Please help! Honest opinion on my 14.2 mare going to a 16.2hh

F

fruity

Well-Known Member
Joined
30 January 2007
Messages
1,560
Location
Oxfordshire/Bucks
Visit site
Can i have thoughts on my quandry.

I am trying to organise the AI of my mare with work (vets) and have done pre breeding checks/swabs just need to organise sperm etc. I need to get this sorted asap or will have to wait til next spring :( Now all was going well until i told my chosen AI vet (good friend) the height of the stallion. She thinks he's too big for my maiden mare :( I havn't been able to sleep with worry and would be gutted if i can't go for the one i think is best for her but at the same time don't want to risk my beloved mare having problems. Another vet colleague of mine thinks she will be ok but i'm pushing it. Thoughts?

Said mare is a 14.2hh fairly stocky Welsh D (Well bred,fab temp and good confo)

Also mare did have a hip muscle injury at 5 but has been looked into thoroughly and given the all clear to breed from,but have been advised to keep her 'slim' throughout the pregnancy.

Havn't got great pics of her on my laptop but these are her when she was 4/5.
TN_273-7317_IMG.jpg
P1030097.jpg


Chosen sire would be...... Wolkenderry! Foal is a one off keeper! Opinions?

Cup of Twinings tea and M&S shortbread on offer for reading my essay. Thanks.
 
I've always been told, that the mare will only 'grow' the foal, to the size she is capable of. Obviously, you wouldn't put a shetland to a shire, but I can't see your choice of stallion to mare is going to be a problem, many have done that height ratio before. Keep the mare fit and healthy, and enjoy breeding.
 
Personally for a maiden and first time no, i wouldnt go more than a hand.
So sorry im voting no on this one
 
My 14hh SHP mare (much finer than ur mare) was put to wolkenderry last yr (16.2) She was maiden and 18, Managed by twemlows. I was worried but they assured me the foal would only grow to the size of the mare. Little Colt born this yr in proportion to his mum! Great choice of stallion :)
 
RuthnMeg said:
I've always been told, that the mare will only 'grow' the foal, to the size she is capable of.
Click to expand...

If only! :rolleyes: Why do you think equine vets are so hard to get hold of during foaling season? They're dealing with dystocias, most are NOT mis-presentations - just foals that the mare 'growed' to a size she WASN'T capable of!

Of course feeding and management play a part - possibly a bigger part than the size of the stallion - but IMHO - a difference of 2 hh is pushing your luck - especially with a maiden mare!
 
I have done it quite a few times over the years and never had any problems. I'm careful with feeding all of my broodmares, not just the smaller ones bred to larger stallions. I think so long as you are mindful of keeping the mare trim and relatively fit while still giving her all the calories and nutrition she needs then by the laws of averages your mare will probably be just fine. My final foal for this year is by a 17hh stallion and out of a little 15.1hh mare. I took a lot of care choosing this stallion for her. He is not a big, heavy boned stallion, he is very elegant actually, as is she and I think they will compliment each other beautifully. The pregnancy has gone smoothly and no problems are expected at this stage, however if anything crops up at this late stage then we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.
 
Although I used Wolkenderry for my mare (14.2) it wasn't her first foal. For her first I chose a 15.3 stallion as she was maiden.
Plus side using Wolkenderry on smaller mares is that he is slight in build.

As Velv above has done it with her maiden without problems it shows it can be done and at the
end of the day it is your mare, your choice.
 
Whizz105 said:
Although I used Wolkenderry for my mare (14.2) it wasn't her first foal. For her first I chose a 15.3 stallion as she was maiden.
Plus side using Wolkenderry on smaller mares is that he is slight in build.

As Velv above has done it with her maiden without problems it shows it can be done and at the
end of the day it is your mare, your choice.[/QUOTE

Thanks Whizz(and everyone else),i was thinking she is similar in build to your girl but knew yours had already had one,i was thinking it was good also that Wish is v fine,if he wasn't i wouldn't of chosen him. I was going to tell work my mare my choice my risk but thought better not to! Will let friend know that i'm going to go ahead and will just have to be careful to manage her and try not to have a breakdown worrying about her when/if she's in foal! Cheers again for your opinions.
Click to expand...
 
fruity said:
Whizz105 said:
Although I used Wolkenderry for my mare (14.2) it wasn't her first foal. For her first I chose a 15.3 stallion as she was maiden.
Plus side using Wolkenderry on smaller mares is that he is slight in build.

