As are you.
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Oh, I agree with you that sometimes people “think” there’s a purpose or a desire when there isn’t.
I certainly agree there should be a level of discretion. The types of questions you pose are 100% valid and I think everyone should be able to answer them.
Breeding is an exercise in heartbreak and lighting money on fire. You have to go in prepared.
But sometimes people put impossible barriers to entry on it. For example, how many times do we see on COTH or similar outlets situations where someone has a perfectly useful mare they want to breed, only for them to get completely shut down?
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On COTH, on FB, in social circles. I agree with you about the gatekeeping. Sometimes I think the infighting within breed circles is more detrimental to the breed than people just wanting to replicate their special mare.
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In this thread: a COTHer discovers The First Noble Truth.
In general terms:
- A moral issue with animal breeding by humans means you personally believe it to be wrong for some reason.
- An ethical issue with animal breeding means your belief is tied to some community standard: professional, social, ideological or religious. Most professional or social ethics are practical- be responsible, don’t be cruel and do the right thing but “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. Some religions or ideologies can be quite extreme. Jainism is the best known religious example of this- they oppose any consumption or or harm to animals. Anti-natalist ideology opposes life itself on the basis that it sucks so why keep doing it?
- Having the “ick” about breeding but a willingness to benefit by buying from others who breed them where you can’t see it happen would fall under some kind of ethical relativism, or these days the newly coined terms moral distancing or outsourcing.
- Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort you feel from conflicting beliefs or beliefs and actions.
Most people in the modern US are raised without an ethical framework for animal ownership except pets. I personally was raised in a community with very strong ethics around working animal ownership and I suspect many others on this board were too. So you are getting responses that your concerns are either silly and childish or an attack on a commonly held ethical code. That’s how all these conversations go without a framework and commitment to discussing in good faith.
In the larger sense that life is suffering and suffering is bad- that is extremely well trod ground philosophically. It’s like, all they talk about. If you want to explore some of the basic ways people have thought about this maybe look into modern stoicism or individual thinkers in the vein of Victor Frankl, maybe secular buddhism. Stay away from the germans. Don’t join a cult.
ETA: I should add that you can also just not want to do something and do not need to tie it to a larger philosophy. It’s fine to say I don’t want to risk this mares life because I love her too much. I know so many farmers that have one animal they just keep as a pet.
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This.
I was raised Vegetarian/Vegan. And I spent a lot of time contemplating suffering, and researching philosophies and world views about suffering.
I also raised food animals by the way, and I get it. I decided that if I was going to eat meat, I needed to be able to raise and butcher said animals. It wasn’t easy. I also decided (for myself) that it was kinder to purchase from small farms locally than to subsidize larger industrial farms.
However…
I recognize that those have a place in our society as well, to feed people on a much larger scale and I realize my privilege in being able to choose as I have.
From an equine perspective, a well-bred horse has a better potential for a good life than a horse that is bred by someone less careful. But what makes a well-bred horse? Is it just bloodlines? Suitability for purpose? An eye toward soundness and longevity? I have 3 horses in my barn who are all “well-bred” from a purpose, bloodline and showing perspective, however no eye was put toward their longevity so they each have defects arising from breeding more to purpose/show than to conformation and long-term soundness. Conformation and long-term soundness is tricky though, as often faults in either of those don’t show up until after the decision has been made to breed.
I admire breeding programs that have managed to stay that course, but unfortunately financial pressures can impact the ability of an ethical breeder to stay ethical.
To your original question, does the mare consent? Oh golly, every single mare in heat I’ve ever seen would like to get pregnant by any animal possible, including flirting heavily with geldings who can’t do the deed. I wouldn’t worry too terribly much about that part of the equation.
I think it’s interesting to examine our beliefs and wrestle with the impact we have on others, including those that are non-human. Definitely not always easy!
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Pretty much everything we do with horses from sports right down to training them to tie and trailering them could cause grievous injury or death. However, they exist because we feed and house them because they serve a purpose for us. We have a responsibility to look after them and manage risk obviously but we can’t completely mitigate risk. How is the risk of injury from pregnancy worse than the risk of injury from any other activity? I don’t think it is, I think it just grosses you out more because you are projecting your psychological discomfort with it onto the horse. I have seen horses infinitely more distressed over their buddy being taken out of the pasture without them than some broodmares seem to be by labor. Reproduction is kind of a fundamental goal in life for most animals inasmuch as they can understand it, and while pregnancy and birth are uncomfortable mares definitely also love their foals; who’s to say that your mare wouldn’t choose it just like a lot of people do? If she was left to her own devices she obviously would choose it if there was a stallion nearby when she was in season lol.
I understand why you are uncomfortable with breeding in particular because it is a step towards treating animals as livestock that you are using rather than pets you are just living with. I don’t think that has any negative impact on welfare for the animal though, I think it is essentially only a psychological distinction for the human.
