Just a quick tip: If you plan to try to breed in January, you will need both your mare and her recip(s) to be under lights by November 1st. Otherwise, they aren’t likely to start back cycling regularly until sometime between late March and early May.
Thanks for the tip! The vet had mentioned around Thanksgiving, but I’ll go ahead and do it earlier like you’ve suggested.
You’re welcome! The general rule is that it takes 60 days of a lighting routine to get mares cycling regularly. You don’t want to breed on the mare’s first cycle coming out of transition, so add 2-3 weeks to that 60 days and count backwards from the earliest you would want to breed.
Be sure to join our Foal Watch thread next year! We chronicle all our breeding efforts, too, in those threads.
As for lights, make sure they can’t stick their head out of the stall or find a dark corner in the stall to hide from the lights. I have one mare who was a champion at finding the darkest corner of her stall to hide her face in. The stall needs to be evenly lighted and bright enough to read a newspaper in.