appears as a red bag hanging from the vulva, wherein normal births, this red bag will come to follow after the foal about 1-3 hours after birth.
There are 2 bags during the foaling process, the red bag called chorioallantois, and the white bag called the amnion.
The red bag is the one attached to the uterine wall and allows the exchange of nutrients and waste back and forth to the fetus through the umbilical cord.
The white bag surrounds the fetus and has many functions, including lubrication and protection.
*The information about Red bag delivery is sourced from websites, and all links will be shared below. Please consult with your Veterinarians first.
The foal should be watched carefully for signs of hypoxia (oxygen deprivation) or infection. Reasons for that a Red bag delivery is that the mare has either contracted an infection such as virus, bacterial, etc and therefore the detachment of the placenta. Please read more about it on these websites:
www.intechopen.com/chapters/5...
www.horseillustrated.com/hors...
And sadly in our case, it seemed like this was a stroke of double bad luck, the foal was already infected through his mother, where Joe later in the evening noticed that the milk coming out of Venus was brownish and see-through, meaning that the foal never received the very important first milk, called colostrum. Again, this
was something we had not seen before and thought that perhaps this was due to Venus being a young foal, and decided to let her continue feeding to stimulate her to start producing milk. At that moment the foal seemed fine, and was active and behaved normally.
The day after, Joe noticed some concerning signs, in the morning when he saw the foal, the foal had pus under his eyes, also something we had not seen before.
The foal at this moment was still active and sucking off Venus´s teats.
But Joe´s intuition told him to find out more about the milk,
Joe consulted his friend who´s also a horse farm owner and veterinarian about the milk being brownish yellowish, and his friend could confirm that this milk had no nutrients, using the term, bad milk.
And was suggested to use formulas for the foal,
or try to milk the other mare who is already feeding her foal.
So in the late afternoon of the 11th of September, we went to milk Valencia, using our daughter's milk bottle, not the ultimate bottle, but at least better than nothing.
Valencia was easy to milk, but when we were feeding Venus´s foal, we noticed that he seemed very weak, even though he drank all the milk, it seemed like at this
point it was already too late. The morning after when Joe went down the stable, he found Venus´s foal barely breathing at the same spot he had laid down the night before and was about to take his lasts breaths. It was a very sad moment for all of us, not only was this Venus´s first foal, but it was also the first chestnut colt of the stud.
We hope that sharing with you our story of the loss of little Pegasus,
and the signs of abnormal Placenta, Pus and Milk, could help others to act more quickly. We know that the next time seeing these signs is to prepare Formulas, bottles, medicine for the foal to increase some percentage of survival, though in cases with Red Bag Deliveries they often are very small chances for survival...
​Sincerely Catarina and Joe
The links and sources:
Website: www.southarabianhorseclub.com
The whole blog post: www.southarabianhorseclub.com...
Donation: www.southarabianhorseclub.com...
The shop: www.southarabianhorseclub.com...
Links about Red bag delivery:
www.intechopen.com/chapters/5...
www.horseillustrated.com/hors...