Valentine’s Day was another frozen day in an unusually long cold spell in Central Kentucky. My seven-year-old Thoroughbred broodmare, Exotic Blue, looked comically distorted, with a belly that stuck out dramatically on both sides and fell so low that I had to crane my neck just to locate her udder. At 16.2 hands tall and with a rangy build, this pregnancy was the first time I’d ever thought "Blue" looked like a broodmare, even though it would be her third foal.

Exotic Blue seemed to accept the foal at first, but her body language soon indicated a change of heart.

There was no mistaking the situation on that Feb. 14 evening: foaling time wasn’t going to be far off. Once I did sight the mare’s udder, I could see it had bagged up quite a bit since that morning–and it had already been filling up a lot over the previous two days. She had a large cap of milk crust on each teat. The frigid temperatures had helped to make it obvious that she was waxing up, freezing a layer of the dripping milk over the head of each nipple