Breeding?

You can put them in foal as young as two if they are strong and mature enough and stallion size is taken into account but a filly can actually be bred from her very first season - most definitely not recommended by anyone! We had a filly come here, she was just under two - and she had just been weaned from her 5 month old foal!!!!!!!!!!!! (needless to say, not one of ours) but bought by a livery (from a dealer that ran fillies and colts together all the time hoping for extra stock the cheap way!) who felt sorry for it; do you blame them?! She was incredibly poor as you would expect and took a long time to recover; it was a good thing she was so young so the owner wasn't tempted to do too much too soon with her. She went on to be a cracking jumping pony and is still going strong, must be 20 now - but no more foals!
 
You can breed from a 2yr old, but no matter how big they are they are still immature. Therefore the youngest ideal age would be 3yrs to foal at 4yrs. It has been used to slow the growth of the mare.
 
I would not breed from any mare younger than 3. It is certainly possible to breed from a 2yo, but IMO that is way too young.
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Even some 3-year-olds may be too immature, and it would be inadvisable to breed from them. For example, a breeder in Belgium who has 3 mares in foal to my stallion was planning to breed a 4th mare - a 3yo filly - to him as well, but changed her mind as the filly was not really showing in season and seemed quite immature for her age, so she has decided to leave her to grow up for another year and do the breeding in 2008 instead.
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Seemed like a sensible decision to me.
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