Posted by: BarnCulture.com writer Sharon Wheater
The Cost of Breeeding
By Ms Sharon Wheater
The season has come around again, breeding time is just starting and many people have the dream of breeding their own foals. A nice thought but what you don’t realise is how much this is going to cost you. Having your own stallion is a plus and saves of some of the costs but the keep of the pregnant mare and then the foal when he or she is born is not often considered enough.
Think about it carefully, what will happen to the foal once it has been weaned, can you afford to keep two horses or is it going to become one of the many many unwanted horses that we see today. This article will give you an insight of how much breeding a foal will cost you in $$ and the time consumption, and the outlook for an unwanted foal.
You have to think why do I want a foal? What will I do with it? Will it have good enough breeding to bring a high enough price to cover my cost if sold? (You’re looking at a $10,000 youngster to break even after all the upkeep….don’t think so…work it out for yourself, there is an outline here and there is much more to consider.) Do I have the knowledge to take care of an in foal mare and then a foal?
After researching the costs of the average foal in the USA, these are the figures you are looking at spending; (figures correct when this article was written)
Taking a mare to stud (hiring transport) = approximately $4 per mile.
Stud fee = from $400 plus, dependant on breed and quality of the Stallion.
Livery and vet bills at stud = $250 + per month, she may stay longer.
Post Natal Inoculation = $80
Blood typing Dam = $115
Registration fees = $30
Gelding = $250 – 300
Vet signature on reg certificate = $50
Hoof care = £30 x 4 every 6 – 12 weeks.
Drench, etc = $200 per year.
Feed and Hay (mare) = $100 plus per month.
Feed and hay mare and foal before weaning = $130 plus per month for 6 months.
Feed for mare and foal = $160 per month.
Cost of breaking and schooling by pro trainer = $500 plus.
Veterinary fees from accident or illness = unlimited.
Professional foaling if necessary = $500 plus.
First set of shoes = $60 – 100.
Veterinary fees from foaling problems = unlimited.
Worming = $12 every 6 – 8 weeks
Mare and foal worming = $24 every 6 – 8 weeks
Livery (if not got own barn) for mare = $200 + per month
Livery for mare and weaned foal = $400 + per month
Insurance Premiums = $35 per month
When the foal is born = $70 per month.
It may not seem very much, but you add that together, plus you may require the vet should something go wrong, it is quite a substantial amount.
Taking the cost into consideration, you also have to take your time costs into it too, extra care needs to be taken with an in foal mare, still ensuring she is exercised, groomed and extra care taken when mucking out to ensure it is spotless. You may be called out in the middle of the night, you may have to miss work and that’s a days pay lost at least.
Your foal is born, you have raised it and weaned it… now what? Double the cost of everything, can you afford to keep two horses. Will you have to sell the foal? How much is it worth? Will you lose money, break even or make money once you have added up the cost of breeding and the first 6 months keep (at least) for her?
70% of foals for sale are bred and sold for half the price it cost to breed them, most much less, and where will the foal go?
As we all know, nowadays, horses are being over bred, we need quality not quantity, and the more people who have the great idea of breeding a foal, the more the cost of buying a horse will drop. Why buy a high priced foal with papers when you can buy one just as good from someone else for less because they have far too many, over stocked. All too many times the poor youngstock end up in an auction, even though most meat packaging plants no longer take horses, only two left in the US, they are sold to meat shipping companies and taken thousands of miles across the States to Mexico and Canada, we all know that Mexico doesn’t have any guidelines on the welfare of the horses its going to slaughter, imagine the terror they feel from the journey alone, lucky if they get fed or watered, many trampled to death or seriously hurt and given no treatment, and the horror when they arrive at their destination.
Breeding horses is great if we can afford to keep the animal, if we know that it will stay with us for life and never need to worry about what could happen. So in the end it may not only cost us, but it could cost your foal too.
Although we have touched on the cost to us to breed a foal, and the cost of what can happen afterwards, we will now talk about what can happen before the foal is born, whilst the foal is being born and the problems we can find during and after.
Although many mares foal without a problem, there are factors to take into consideration. When we find a stallion, we check thoroughly that the stallion carries no Sexually Transmitted Diseases don’t we….wrong, not many people actually realise that horse carry some of the most hideous life threatening sexually transmitted diseases. For example; Coital Exanthema…more commonly known as EHV-3, one of the herpes strain, and the fatal EVA (Equine Viral Arteritis) which is also a notifiable disease and extremely infectious, Contagious Equine Metritis (CEM or CEMO) , that’s only three of the possible many of viruses that can be passed on through mating, it is a terrible worry for owners yet so many never check out the possibility that a stallion may be a carrier, this is the reason to only go to a well established stud. Using a stallion that belongs to a friend or just someone that you know could prove very costly and even fatal.
We know how much a normal coarse of antibiotic costs for our horses, to cure these diseases is a strong coarse of antibiotics plus other medication and you are looking at least $400 – 500 just to get it under control, once these diseases are out of the system, it may be unlikely your mare can ever breed again so what is the cost!
Problems with the in foal mare are terrifying because not only are you looking at your mares health but that of the unborn foal, mares can hormonally abort at the slightest thing and this is her bodies way of survival.
Both of the above mares are suffering from Ventral Ruptures. Any pregnant mare showing a quickly enlarging abdomen and, a painful oedema along the outer abdominal wall maybe suffering from rupture of the abdominal musculature or rupture of the rectus abdominis muscle or rupture of the prepubic tendon. These can occur together or separately in pregnant mares. In practice, rupture of the rectus abdominus muscle and rupture of the prepubic tendon can be seen as one condition under the same heading of ventral ruptures. Other reasons for this may also be; haematoma - subcutaneous or intramuscular and placental hydrops as a reason for leading to the above. Both mares are also quite far on in their pregnancy.
