mares !! experiences and advice please !?

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Poppys Nannan

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My daughters horse (mare ) is an absolute dream we love her to bits and she is a diamond for my daughter on and off the ground, she will try anything asked of her and i am certain that she senses dangers and trys to keep my daughter safe when they are together but i am now recognising a pattern with her and i am guessing she doesn't like mares.
When we got her she bit and reared at a mare in foal - we kinda thought it may be a new situation and put it down to that and didn't really know how it started
There is another mare in the yard and our mare was awful to her when her owner was bringing her through the field - i kinda thought it was other owners exageration as we were not around !! (i feel guilty now for thinking that !!)
Now i have tried to put her into a new paddock where i had put my foal (filly) i had the foal in first but our mare pinned back her ears and warned foal about going absolutely anywhere near her, end result mare pinned foal in a corner and foal exited by jumping into next paddock !!!

Our mare currently lives in a paddock with a 18.2 gelding and he is definitely the boss, he bites our mare and wont let her have her hay ( so we have to spread it around the field so she gets some)

This thread is linked to some others re the foal etc but i am not sure i have been asking the right questions that i want to know so here goes

: is our mare always going to be nasty to other mares
is there anything i can do about it i feel so guilty and embarassed about it
will i ever be able to put my filly foal in with her

thank you for reading i would love to hear your experiences with mares and their issues!!:o
 
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Nightmare. I don't know what it is about foals but your mare's reaction is common. There must be an explanation but I know of one foal (friend) which had to be PTS after another horse (not sure which sex) broke its back. I put my 2 year old filly out with my 4 month old foal and its mum and first thing she did was corner it at try to kick the **** out of it. Mum wasn't bothered though. On a brighter note my riggy gelding was absolutely lovely to her. I certainly wouldn't put her out with the foal until it can stand up for itself. I would fully expect that you would be able to turn them out together at that point.
 
Unfortuantely, that is what horses can be like. Unless the behaviour is persistent (over days) and extremely bad ie attacking and not backing off. Then I would try to let them get on with it.

It is very natural horse behaviour to do this type of thing and once the less-dominant horse has "learnt his place" he will be allowed back into the herd under the hominant horse's rules!

It how the "sending away" in natural horsemanship works. Just a lot more violent!
 
it sounds more like a dominance thing than just disliking mares. I have an old mare who is like this, with just 2 in the field she can be a bully however she is out with 8 youngsters at the mo and is definitely in charge but not so nasty as there is no 'one horse' to pick on, it gets shared around better.
Dominant mares are always going to be dominant mares sorry. you just have to find one even more dominant!
 
my mare can be very picky about her field mates. - she doesn't like anything smaller than her and will bully them (even those the same size have taken a beaten). She's been like in in herd sizes up to 15. I worried about my new pony going in with her (about 1 hand smaller at the time) and it took a couple of days for them to settle but they are the best of friends.

I would be careful about putting the foal in with her too young. I would maybe introduce them beside each other and let them get used to each other. Give the mare a chance to make friends without throwing them in together if you can.

Best of luck
 
Have you tried putting the foal in with your mare AND the gelding?

I have found that mares often lose their need to dominate if there is a more dominant character in the field. If the gelding accepts your foal there is a chance that your mare will.

I'm not sure how you would go about introducing them. I guess you'd have to prepare yourself to wade in and rescue the foal if needs be.
 
I'd say she is a dominant mare and is putting the youngster in its place- I know it looks awful to us but to horses its a natural process that can take time.

However if it persists and you want to prevent an injury to your youngster then I would try to introduce them slowly i.e. graze them seperately but so they can still communicate with one another over the fence and then once your youngster is stronger and they're happy with that then let them be together.Or you could put your youngster in with your gelding so then they get buddied up so when they go back in with your mare she will back down to your gelding and will accept your youngster.

Good luck. x
 
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