Without a doubt, foals are cute and attractive. But, be sure you're equipped to deal with one.

Everyone loves a foal, but there’s a growing number of poor-quality horses, unwanted horses, and mature untrained horses appearing every year. Most of those unfortunate equines were produced by someone who failed to consider the long-term consequences of the decision to breed. We’re appealing to you to seriously think through the process of raising a foal before you even look at looking through a stallion roster.

Before you make the same mistake, honestly answer the following four questions:
1) Do you have the right mare? 
2) Do you have appropriate facilities for a foal? 
3) Do you have enough money? 
4) Do you have enough time and experience?

Show Me The Money

The Virginia Horse Industry Board determined in 2004 it costs $2,969 to maintain one horse for a year in the state of Virginia.  You can easily double that for a mare and foal, and then add breeding expenses and the stud fee on top.                     Susanne Hassler, director of breeding at Hilltop Farm (warmbloods) in  Colora, Md., estimated in 1994 that it costs $6,000 to raise a foal from breeding to weaning, not including stud fees.  To get from breeding to the competition ring, figure about $18,000 and that’s only if you’re able to do the training yourself on your own farm. May Emerson, who breeds Thoroughbreds for eventing at Tamarack Hill Farm in Vermont and North Carolina, calculated the cost of raising a foal until the end of the yearling year at $4,800.  She states this includes the minimum of reproductive expenses, but not the stallion fee, and assumes there will be no illness, injury or complications anywhere along the way.  Gelding a colt would be an additional expense.

QUESTION 1:
QUALITY IS ESSENTIAL
The right mare is the key to your success.  Assuming you’ve got a well-defined goal, such as producing an upper-level dressage horse or a futurity reining prospect or a backyard pleasure horse, you need to objectively evaluate your mare. Will a foal out of this mare have a reasonable chance of meeting your goals?  Regardless of your discipline, all potential broodmares need faultless dispositions and proven trainability. 

Yes, the sire does contribute 50% of the genetic material, but the foal spends the first six months in the presence of his mother, mimicking her behavior.  If your mare is sullen, wary of people, or just plain aggressive, you’re going to get a foal who displays all of those tendencies early, in spite of your best attempts to befriend it.

While we know no mare has perfect conformation, some faults cannot be ignored. Obvious ones, like parrot mouth, poor feet, crooked legs, weak backs, sickle hocks, and so on should immediately exclude the mare as a breeding candidate (see sidebar, Heritability Of Traits).Unsoundness may or may not eliminate the mare. It depends upon why she’s unsound. Did she break down after years of hard racing, injure herself accidentally or did she bow a tendon at age three after a month of under-saddle training?

When no other factor except evolution was involved, the soundest and most fertile horses survived and passed on their genes. But veterinarians can now manipulate hormones and practically the entire reproductive process; mares that would have been hopelessly barren a few decades ago are carrying foals to term, or donating eggs to surrogates. Ask yourself if you are comfortable passing along a breeding unsoundness.  Do “Regumate mares” (mares requiring progesterone supplementation to maintain their pregnancy) produce “Regumate daughters”?

If you have any doubts about your mare’s quality, talk with a breeder with a reputation for producing successful horses in your chosen field.  Then apply the acid test:  If this mare was owned by someone else and you knew nothing about her, would you buy her as a broodmare prospect?

Heritability Of Traits

Dr. Ludwig Christmann, former deputy director of the Verband Hannoverscher Warmblutzuch, compiled data on 5,300 Hanoverian mares and foals over a seven-year period. Below are his findings, published in 1997, on the heritability of certain characteristics.  In other words, these statistics tell you how likely it is the mare would pass on these traits to her foal. A heritability factor of less than 20% is considered insignificant; above 40% is strong. Breed and Sex Type – 37% Head – 41% Neck - 25% Saddle Position – 37% Frame-23% Forelegs-16% Hind legs – 18% Correctness of Gaits – 14% Size – 36%

QUESTION 2: SAFE FACILITY
Facilities that are satisfactory for mellow, adult horses often fall far short of being ideal for foals. Experts recommend a large box stall, 12' x 16' minimum, for foaling, assuming you intend to witness the birthing process.  You’ll also need a monitoring system and some form of nighttime illumination.  (The wait-and-see-in-the-morning method is risky. Anyone who’s opened the barn door to discover a dead mare and foal will tell you how vitally important it is to be present at foaling.)

Fencing needs to be a barrier, not a deterrent.  Foals don’t see well initially and aren’t born with an understanding of electric tape.  They are also notorious for lying down for a nap on one side of the fence, rolling under it and getting up on the other side. 