This is a very dangerous problem for both mare and unborn foal. There is no limit to how much you would have to pay out in veterinary bills to help your mare in these circumstances.
There are many pregnancy complications, more than you would expect and they are not a rare occurrence.
Foaling problems are very common; would you know what to do with a dry birth? Breech foal? Your foal is too big and is locked into the mare’s pelvis? (Very common when the owner has not thought of the consequence of breeding to a larger stallion, too often happens). The sac will not break what would you do? And in many of these circumstances, you are there expecting a normal delivery, or she starts when no-one is around and no-one knows thus threatening both lives, or your there alone and this happens, the vet wont suddenly appear…your on your own till he gets there to help…what would you do? The veterinarian will rub her/his hands at a call out after hours…minimum cost of call out alone is $100, that’s without the treatment which could be phenomenal depending on the outcome and then you have to have revisits due to the complications, fingers crossed she passes the placenta in 12 hours too or that’s another vets bill. Too many people don’t even realise it hasn’t passed and infection sets in…. out comes the vet again!
Your foal is born, she is lay with her hind feet inside her mother as part of the bonding ritual that happens between mare and foal, very cute, soft whickering and the usual communication is going on, the mare gets up and begins to eat, and now its time for the foal to get up…..
And here you have it! Your foal is suffering from dreadful deformities of the legs!
This is very common, the small picture shows slack tendons, a friend of mine recently had a foal born with this deformity, they happen regularly. To correct these deformities is thousands of dollars, not just a few hundred, and even though you think this won’t happen to you….it can do, you don’t know what is going on inside your mare. Attempting to suckle for these foals is near impossible, a cleft pallet can be another birth defect that hinders the suckling of a new born foal, and the mares first milk gives the foal its immunity, to be restricted from this essential first milk can be detrimental, it has also been found that mares will reject a foal with deformities, and this happens regularly.
Talking about the rejection of foals, this can happen for no apparent reason, this has happened to me many times throughout breeding my mares, not only from maiden mares but established broodmares that have never done this before. In these cases you have to very quickly find a surrogate mare, one who has lost her foal very recently and hope that the mare will accept the rejected foal….or you are going to have to bottle feed the foal, this means the dreaded round the clock supervision and nursing. Or you could lose your mare in foaling, look at what you have then lost!
A surrogate mother is extremely hard to find, this is an experience I had to endure that broke my heart; My big mare Cindy foaled and we lost the foal the same night that blaze foaled, blaze immediately rejected the foal and we had to get her out of there as she wasn’t going to be accepting one bit…now the foals life is in danger. We took the foal to Cindy…but it didn’t have her scent, so we called my uncle Alistair who is one of the top Race Horse Vets in this country (UK). His recommendation made me sick, only myself and my mother was there. So, off we went to retrieve the dead foal’s body from the back of the truck, and I had to skin it, and he was still slightly warm, we layed the skin over the rejected foal (Perdita) and the scent had began to pass on. After a couple of critical and frightening hours, Cindy finally accepted her and we blew a sigh of utter relief. We were fortunate and also very experienced established breeders, yet that will always stay with me, could you do that if it came to it?... I still have nightmares over 15 years later.
Bottle feeding is very hard, you will have to be there to feed at regular intervals… more time from work because unless you can find an experienced person who has all the time in the world, you have to do it yourself…or send it to a stud farm which will cost you from $500 per month at least for the continual care she will need.
You may have had a good birth and the foal and mare are doing fine until bang…there you have it; infected naval! This is a course of antibiotic, and call out fee, costing you around $150 for the first call out alone. Or Mastitis…milk fever…very common, this is another call to the vet…..how many times can you afford the vet to come out like this?
Unforeseen circumstances…. You lose your job, money problems, mare or foal or both has to be sold quickly, how do you sell her quickly when so many other horses are for sale cheaper, or you are over priced… you have to get rid…is this where you want your foal to go…..
There are currently around 100,000 horses transported into and across Europe for slaughter each year, making it the single biggest abuse of horses in Europe.
In an enlarged European Union comprising 25 Member States, there are few restrictions on trade. Horses are able to be transported vast distances in horrendous conditions with few, if any, checks en route as a result of the removal of many Border Inspection Posts. Also happens in the USA. (ILPH Campaign to stop the cruelty horses endure between auctions, transportation and slaughter.)
FACT….
THE CAPTIVE BOLT THAT FIRE THE RODS IN THE SKULL DO NOT WORK DUE TO THE HORSES MAKE UP, THEY ARE NEITHER STUNNED NOR KILLED.
THEY ARE SHIPPED FOR MILES WITHOUT FOOD OR WATER.
TERRIFIED HORSES AND PONIES ARE CRAMPED INTO DOUBLE DECKER CATTLE AND PIG TRUCKS, THESE OFTEN COLLAPSE CAUSING EQUINE AND HUMAN DEATH BUT VERY LITTLE IS IT MADE PUBLIC!!
Over breeding our precious horses is the main cause for this. Due to the stoppage of horse slaughter in the USA, which at first sounded like a good idea, the rescue centres are over flowing and more horses are now suffering at the hands of foreign slaughterhouses. This is not what we want for our horses, so PLEASE….think carefully before you breed, there are thousands of horses, ponies and youngstock awaiting homes in Rescue centres around your areas, adopt one of those if you really want that second or third horse, stop breeding for them to suffer. That goes for everyone world wide not just the UK or USA.
DO YOU STILL WANT TO BREED? REALLY? I pray you don’t.
