Pačo

Story

Pačo was Najka and Buro's black colt. He was born in March 2023 — just a day after Rio — and lived only two or three days. His story was short, but what he showed us was enormous.

When I first held him to the udder to suckle, I noticed something odd — it was as if he did not like the milk. He did not want it, not then and not the next times either. It occurred to me that Luca was right there, having foaled just a day before Najka — but we were afraid that Luca was older and that her own foal would go short. So we did not try it. We consulted the vet — we pointed out that he seemed not to like the milk — and he advised us to make him drink. And that is what we did.

Only after he died, when we had a post-mortem done, did two vets straight away explain from the yellow membranes and the yellow colour throughout his body what had been going on. Najka and Buro's blood types did not match. Their first colt, Orík, got away with „only" a weakened immune system. But by the second foal Najka's body was primed — and after the birth her own immunity, through the antibodies in her milk, killed him.

Pačo knew it before any of us. That is why he did not like that milk. Had I listened to my instinct then, he could have lived.

We do not blame the vet. A foal that will not drink is a common thing, and his advice at that moment was what almost anyone would have given. A blood type mismatch cannot be spotted from a distance — we only found out from the post-mortem. We write this so that someone else thinks of it sooner, not to look for someone to blame.