how old is too old??

[blissful-nat]

when is a mare too old to be put in foal? i have a 15.1hh arabxtb mare she is 13 and i have been thinking about having a foal out of her, but 50%of people have said yes and 50% no she hasn't had a foal before.

she has pulled her check-ligament twice in the same place on her left foreleg would this effect her if she was in foal?
also any suggestion on what breed i should go for when choosing a stallion?

 

[Polonaise]

Not too old at all, may have more difficulty getting in foal then a 6 year old though.
My main concern would be breeding from a lame mare, the vast majority of lameness has some genetic or conformational factor contributing to it so why keep those genes?
I have 2 mares currently, both cannot be worked fully due to lameness, both have successfully evented BE. If put to a good stallion I could in theory breed some valuable foals, sell them nice and young and leave someone else in the situation of having to retire a horse at 12 due to lameness....
Sorry for the rant but we need to stop breeding from lame horses unless the lameness is due to a freak accident (even then do you really want to breed from the horse that was stupid enough to run through the fence/get into a fight etc...).
Of course this will never happen because sound mares are kept in work until they are too old to breed from, or bred from before they've had chance to go lame. Prehaps we need to learn from the breeding programs of some other species, look at the health (not just performance) of not only the parents but also grandparents and siblings before deciding to breed.

 

[emlybob]

Absolutely agree with the above statement.

Also we had a mare that did her check ligament twice when in foal due to the added weight on the limbs. She was a big mare anyway but I would take a long hard look at your mare before you go down the route of putting her in foal. There are many other factors to consider

 

[Polotash]

13 isn't too old to try... of course there are no guarantees with any age mare.

In addition to the others posters valid comments, go into it with your eyes wide open re finances. The chances are it will cost you AT LEAST £2500-3000 to get a foal on the ground. It will then cost you about £2000 a year to raise it (assuming you pay a small amount of livery i.e. £120 a month = £1440, plus farrier, feed, hay, vaccs, wormers, rugs etc). That means by the time you can ride it at 4 years old it will have cost you £11,000.

Could you go out and buy what you want for less than 11k? Chances are you can.

My costs are conservative too:

£500 stud fee
£500 vet package (this can go up a lot, e.g. bottle of regumate is £120 odd)
£500-1000 livery whilst at stud
£360 - 3 x vet visits and jabs for EVA whilst mare in foal
£100 vet visit for 28 day scan
£100 vet visit for Xmas scan
£100 - vet visit for pre foaling tet jab
£200 - night time call out to check new foal and give it a tet jab (often need to wash out mare at least once too, so allow extra call outs and antibiotics for mare)