As Velv above has done it with her maiden without problems it shows it can be done and at the
end of the day it is your mare, your choice.[/QUOTE

Thanks Whizz(and everyone else),i was thinking she is similar in build to your girl but knew yours had already had one,i was thinking it was good also that Wish is v fine,if he wasn't i wouldn't of chosen him. I was going to tell work my mare my choice my risk but thought better not to! Will let friend know that i'm going to go ahead and will just have to be careful to manage her and try not to have a breakdown worrying about her when/if she's in foal! Cheers again for your opinions.
Click to expand...

I was very careful with my mare and only went with advice from Twemlows as this is my first breeding experience on my beloved mare! The foal is to keep and I wanted something bigger, Twemlows didnt see any problem at all with the size difference and if they did I wouldnt of dreamed of considering it! It wasnt until reading posts on here near the end of her pregnancy that I was worried.... but all was fine. I would definitely take everyones opinions and maybe I would of thought twice if I had read the posts before!

On the plus side Wolkenderry has been used on smaller mares with success so hopefully not as much chance of throwing a huge foal.
Click to expand...
 
A few years ago I put a small 16hh TB to my 14hh traditional cob, not a maiden mare. She had a filly with a completely normal pregnancy - however if we had not been there to assist I don't think she would have been able to push the filly out. I even had to get my husband up to help get the foal out :eek:

I wouldn't say I wouldn't necessarily do it again - however - it is something you need to give serious thought. Plan for the fact that it would be very important that you attended the foaling.

That said all foalings can go wrong, and like others have said many have bred to mares in this way with no problems. The filly is now three and about to be backed :D
 
i would always use a stallion less or around the same size, or maybe a up to a hand higher depending on build or type, like putting a tb to a cobby roomy mare is ok ,the last foal i had was sired by a horse a full hand smaller than the mare and i still had to assist the final stage of the birth.
i am not a vet but i believe the size of the foal is governed by a growth hormone? therefore any mare can have the probs of a too large to deliver foal regardless of the size of the sire.

birth is not an easy process, ok easier for some than others, but having given birth myself i would always try to take the kindest and humane option for the mare.
 
Gosh I've been going through these same worries too.

Only from my own experience and thoughts (not based on any facts what so ever) if I go ahead with breeding another foal I want to take every possible action to minimise risk. For me its about not breeding from too big a stallion.

Again i'm not in a position to say if a large stallion contributes to mare mortality however for me its one thing of the pregnancy (the others being fitness and weight) I could control. So I wouldn't take the risk.

My mare isn't a maiden and I wouldn't consider sending her to anything bigger than 16hh and ideally i'd want something about 15.2 (she's a large 14.2) even thought it puts a lot of lovely stallions out of the running.
 
I put my 14.2hh mare to a 16.2hh stallion. Not one of the professionals I was dealing with cautioned against it.

However, knowing a bit more, and from reading posts on here - I would probably think twice about it now.
 
my vet is very experienced in stud work, and told me about an experiment Twink Allen did years ago, swapping shetland embryos with t.b. embryos. all mares foaled safely. the shetland foals who has been incubated in t.b. mares grew much larger at maturity than they should have. the t.b. foals who had been incubated in shetland mares never grew to full expected height. from this it was deduced that the size of the mare's uterus determines size of foal to a huge extent. my vet is adamant that mares very rarely allow the foal to grow too big to pass... BUT...
BUT i know of 2 people (Janet George on here and a v experienced breeding friend) who have had mares attempt to give birth to a foal which was too big to pass, and in both cases the foal died (iirc from what JG said about hers last year.) my friend's mare was a big girl who had had many successful foalings, and the sire was not huge (and she'd foaled to him before.)
when i first bred from my 16h Adv mare i deliberately selected a smallish stallion, no bigger than she was... wasn't going to risk her tbh. so, OP, i guess it's a calculated risk.
 
kerilli said:
from this it was deduced that the size of the mare's uterus determines size of foal to a huge extent. my vet is adamant that mares very rarely allow the foal to grow too big to pass... BUT...
BUT i know of 2 people (Janet George on here and a v experienced breeding friend) who have had mares attempt to give birth to a foal which was too big to pass, and in both cases the foal died (iirc from what JG said about hers last year.)
Click to expand...

I don't think there is any doubt that the size of the mares uterus plays a major role in determining - not so much the size the foal grows to in-utero - but the size at which it HAS to be born! But of course the size of the mare's uterus doesn't influence the ease of delivery - that's determined by the pelvis and the birth canal!