They should be turned out only in a safe area, which means no barbed wire, no hot wire, and no high-tensile. The fence needs to be highly visible and capable of bouncing a high-energy foal back off it without injury.

Studies have documented for years the importance of turnout, preferably 24 hours a day, on the health and biomechanical maturation of young foals.  You will need ample pasture and protection from the environment. That means: rain, hot sun, high wind and insects. A deep, three-sided shed is ideal, providing it’s large enough for all the occupants to maintain their personal space.  To minimize the risk of an unfortunate kick, mares with foals should not be pastured with open mares or geldings.

Breeding Research: Colostrum Absorption

Foals born weak are sometimes tubed or bottle fed a milk replacer or a glucose-and-electrolyte solution to get them going, but colostrum may be the better choice. A study performed at Murdoch University (AU) and published in the Australian Veterinary Journal emphasizes the importance of colostrum ingestion in the first few hours of life. The sooner the better. Foals born weak should be fed colostrum milked from their dams or stored colostrums immediately. The study looked at the effects this practice might have on colostrum absorption, with the theory that the more molecularly complex milk replacer might decrease the amount of time the intestinal lining remains open to the antibodies in colostrum, or that the simpler solution of glucose and electrolytes might increase the window of opportunity for colostral antibodies to be absorbed. The absorption of antibodies (immunoglobins) from colostrum was checked in three groups 1) those allowed to nurse from shortly after birth; 2) those given milk replacer and 3) those given glucose/electrolytes for the first 12 hours. They found that the milk replacer or glucose solutions had no effect on colostrum absorption when foals were given colostrum after this 12-hour period but also found that maximal absorption of colostrum occurs in the first 12 hours after birth. The foals deprived of colostrum in the first 12 hours weren’t able to achieve the same high immunoglobin levels as foals given colostrum from birth.

QUESTION 3: MONEY
If all those improvements and adaptations to your existing facility sound expensive, we’ve only just begun.  Raising a foal is a pricey endeavor (see sidebar, Show Me The Money).  You need to consider stud fees, the sometimes astronomical veterinary fees for getting the mare in foal, the cost of maintaining the mare throughout her pregnancy and while nursing, and the money spent on the special needs of the foal.  

If you’re going to give your foal the best chance to reach its genetic potential, you also need to have your feed analyzed and balanced by an equine nutritionist.  This attention to mineral imbalances must start with the mare’s diet, well before she’s bred, and persist during pregnancy, lactation and especially throughout the foal’s early years (see Feeding The Pregnant Mare, page 14).

Things can and do go wrong: Are you prepared to pay for a few weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit if there are complications at birth?  In spite of rigorous selection, a correct mare bred to an equally correct stallion can still produce a crooked-legged foal.  Treatment for angular-limb deformities, and the resulting demand on your wallet, can range anywhere along a spectrum from simple biweekly farrier visits to glue-on shoes to surgical periosteal stripping or stapling.

Foals require an exacting and expensive immunization and deworming program. They also outgrow halters at an alarming rate. When you add it all up, it’s frequently less expensive to purchase a foal from a respected breeder and guarantee yourself the sex, color, size and conformation you were hoping to breed.

QUESTION 4: TIME
The one factor rarely mentioned is the inordinate amount of personal time needed to raise a civilized foal. Even after you’ve survived the weeks of foal watch, you’re suddenly faced with an active, strong, survival-driven creature weighing over 100 pounds that needs to be taught everything not instinctive at birth. Young foals cannot be dragged by a halter to the field. They require two handlers—or one very experienced handler—to guide them by the chest and buttocks.  Eventually they learn to follow their dams, but they just as quickly learn it is much more fun to run helter-skelter all over the farm. 

At the very least, buyers expect a horse to lead quietly, stand tied, remain motionless for the farrier, and submit to being touched everywhere.  All this early training takes frequent repetition and a huge amount of patience. If you plan to do your own saddle or harness training, the time demand increases exponentially.

BOTTOM LINE
If you’ve answered yes to all four of our questions without hesitation, you likely have what it takes to raise a foal. If you’ve questioned even one of them, you might want to rethink your decision. To be blunt, breeding a mare is easy: You pay the money, the stallion does the rest. It’s raising that foal that’s tough.

It shouldn’t be a casual decision. The horse you create will need proper care for decades. Responsible breeders believe if their actions put another heart on this earth, they’re responsible to assure a healthy, happy, pain-free life until that heart ceases to beat.