They’re home!

I think we pushed our luck a bit. We took both mares out for a little walk (200 metres away from their field)in hand yesterday and they both got very stressed by a herd of galloping horses in a different field. Highland was on her tippy toes but didn’t have a meltdown - Icey was not exactly and Ice Queen and spun round me at fast trot/tilt multiple times, felt like she was a Thoroughbred waiting to race. Managed to hold on to the reins (she was tacked up) and my daughter helped me walk her back. Maybe a combination of missing her safe place and her foal, being freaked out by a new environment and not least the galloping ponies.

Seeing the trainer again tomorrow so will get her advice. Kveðja is the calmest, sweetest horse in the field but has led quite a sheltered life for the past few years - first having a foal in Denmark and then this year. I do know she’s capable of being out and about but it may take time to get there.

Had a weird experience of some teenage boy (he turned out to be younger) screaming and running down to my field. All horses spooked and cantered away. I shouted for him to go away - it looked like he was going to chase them into the field. Turns out he was with his mum or carer. She told me he had additional needs. Oh well, no real damage done although I hope it doesn’t happen again.

If I do start riding Kveðja I think I need a good pad under my treeless pad. I’ll probably get a treed Icelandic saddle soon anyway but she appears to like wearing treeless one for now. I’m probably falling for the adverts but I really like the look of the Equitex. Wonder if anyone has any experience with them?
 
I’ve ridden (other people’s ) mares with foals on long mountain hacks before with no problem. There’s no hard and fast rule about not separating them for a short while (and it really was a short while, and not the first time).

Today we did the same and the mares were both completely relaxed. The foals were very excited when we came back after the whole five-six minutes we’d been gone. They had not gone mad with despair and everything was fine.

I think it must have been a combination of things that set them off on Sunday. But today was a great experience- including a few five second sit-ons on the Icelandic. Not planning to actually ride her for a while yet, just slowly reintroducing her to working and doing something other than being a broodmare. When we let the mares off afterwards, having given them a groom both before and after, they both chose to stay with us for more cuddles and attention.

I’m doing all this with a qualified trainer, and taking baby steps. Once the foals are weaned it will be easier to actually take them out for more than ten minutes, and further than a few hundred metres. For now we’re just building our partnership.
 
I am not an experienced foal owner, but I've definitely put on some 'bad idea jeans' and took the mare away from the foal before he was weaned. Just around a corner to an arena, and the foal was accompanied by his owner and a nanny horse. Did this a few times. Mare was cool, but foal's owner was having to fight him to stop him from throwing himself at/over the gate. We were obviously idiots. It escalated, and we stopped. If I had another foal (deliberately), I would not do that again.

As hard as it was, I just resigned myself to not being able to do sh**t with my mare until the foal was weaned. At least not beyond basic handling, which they both needed because her breeder hadn't done any of that. The foal was a BOGOF, so I hadn't planned for that when I bought the mare. And of course I wanted to; I was keen to get on with all the pre-backing work, but ultimately I just had to suck it and wait. I did the work I could do with them together (a fair bit, in fairness... we could play with tarps and rugs and balls and things, and when there was someone to lead the baby, we went on many in-hand walks on the roads and trails), and just waited on the other stuff until he was weaned.
 
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If at any point the foals had panicked we would have returned asap- and it would have taken us two minutes. The foals could see the mares most of the time. I do feel this might be a cultural thing. It’s not uncommon to do this in other countries and we have now done it three times - and not planning to increase the time and distance away.

Most of the groundwork etc is done in the field with the foals. And I don’t take the mares out when I’m on my own. So it’s all done in a considered way. I appreciate that there are different views on this but it’s not black and white.
 
The foals were not ‘excited’, they were stressed.
And everything will be fine, until it’s not fine. My OH (an equine vet) put down a foal last week who had flipped itself over a fence whilst its mother was taken out. You don’t want to know the details of what it had done, but it happened in a split second. Everything we do with horses carries a risk, but you do owe it to your horses (particularly young foals who act more on instinct) to try to reduce that risk wherever possible.
 
By the time the foals have panicked it would be too late to get back to avoid an incident or injury.

In other countries mares are often taken out, sure, but with the foals going with them - in less populated areas with little to no traffic. That's a key difference between life in other countries and life here in the UK, as we don't have the safe open spaces some other countries do. Or the tolerance of the wider public to horses.

I backed a mare with a foal at foot several years ago, but always worked in the field with her foal around us. He generally went off to graze, but neither were put under undue stress or risk. When the foal was weaned the mare and I then started to go out on the lanes and into the wider world.
 
Yet again you seem to be getting spectacularly bad advice from a ‘professional’. What experience do they actually have with youngstock, unweaned foals in particular?

Horse or human, you don’t leave 2 babies/toddlers unattended… For the sake of a few months (your Icelandic was a fairly late foal, wasn’t he?) please just let them be. Basic daily handling is all they need. Otherwise you are setting them up for issues. If not now, later on.
 
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My family in Denmark have Icelandic, Jutland and Fjord horses as family horses as well as sports horses.

They definitely do things a bit differently to what I'm used to here. They tend to keep their mares in some level of work until 3 months before foaling, and feel that keeps them nice and fit. I always feel a bit weird riding a mare if I can feel a foal kick. But it seems to work for them.

They then bring their mares back into some level of work quite quickly - maybe 4/5 months on - and generally do so by riding with the foals loose next to them. I worry about foals getting into trouble or not following but they happily hack their mares down the beach with a couple of foals alongside.

It's not what I recognise from friends who breed here where broodmares are often retired from riding or take more than a year out to have their foals but their mares are glossy, fit and don't seem to get pulled down by their foals.

They don't separate mares and foals though. They watch the foals find their natural independence from their mothers and when the foals are no longer engaged in following mum, they wean them. It's led by the foal's natural growth in independence and confidence, not by 'teaching' them to get used to being apart.
 
Very few trainers that I've come across have ever bred a foal. If this is the advice from the trainer I'd ask how many foals they have bred themselves and bear in mind that the trainer will take no responsibility if there is an accident.
 
I am another who wouldn't sperate - it is simply not worth the risk.

The mares are more likely to get upset by things that normally wouldn't bother them, as there is already a level of anxiety from leaving the foals. They may not show this anxiety until something tips them over the edge

I would happily do ground work, sit on the mare in the field if appropriate.

Do you have a plan for when you need to wean the foals?
 
LadyGascoyne said:
My family in Denmark have Icelandic, Jutland and Fjord horses as family horses as well as sports horses.

They definitely do things a bit differently to what I'm used to here. They tend to keep their mares in some level of work until 3 months before foaling, and feel that keeps them nice and fit. I always feel a bit weird riding a mare if I can feel a foal kick. But it seems to work for them.

They then bring their mares back into some level of work quite quickly - maybe 4/5 months on - and generally do so by riding with the foals loose next to them. I worry about foals getting into trouble or not following but they happily hack their mares down the beach with a couple of foals alongside.

It's not what I recognise from friends who breed here where broodmares are often retired from riding or take more than a year out to have their foals but their mares are glossy, fit and don't seem to get pulled down by their foals.

They don't separate mares and foals though. They watch the foals find their natural independence from their mothers and when the foals are no longer engaged in following mum, they wean them. It's led by the foal's natural growth in independence and confidence, not by 'teaching' them to get used to being apart.
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Chuffed to read this. I let my foals wean naturally too, in my case easy because they were bred to keep, and only had one or at most two from a mare so the mare just took off as much time as needed to be a mum.
 
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