KarynK
Well-Known Member
Prompted by the seasonal questions of when do you think she will foal etc. It occurred to me that all the books containing foaling statistics, average gestations, foaling times etc are all some years old and based on figures from the Thoroughbred industry.
I Thought it might be interesting to gather some information from forum users from a variety of breeds/types, and with climate change which would give everyone the opportunity to look at the averages from the horses bred by members and not just pure TB mares (though I have one of those!!!).
We could look at things like how many days from visible bagging up to foaling, gestation times according to time of year. Foaling in or out and general weather conditions, are mares foaling out more in tune with weather conditions?. The full moon thing, do more mares foal then? The passing of afterbirth and retained placentas. How many mares wax up before foaling or run milk. You could look at birthing problems and objectively look at fertility rates / foaling heat cover successes and average stud fees across breeds and types.
You could also look at the country of origins of horses being bred and answer the question are people using British Based Stallions? All sorts of things really and it would give answers to all sorts of questions, there are enough on here to make it statistially significant as well! I would HAVE to add something about colour in there or I wont do it!!!!!
It would take some analysis and I am happy to plug away at that as long as no one wants it yesterday ( only my boss gets away with that one and probably far too much!)
Have not really thought of the logistics as yet but I could set up an email address to send out a spreadsheet template for people to fill in and return ?
Just some thoughts really and some feedback if people would participate or have any burning questions about breeding they would like answered. Happy to pen a report on it all with pretty graphs and stuff so maybe H&H or someone with a website could host the paperwork, the data I would keep separate but as I say no names and also I have no real contacts with the sports horse world and no agenda other than I must be mad and I put it down to foalwatch!!
So what do you think?
I Thought it might be interesting to gather some information from forum users from a variety of breeds/types, and with climate change which would give everyone the opportunity to look at the averages from the horses bred by members and not just pure TB mares (though I have one of those!!!).
We could look at things like how many days from visible bagging up to foaling, gestation times according to time of year. Foaling in or out and general weather conditions, are mares foaling out more in tune with weather conditions?. The full moon thing, do more mares foal then? The passing of afterbirth and retained placentas. How many mares wax up before foaling or run milk. You could look at birthing problems and objectively look at fertility rates / foaling heat cover successes and average stud fees across breeds and types.
You could also look at the country of origins of horses being bred and answer the question are people using British Based Stallions? All sorts of things really and it would give answers to all sorts of questions, there are enough on here to make it statistially significant as well! I would HAVE to add something about colour in there or I wont do it!!!!!
It would take some analysis and I am happy to plug away at that as long as no one wants it yesterday ( only my boss gets away with that one and probably far too much!)
Have not really thought of the logistics as yet but I could set up an email address to send out a spreadsheet template for people to fill in and return ?
Just some thoughts really and some feedback if people would participate or have any burning questions about breeding they would like answered. Happy to pen a report on it all with pretty graphs and stuff so maybe H&H or someone with a website could host the paperwork, the data I would keep separate but as I say no names and also I have no real contacts with the sports horse world and no agenda other than I must be mad and I put it down to foalwatch!!
So what do you think?