Social services in pre-dawn raid over baby horse mix-up

A Swedish farmer said a pair of social services workers who arrived at her farm to investigate a reported birth were surprised to find the newborn was a horse. Linda West said she and her daughter were concerned when a young horse at their Ansmark farm would not bond with her newborn foal early on Friday and they contacted a veterinarian for help.

"(The mother horse) was in shock and pushed the young foal against the side of the stable. We called a vet and were told to put her on the bottle - the first milk is very important to a young horse as they are born without an immune defence," West said. However, West said she did not have a bottle, so a neighbour went into town to try to track one down. She said he visited the Umeå hospital emergency room and "said only that a girl had been born" because he did not think the hospital would donate a bottle for a foal.



"They did not help him anyway and he was eventually able to track down a bottle at a petrol station - by then we had found one at the farm," she said. However, she said her neighbour's trip was the apparent cause of a visit to her home at 3 a.m. Saturday by two women who identified themselves as social service workers.

"They told us that they had been informed that a child had been born at the property and that as it was not on any register they were investigating the matter," she said. The pair left after viewing the newborn and determining that it was, in fact, a horse and not a human, West said.