Breeding Season Timeline
When it comes to breeding horses, timing is everything. You only get one chance a month and only a handful of months a year so proper planning is essential to get the foal you want when you want it.

      This involves the following:

           Physical Exam: Your veterinarian will give you a full assessment of her overall health and breeding suitability. Is she over or underweight? Is she nutritionally healthy? Is it too early or too late in her life to breed her? What is her prior reproductive history? Is her physical conformation, temperament and ability something you want to reproduce? Answers to these questions will help you determine if she is right for you to breed and may even help you select your stallion. If you know your mare is in poor condition, you may need to start as much as 6 months earlier to return her to sound health before you breed.

          Pre-breeding Soundness Exam : This includes palpation with ultrasound exam, culture and cytology and a speculum exam. Ultrasound to determine stage of her current cycle, determine if uterus contains fluid, cysts, or other abnormalities.  Culture and cytology to determine that she is free of any harmful bacteria, or the presence of an inflammatory process.  And finally a speculum exam for a direct visual assessment of the cervix to determine that she has healthy looking tissue, is free of adhesions, or urine pooling, and to attain more evidence of the stage of her cycle.

     O.K., so we have determined she is a good breeding candidate, we have tracked her cycle and we have bred her to the only stallion we could find that is worthy of mixing genes with her. 

     Now we have to wait to see if it worked. The ultrasound your veterinarian used for her pre-breeding exam is hauled out again to see if there is evidence of the beginnings of a foal. This diagnostic tool is one of the veterinarians and the mare owners best friends when it comes to conception.

     If the stallion was on distant shores and you bred her with shipped semen you will want to get her an ultrasound at 14 – 15 following her breeding date so you can arrange for another shipment if she did not conceive.

      If the stallion is close by and she was bred by “live cover”, you can wait for signs of heat (if she shows heat well) or else Ultrasound her at 20 days post breeding.
 

Congratulations! Your mare is pregnant…so now what?

      So your precious cargo is finally onboard. Can you just toss her hay until next spring and then start picking names and tiny pink or blue halters?

    The first months are the most important to keep track of and you should plan on getting ultrasounds again at 35, 60, 90 and 150 days to ensure she is maintaining a healthy pregnancy.  A significant percentage of mares experience early fetal loss, twins (which results in a loss of one or both foals), or non-viable pregnancies. Thinking she is pregnant when she is not could cause you to lose the entire season. Now your foal is two years away.

  Assuming that a good strong pregnancy is underway, the next step is maintaining your broodmare's health, which means...: 

Good Nutrition: If your mare is in good condition and on a good feed program when she is bred, there is no need to make changes just because she is in foal. Keep the basics in mind. As you get closer to foaling you will want to think ahead about the nutrition needs of a lactating mare and developing foal.

Disease Protection: This is where you have to stay on top of things and keep records. Staying current on vaccinations is one of the most important things you can do to ensure a healthy foal next spring. Please see our vaccination guidelines to determine what your mare needs and then download our health record so you can keep a yearly calendar. To make it even easier, if you are enrolled in one of our PreventiCare wellness programs or if you have received your vaccinations from The Equine Center veterinarians, you will automatically receive reminders when your mare is due for vaccinations. 

Parasite Control: She is already feeding herself and a developing foal, you don’t want her to have to feed parasites as well. Worms can be damaging on a variety of fronts and could pose a significant threat to the pregnant mare. In addition to scheduled de-worming, The Equine Center recommends a daily de-wormer like Strongid C2x  to prevent the build up of parasites. Please see our Wellness page to learn more about this important management issue.

Exercise: It is understandable to worry about “her condition” but she is carrying a foal not a tray of crystal glasses. Exercise is an essential part of a healthy pregnancy. You can continue to ride her all the way up to her last month. If she has not been getting regular exercise, now is not the time to try to turn her into an athlete but regular turn out or some type of exercise is important as the pregnancy progresses. Standing around (especially if the mare is older) is unhealthy.

In the last month:

At 300 days boost all of her annual vaccines, get her teeth checked, her feet trimmed (it will be easier to do before she foals than right afterwards with a foal at her side), get her wormed, and if she has a caslick (sutures in her vulva) you will want to get that opened. Now you are in the final stretch.