Winning Name Chosen for Foal Cam Colt at Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center |
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April 29, 2014, Volume 60, No. 32 |
The colt born with the world watching on the New Bolton Center Foal Cam is now named New Bolton Pioneer, Boone for short. New Bolton Pioneer will serve as the colt’s formal “show name,” with Boone as his less formal “barn name.”
Tens of thousands of people watched live via the Foal Cam as their mare, My Special Girl, gave birth to Boone at 9:22 p.m. on Saturday, March 29. Dr. Jonathan Palmer, chief of New Bolton Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Service, and his team assisted with the challenging, 22-minute birth. More than 170,000 people in 120 countries tuned in to watch the live broadcast from the Foal Cam, from February 26 to April 2.
A video of the birth is featured on www.vet.upenn.edu/foalcam
Also included is a link to access a Baby Book Blog, which chronicles Boone’s life.
Penn Vet offered the public eight names to choose from during the week-long contest, and Boone was the clear winner. Of the 2,968 votes cast online, New Bolton Pioneer/Boone received 874 votes. New Bolton Zenith/Zeno, came in second with 550 votes. The other names, in order of popularity, were: New Bolton Equuleus/Stellar; New Bolton Newsworthy/Scoop; New Bolton Original/True; New Bolton Peerless/Tip-Top; New Bolton High-Tech/Scope; New Bolton Broadcast/Signal.
“This colt is truly a pioneer for New Bolton Center. And in the spirit of Daniel Boone, he personifies everything we’re striving for at Penn Vet,” said Dr. Rose Nolen-Walston, New Bolton Center assistant professor of medicine, who will adopt Boone. “Looking at him over his first week, I have no doubt that he’s going to make us very proud. Every time I see him, I think of the new hope that the innovations that allowed him to be born will offer horse owners around the globe.”
This foal, in particular, is very special because he represents the first successful pregnancy by Penn Vet using the advanced reproductive technique intracytoplasmic sperm injection, known as ICSI, which involves injecting a single sperm into a mature egg. This ICSI embryo was transferred to My Special Girl in early April 2013. She was due to foal on March 14, which is the average of 340 days of gestation. But the pregnancy went a bit longer, with the world watching and waiting, until the 355th gestational day.
Boone and My Special Girl are both thriving, their veterinarians say. Although Boone fractured four ribs while coming through the narrow birth canal, the ribs are aligned and healing well. He is eating well and steadily gaining weight, having gained some 75 pounds in three weeks, up from a birth weight of 104 pounds. Boone does have a heart murmur, a condition that Dr. Palmer said is very common, found in 80 percent of foals in the first month of life, and usually harmless.
“We will be following Boone’s heart murmur carefully during his first month to be sure it is harmless,” Dr. Palmer said. “If it doesn’t fade and disappear we will do a complete heart examination, including ultrasound imaging of his heart.”
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My Special Girl and Boone were moved to the Hofmann Center for Reproduction at New Bolton Center, where Boone will live for about six months until he is weaned. But he will remain in the New Bolton Center family, going to live on Dr. Nolen-Walston’s nearby farm. Lisa Fergusson of Cochranville, once on Canada’s Olympic Eventing team, will be his trainer when he is ready to begin his athletic career.
For more details on this story, visit www.vet.upenn.edu/foalcam and read the Penn Vet Extra story and more about the birth.
For a recent video of Boone, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKDekJnAoP4
At left, New Bolton Pioneer, Boone, with his mother, My Special Girl. |
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