You're right to say I had a foal die last year because it was too big and therefore took too long being born! At the point when I managed to get the head clear, the foal was already clearly dead - it took an hour after that to deliver the body (obviously I wasn't DRAGGING it out in a rush - wanting to minimise damage to the mare.) The mare was a 4 year old, 17hh maiden in foal to a 16.3 stallion! This year she foaled again to the same stallion and I'd kept her on a VERY strict diet - foal was still big and quite hard work to get out!

I've had mares with HUGE foals foal as early as 316 days - that was because the uterus just couldn't contain it any more (suggesting that the size of the uterus doesn't necessarily limit the size of the foal ENOUGH!)

I am as sure as I can be that a combination of diet, the state of the placenta, and the individual mare's metabolic state are the major influences on size of foal. But it's damn hard to factor all these in, and get it right, if you've ALSO used a stallion who is considerably bigger (or broader) than the mare!
 
All birthing for mammals is a calculated risk, some could argue that you may increase your chances by using a taller stallion. It is a difficult one because for every horror story there is a success. TBH I would not gamble with a maiden mare, but that does not mean you are wrong in your choice.
 
I personally wouldn't because like JanetGeorge said, it also depends on hip size etc. They do say they will only grow to the size of the uterus but look at how many mares nowadays lose foals, present wrong, get stuck at shoulders etc? In the wild I think mares have a bit more self preservation so don't tend to go with stallions of a much larger size. I personally would probably go smaller to start with (I went with a stallion the same size and I still think my filly is really gangly and have NO idea how she fitted in there). I also kept my mare on a strict diet as shes naturally quite a barrel on sticks and unfortunately I had a personal experience with an over large mare which I think due to her size she couldn't correct the foaling position therefore the foal was delivered upside down which lost both mare and foal. One of the mistakes was they were feeding a good doer a large amount of feed: purely because the bag said to. I'm not saying she had those problems due to the stallion as he was slightly bigger but more the fact that feed I think also plays a part.
 
Tbh em, I have no personal experience of the breeding process as both mares we have ever owned we decided weren't quite right for us to breed from (t cos of her soundness issues and mills cos she was liable to produce too big a horse for me, being 16.2 of brick *****house!)
However know Han and knowing you - she's not a big 14.2 for her breed, I've always thought of J and dora as being bigger than her and we know they are bang on 14.2hh? I guess what I'm saying is, she's very special to you - and worst case scenario and she did have problems foaling due to a big foal, how would you feel about it?
Would it be worth considering breeding her with a smaller stallion? Do you need a big horse at the end of the day? I'm guessing 15.2 would be ideal, but maybe if you found a 15.2hh TB? And if it didn't grow big enough... Then you could always use wolkenderry next time? At least she wouldn't be a maiden then?
Up to you at the end of the day, but as your first homebred, and out of such a special girl, I guess it's just an added risk that maybe doesn't need to be taken? I can't believe how much fun it is to be competing a homebacked and produced horse, homebred as well should be just the most amazing fun!!
 
one of the added risks seems to be the fact that mares need to foal so quickly, due to being susceptible to predators, so if they don't get the foal out quickly it often leads to a dead foal as there seems no real time margin within how their foaling process developed to play with, for example in other animals like a cow can be on for hours with no danger to the calf, whereas with a foal 30 minutes can be too long sometimes
 
Why not contact the stud owner to see what sort of mares the stallion has covered previously?
It's in the stud's interests that your mare delivers a live, healthy foal.

A good stud would not put their reputation on the line by putting a stallion to an unsuitable mare.
 
I have covered a nos of mares from 14hh (inc our own Riding Pony types) with our 16.3hh middleweight. No problems with any of them foaling, I have also covered 15hh pure bred arabs with him. Ironically the one foal we lost by him which had to be cut out was out of our 16.3hh middleweight hunter mare!

My stud vet who is extremely experienced had no concerns about the smaller mares foaling (and he was right) but we did collect semen and inseminate as the stallion is rather well endowed!
 
If your mare is irreplaceably dear to you either don't put her in foal, or minimize the accepted risks through a suitable and as well-matched pairing as you can.

Otherwise, and as long as you can afford it, do what you want and replace the mare/foal/both if you lose them during the birth.

They are my maxims after the tricky hurdle of 'how perfect is your mare anyway'.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top