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I agree and whenever people talk about “only professional breeders should breed”, a few things come to mind:
- I was also told this when I wanted to breed my mare and came her for advice on suitable stallions
- I was also critiqued for “only” looking at stallions within 8hr drive because I wanted to go out and SEE the stallion but I was “limiting myself” to much (I live on the East Coast and very near some stallion standing stations so plenty of choices).
- I was told by the stallion owner that I finally chose that I knew more about Hanoverians, breeding, testing, etc. than many professional Hanoverian breeders she knew. I bred to a younger, lesser known stallion based on his pedigree, testing results, and personality when seeing him and she’s WONDERFUL, kind, and one day hopes to have me a bit better trained but she is very tolerate of my mistakes.
- There are enough “professional breeders” out there that do not care about their mares or the young stocks futures that making some claim that “professionals are better than backyard” is spurious, in my opinion.
- The “backyard breeders” that I know all kept the offspring and specifically bred for personal offspring. I am sure there are those out there that did not but there are also professionals out there that are not ethical.
Anyway, so yeah, horses aren’t out there thinking “man, this one night stand will get me pregnant…do I want kids?”
Humans are rather unique in the concept of NOT wanting offspring - the desire to procreate is an evolutionary trait that keeps the species going so breeding is not something I am against. Now, if you find your mare has difficult births or trouble carrying to term or has some genetic issue that will make it difficult for the offspring to have a good life, that is different (outliers excepted). But generally speaking, it’s part of the circle of life.
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Just to illustrate an example as agreement - I specifically did not breed my Thoroughbred mare to a thoroughbred because her feet were OK but not great and crappy feet is SUCH a thoroughbred trait, I wanted to stay as far away from it as possible.
So yeah, professionals breeder will do those things - worse overall in dog breeds, in my opinion but it is there in horses as well.
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I do not have a problem with people breeding horses if the goal is to improve the breed and not just put more horses on the planet. And that includes breeding for soundness and temperament. But bear in mind that the same temperament that is suitable for an ammy , especially an aging ammy like myself, is not going to win the race or an Olympic medal.
There are exceptions of course, but a lot of the horses that end up in feedlots are products of back yard or lower end breeding operations. I see on my Horses for Sale FB pages - “grade mare, lame, not broke, otherwise not suitable for riding” advertised as a brood mare. Why? Or stallion -" grade. But guaranteed fertile. Not broke or rideable. Selling as breeding stud." Or horses advertised as breeding animals with horrible feet or other conformation. Now they are registered but why would you want more like them? To keep churning out this - that is unethical to me. So many of those horses looking for a home. At least in my state. Now if you have the ability and motivation to make them useful, then it is not so bad. But most of these “breeders” don’t even make the effort to do anything with them.
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The people saying that (vs saying there is a standard that should be met or only acceptable animals should be bred under good conditions) usually either are using US-pet-ethics again or stand to make more money by limiting the supply of foals because they sell foals. Trying to make self-interest part of a community ethical code usually leads to a schism. Look at the US hunter world- you have true believers who really do think their trainer deserves a financial cut of every transaction they make related to horses because they are truly indispensable all-knowing authority figures and people who think hunter-land is a borderline cult and they are all being scammed. Some people might hold their nose and deal with it for their own self-interest but almost no-one’s internal beliefs are intermediate of those two positions.
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There’s a humongous thread over on I think sport horse breeding about this very thing involving Kate shearer
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This is quite an amusing statement because what I quoted was the exact reaction of some people here on COTH some 15 years ago when I posted the thread. And yes, that reaction was from known breeders…kind of makes you think…
I do agree that “barn blindness” (as in thinking X breed, or X person, or X way of doing things is the only good/proper/appropriate one) of all sorts just leads to trouble.
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OP, I just want you to know that I appreciate your thought exercise here and I think some responses were rather knee-jerk defensive instead of an opportunity to explore the big picture idea of our relationship with animals. But I think my brain works in a similar fashion as yours sometimes.
I believe that the domestic animals in our lives serve a purpose, and without us the quality of their lives would be dependent on the harsh vagaries of nature. In my mind, unethical breeding is that which does not serve that purpose well. It’s a trade-off, and I hope that most people trade fairly.
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Are you a PETA plant?
Your questions and responses to others are so weird and off base. Its as if you have no actual experience with livestock of any kind.
Its starting to feel as if you are on an information gathering mission…
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Just reads to me as a young person who spends a lot of time online and has absorbed some of the animal rights type stuff deliberately presented there as animal welfare in an effort to confuse the two. In people who do not have a lot of experience to draw on or do not belong to a community with an appropriate existing ethical framework around livestock this kind of thing is almost inevitable. There is a reason they are called “influencers”. They influence public opinion.
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Agree with this 1000%, and I think people are as reluctant to provide questioning/gentle pushback when someone’s eager to breed their mare because the only socially acceptable response is, “ooh, cute baby foal.” It’s like questioning someone’s desire to have a child they can’t afford or when they’re in an unstable life situation–you can think it, but can’t say it.
