Breeding: foster mares' foals

unwinding

Simple question: what happens to the foster mares' own foals? I know foster mares are widely used in thoroughbred breeding industry, and probably in sport horse breeding as well - there must be hundreds of foals generated by this kind of breeding - what happens to them all?

Simply baffled.

Victor

I imagine a percentage of foals die young.

shanagarry

Mares aren't put in foal just to be used as foster mothers. Fostering occurs when mares lose their own foal to natural causes.

Plus it's not anywhere nearly widely occuring. I've no idea of numbers, but I'd guess at not more than 100-150 successful fosters p.a. as for it to work you need a mare to lose her foal somewhere fairly near at the same time your foal is orphaned. That doesn't happen that often.

Esroh

Well I just tell you from experience . I worked for 2 of the countrys biggest TB breeding operations in the past and both had their own herd of Foster Mares. Generally Pie/Skew bald types which were covered by the new Stallions in Dec and early Jan. This gave the Stallion a nice quiet mare who would stand still while he learnt his trade but also meant the mares foaled in Nov or Dec. This meant that the earliest a foal was taken from its mother(if she needed to foster )was when it was 2 months old. By then it was able to survive on its own. Also on 1 of the studs there was a mare which was happy to adopt anything and she would often be left with the foster mare foals as their minder.

The Fortermares own foals which had some very high class Sires were often given to members of staff or were sold privately though their passports would allstate breeding unknown or give the Teaser as the sire.


If you get a fostermare from <snip> you are required to get the mare in foal before she returns to them. They also keep a herd specifically as fostermares

shanagarry

Gosh, I'm obviously very naive as to what goes on in TB breeding so. I've never heard of that in sport horses, but I guess the money riding on those foals isn't a patch on top TBs.

I'm quite disgusted to hear that tbh.

Esroh

shanagarry wrote: »

Gosh, I'm obviously very naive as to what goes on in TB breeding so. I've never heard of that in sport horses, but I guess the money riding on those foals isn't a patch on top TBs.

I'm quite disgusted to hear that tbh.

As you say its the value of the foals that leads to it. But also its the value of Horses coming to stand at stud for their first season. Studs need mares that will put up with alot of messing from a Colt who is being encouraged to something he has spent the 2/3 years in training being told not to do, get excited around fillies.
I know the foals would go thru the trauma if being weaned early but they were extremely well looked after.There are alot of foals who do not get as good a life As you said earlier per head of horse population it does not occur that often. Both farms I was on would have had maybe 10 mares and it would have been very unusual to have used more than 4 although we would have foaled up on 200 mares a season. And I remember 1 year a mare took on a late orphen foal along side her own in June.
I can also tell you that one of the Foals that was weaned early went on to the RDS as a 4yld to be ridden in the medium eight hunter class. Showjumped to the old grade D/120m and had a good life as a hunter in the UK.



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unwinding

Thanks for replies - I'm actually quite relieved. Do a Google search and you'll find out why. For most of these foals to actually have a decent life is not too bad, even though they get weaned early and end up having no pedigree.

I understood that this is a big business (?), foster mares are kept specifically for this, and I had to wonder what do they do with their foals. When I asked I was told they end up in dogfood tin, but this source was not reliable. It would make very little sense, and it would be such a waste. With all the unwanted horses in the country already it seemed also mad to produce foals for no purpose really, with no selective breeding involved.

It is a difficult subject, I think, a lot of opinions coming from particularly the opposing side. This is probably the reason why it's not easy to find real information about this.