How much does it cost to breed a foal?

tashcat

tashcat

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Bit of an odd one, but with all the foalie posts at the minute I'm curious about costs.

I understand this ranges for so many reasons such as stud fees and the amount you involve your vet, but how much does it cost to get a mare pregnant (unless you get a lovely freebie like JJS), for her veterinary care throughout pregnancy, and for the upbringing of the foalie?

Will be really interested to see replies, personal stories and cute foal pics always welcome :D
 
Probably not a good example but my highland foal cost about £3500 by the time she was a week old. Stud fee was the smallest part there were multiple scans as she refused to take, then the long term grass livery as we wanted to keep the hard come by pregnancy safe so waited for the late scan to tell us she was still in foal ,so ended up being on double livery for about 6 months. Pregnancy went well, delivery was relatively straight forward but the foal was a bit thick when it came to nursing, as her legs were too long she didnt cotton on to bending down to nurse for 24 hours. So she was bottle fed it dawned on her when she investigated where I was getting the milk from, Vets visits for tetanus and ab injections. IGg test as she hadnt nursed and return visit to make sure all was well. fortunately didnt need a plasma transfusion or it would have been even more
 
More than it would cost you to buy it at four years old, with none of the risks.


JJS 'freebie' bogoff has cost £200 in vet visits and checks so far if her vet charges what mine does. Over£100 of tetanus jabs still to come even if no visit charged. Passport. Food for mother while she's with her. Livery when weaned Etc etc
 
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My foal has cost me :so far :

One AI cycle - £250
Multiple vets visit & sedation for mare to get in foal , say another £200.
Stud fee £950 +Vat

Emergency call to vet when mare wouldn't let him suckle , £100
Vet call out for bloods check £100
Stud balancer - about £22/ bag had about 3 bags so far

Waiting on bill for call out last Sunday when he wasn't well, reckon that's at least £200 with all the meds he had.

Won't count hay/ straw as mare would have had that anyway.

Costs still to come vet visit /microchip/passport. He's only 5 weeks old.

My other mare cost in the region of £1k and didn't take previous year.
 
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ycbm said:
More than it would cost you to buy it at four years old, with none of the risks.


JJS 'freebie' bogoff has cost £200 in vet visits and checks so far if her vet charges what mine does. Over£100 of tetanus jabs still to come even if no visit charged. Passport. Food for mother while she's with her. Livery when weaned Etc etc
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Ah sorry was definitely not saying JJS had a freebie there!! I know she has invested an incredible amount of money and time into Mary and Mayflower, I simply was referring to the fact the foal was a surprise and thus no stud feeds!
 
tashcat said:
Thank you for replies! So we're talking thousands and often more than youngsters are sold for!
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Yes.
I calculated it cost me over 5K to get my foal to weaning - bearing in mind I don't own land so used stud livery and the stallion was expensive.

You can of course do it cheaper than that, but as it was the only one I was doing it was a no expense spared job! Even then my mare took first time, imagine if I'd needed a few cycles

 
The last two ones I bred cost about £1500 each on the ground.

One mare took first time and the second mare took second time.

Stud fee was £400.

It is cheaper to buy a youngster than breed one, but I loved it when I bred my own :)
 
I estimate my last homebred cost me about 10k by the time she was PTS at 18months.
I have no idea why I bred again, but her dam is due to drop any day now. Heart ruled the head!
 
I'm another who thinks it has cost me nearer the £10,000 mark- I haven't added it all up as I fear it might be even more!
Admittedly they don't all cost so much, we did have bad luck. The mare had problems during the pregnancy which required a lot of extra scans and drugs. It turned out to be nothing too serious but I wasn't taking any chances. The foal then needed surgery when she was a couple of months old.
I'm glad I did it but I'm not sure I'd do it again-not that I could afford to anyway!!
I also think I've aged about 20 years with all the worry!
 
For stud fees/vet fees and livery at the stud for about 6 weeks - cost me about £1500 but that doesn't include any normal keep costs for the mare (I kinda don't count those as would have had them anyway) and doesn't include the £2500 of vets fees the mare cost me choking when she was being scanned and nearly died of aspiration pneumonia
 
This was the third year I bred her she didn't take twice before so anything not related to the live foal you can triple.

For my current foal... haha this will be fun

£150 for vet check / washing out not including petrol and travel expenses
£50 for scan
£30 for vaccine (just flu/tet as she's an older mare and vet didn't feel she needed ehv)
£----wormers?
£150 in petrol to get the stallion
£21 mare and foal feed
£50 bedding
£15 cleaning products
£30 on various items (iodine, revivers, emergency bottles etc)
£70 for postpartum check

And this is for a miniature, I suspect with larger horses that is vastly more, and then people want to buy it for £50 😡

It will have passport but as part bred can't be registered until the society has its hardshipping event here. So that will be £100s

Next foal due is purebred so that will be a few quid to register and passport (needs DNA etc)
 