We have to be careful about projecting our desire TO reproduce onto animals. I see so many women saying that their mares “want to be a momma,” or need to give birth to settle them down hormonally/make them easier to handle by caring for another being. It’s like how people used to breed their dogs to show their kids “the miracle of life” or some guys get all weird about neutering their male dogs. Animals, when they mate, are just acting on the impulse of a moment, they aren’t thinking about becoming mothers or nurturing in some cognitively sophisticated way.
IRL I rarely see people who want to breed–anything–get shut down. Online, maybe, but IRL I usually see enabling because of the cute baby factor.
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Well.
Horses are animals and assigning human notions of consent to them is anthropomorphizing them.
The ethics you need to concern yourself with, and I’m speaking as someone who has not ever bred a horse, is not currently in a position to own one, nor am I in a position to even have horses in my life, so…take it for what it’s worth but:
Ethics to concern yourself with when breeding horses or any other animal:
Do you have a plan for ensuring the offspring has a good home for life? Are you prepared for an offspring that has inherited the worst possible combination of traits from both parents? Do you have the financial wherewithal to care for the offspring, not only routine care but worst case scenario? The knowledge or access to knowledge to train the offspring so it can be handled by anyone and not have another strike (lack of training) that could land it in a bad situation?
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I’m in my early 30s and somewhat baffled by this but I’m not fully caught up on the thread.
I can’t quite grasp why we’re trying to apply human notions of sexual consent to animals generally considered livestock.
And while I’ve never bred a horse - I do remember when a barn I rode at in my younger days that branded itself a “horse rescue” (it was…very much a dump) had a case come in of a stallion who had been found roaming around. (With him, I will say - they did the right thing, raised funds, got him gelded and found him another home. One of the few situations I remember of them getting it right.) They weren’t great horse folks but had enough sense and space to keep him relatively isolated from the other horses until his family jewels were gone.
However - one day, he got out of the round pen. The older woman who helped feed horses in the morning but was, frankly, a little scared of the stallion I think, was trying to lead a very old mare past the round pen. Miss Mare planted her feet and was flirting with the stud muffin. I was around b/c I rode in the mornings to avoid toxic barn people and my 16.3, lanky, chestnut OTTB gelding was tied up at the hitching rail nearby b/c I was getting ready for a ride.
Miss Mare remained planted where she was while older woman tried everything she could think of to get Maresy moving. Meanwhile studmuffin was sniffing around by the round pen gate, starts trying to climb it and the gate goes down. Right then, the woman successfully gets Miss Mare moving forward and I tell her get the mare put up and I’ll try to keep studmuffin relatively contained (I knew he wasn’t gonna go near my gelding, my horse was sweet but could be a bit intimidating towards the others if needed.) Studmuffin didn’t have a halter on (no clue why) so I did the only thing I could think to do, grab a longe whip and kind of herd him back towards the round pen while the other woman got the mare put away and eventually got a halter and we kept him contained (he was generally a sweet boy, not that hard to handle and I was used to my big lanky gelding meanwhile studmuffin was maybe 15 hands on his tippy toes), I realized the gate wasn’t all that bad, just needed reset and we got him back in his round pen. Everything probably would’ve been fine if literally anyone else had been leading that mare, in hindsight, but she was someone who’d be a little too much of a pushover with certain horses and I don’t think she really thought “oh hey, mare’s maybe going to try to stop near studmuffin.”
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Well, given your initial post implies horses that are being bred for a particular purpose is tantamount to rape when animals are not humans and don’t necessarily understand concepts like consent, rape, harrassment, etc. (I say “don’t necessarily” because, IIRC, dolphins have been known to gang up on a lone dolphin and forcibly mate with them. But dolphins, obviously, aren’t domestic animals.) I can see why it draws a knee-jerk reaction.
As a thought exercise, I think horse owners should do what they feel is right, if they want to breed their mare, I’m fine with it as long as they’re doing so as responsibly as possible with regards to the resulting offspring and the mare’s health.
If you get the ick from it - can’t say I personally understand getting the ick from the notion of your female horse, dog, cat, whatever being inseminated and carrying as one poster notes, but you also don’t have to breed your pet. The beauty of humans having choices and brains capable of reasoning beyond base instinct.
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Well, you didn’t posit it as a purely philosophical question when you posted it, so people mostly interpreted it as you positing it as a belief you have.
Philosophically, yeah, arguably the mare does not consent to being pregnant. But would she be any more or less consenting to it in the wild or is it just her instincts she’s caving to?
Animals aren’t humans. They’re more instinct-driven. Not that humans can’t be instinct-driven, humans are also instinct-driven. Difference is we still have reasoning abilities. We’re animals too, we’re just the dominant animal species on the planet, the ones with the intelligence to use tools, etc. to become the dominant species, and have essentially domesticated ourselves.
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