Wimpole Home Farm’s Shire mare Queenie has fostered an orphaned foal, Solomon, giving a happy outcome to a sad story.

In June, Queenie gave birth to her foal who sadly had deformed legs and had to be put down shortly after birth.

As Queenie had plenty of milk and would be able to suckle a foal, Emma Warner, our Head Horsewoman, contacted the National Foaling Bank to see if an orphaned foal could be found for Queenie. This was important for Queenie having lost her own foal, to let her express her maternal instincts and to recover her tone after pregnancy.

Mrs Gemma Hill’s foal 'Looking At The Girls', otherwise known as Solomon, was a suitable match. His mum had haemorrhaged at birth and died.

It was agreed that Solomon could come to Wimpole Home Farm to see if Queenie would be willing to foster him. From his parentage, Solomon is going to be a big horse. His father is a show jumper.

Just 11 days old, Solomon arrived at Wimpole Home Farm at the end of June. Initially he had to be hand fed every two hours causing Emma and Abi a number of restless nights, not to mention the tricky task of milking Queenie so her milk could be fed to Solomon.

Having been hand fed from birth, Solomon was a little cheeky around humans, and not as cautious as a foal would ordinarily be.

Emma received lots of advice from National Foaling Bank’s founder Johanna Vardon on how to go about establishing an orphaned foal with its prospective foster mother. Very gentle – if messy – preparations were made over the next couple of days.

To make sure Solomon smelt familiar to Queenie, he was covered in her faeces, urine and milk, before being shown to her.

Over a period of nine days, Solomon was carefully and patiently introduced to Queenie, starting bottom first so she could sniff him.

Solomon was rather frightened of Queenie at first and it took a while to get him used to the idea of suckling from Queenie’s teats. After all, he had not met a huge Shire before.

Queenie, initially tolerant but not over-fond of Solomon, now loves her surrogate foal, and they spend their time together out in the field.

They will stay together for about six months until he is weaned, when he will return to his owner.

Solomon is still sleeping a lot, as with any very young animal, but skips about in the paddocks and seems to be enjoying life at Wimpole.