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Well my poor livery probably paid in the region of £30k for her youngster which ended up much too big for her and she had to sell him in the end. Breeding was straight forward as natural covering and stud fee was only £300. But the mare colicked twice during pregnancy, plus had one episode of choke. With the scans etc that brought it to around £1k. The foaling was textbook. But then the mare wouldn't allow the foal to nurse so we had to get the vet and sedate the mare (as she wouldn't let us milk her) and tube the foal in order to get the colostrum down him. Then the mare decided he could nurse after all! Anyway, all was well untill he went suddenly lame age 9 months. He was found to have OCD of the stifle. He had to go to Rossdales for an op. Then he was on box rest for 8 weeks which as you can imagine is great fun with a frisky colt foal that was already standing at 15 hands. By then I was charging her livery too (discounted, but that's because I felt so sorry for her). The plan had been for me to break him in at the same time as my youngster, but by then I had started to get ill. My youngster was only 15hh and I lightly backed her, but my livery's youngster was now 17 hands and extremely boistrous and strong. I got him wearing tack and lungeing but had to admit he was just too much for me. I didn't know why I was so weak and tired at the time but there you go. My livery had to send the gelding away to be broken in. The place he went to was exceptional but was over £1000 a month and he was there for 3 months because he was so tricky. But they did a good job. By then he was 17.2. He came back after my livery ran out of money and couldn't sell him. He wintered here and then went to another, cheaper trainer. Unbeknown to us, this trainer abused him and starved him and when my livery visited him she found a wreck of a horse. Then had to pay for rehab livery for 4 months followed by return to first trainer to get him going again and finally sold. He's doing really well now with his new owner, thankfully and is a very useful horse. I so wish I'd visited him myself as my livery missed the signs, but I was running a fulll yard and was very poorly at the time. But I just wish I had.
 
And there's no price for the heartache if it goes wrong:(

We lost a yearling on the yard last year to complications from lawsonia (a bacteria). I know stud fee was £900, but they nearly lost mum and baby when it was born prematurely and a huge amount of money was thrown at both over the course of the next 12 months before the youngster lost its battle. Dreadfully sad.

Even the freebie on our yard cost a lot in terms of 3 x vets visits (from 'is this fat or in foal' to 'we expected it to have a baby by now, is it still pregnant'). Awesome foal, but the farmer whose daughter owns the dam reckons he needs to sell it for £1k to get his money back!
 
In my (limited) experience, foals can be very expensive when things go wrong. With our two most recent foals the price differed quite a lot.

Cardinal - cheap stud fee, no issues, no emergency treatment - probably post around £1200 with AI and vet fees for that, stud fee and then the mare foaled at a stud so that was an extra cost, but overall not a costly process.

Paloma however was a different story- much more expensive stud fee, was very unwell on arrival and needed emergency vet care inc plasma - must have cost us at least £4k by the time she was a week old.

However, we are left with these two terrors, who are two next month!
OnIVAT.jpg
 
I think for any descent breeding by a stallion that at least has some grading and paperwork you have to budget £1000 -£1500, that with no extras, no illness, no problems. That does not include the keep for the mare
My mares first foal cost about £1000, she was covered last year by AI and unfortunately died when in foal at about 4months gestation, it had already cost me £900. Her death cost me another £600.
Nobody makes any money out of breeding, it really is a mugs game. Buy a youngster at 3.
 
It isn't just the financial cost, it is the emotional cost as well. My much loved mare was pre-checked by our vet and swabbed and vaccinated, I then sent her away to stud to be with the experts so had stud livery, then there was the stallion fee/collection costs, the AI costs, the scanning costs, fortunately no sedation costs as she was very good in the stocks, the two lost blobs, the regumate to try and preserve the 3rd pregnancy and then the scans to tell me that this conception had failed too. All in a about £3,500 with nothing to show for it - except a very happy mare that had had the summer off having fun at the stud.


Wise men really do buy the foals that fools breed.
 
Mine has cost me around £1000 to put into foal (inc scans, semen, ai,etc etc) she is now on grass livery at £100pcm and is due to give birth next month.

Praying for a straight forward birth and healthy mare and foal!
 
As others have said, much cheaper to go and buy a three or four year old. I have my horses at home so don't have livery costs but obviously do have the cost of the mare's keep. With straight forward conception and foaling I still reckon it costs about £4,000 to get to three year's old. I have also lost three youngsters at 3 all due to unrelated issues so a very high emotional cost.
 
ihatework said:
Yes.
I calculated it cost me over 5K to get my foal to weaning - bearing in mind I don't own land so used stud livery and the stallion was expensive.

You can of course do it cheaper than that, but as it was the only one I was doing it was a no expense spared job! Even then my mare took first time, imagine if I'd needed a few cycles
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That's a beautiful little one!
 
I didn't get much change out of £500 for my mares first attempt with AI that included all scans, swabs, the semen was free as it's the first year the stallion is available, she didn't take first time so she went back to the stud for another attempt which will be another £500. The stud charged me £220 for 10 days, she was there 5 days each time. This is my first time breeding and not sure I will be doing it again!
 
We have our own mares and stallions and our own land so the cost is vastly reduced. The mare gets her own bag of feed now but it's just a change of feed so no added cost for that in reality. So hopefully it will just be vet check once born and then vets for microchipping and the registration feed. We're still looking at £400-ish just for that. And that's before you get the castration fees if you get a colt you don't want to run on as a stallion.

Given that the last 2 homebreds are still here aged 8 and 10yo they have cost a bit over the years lol!
 
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