could your horse tell you were pregnant?

[Starhouse]

I am expecting a baby and I swear my horse knows it. She can be kind of a hot head but since I have been pregnant, she has been so gentle with me, and very patient. She also likes to rest her nose on my belly. I am 4.5 months along but barely have any bump (I still fit in all my breeches!) so I don’t think it’s because I look any different.

I board at a co-op and the person who does AM chores insists on taking blankets off over the horses’ heads without unbuckling the chest buckles. I have been doing my best to put them back on the horse without unbuckling them even though I really hate that. My horse has a major ear phobia but has stood like a rock for me as I’m fumbling around with the stupid blanket trying to get her head through the neck hole. For the record, I put up with that for two nights and now just unbuckle all the blankets to get them on.

Anyway, the point is that she is markedly different now than she was before I had a bun in the oven. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

[Angela_Freda]

I dunno about when I was preggers, but he sure knows that my kid is our kid.
He’s notoriously hated fast moving beings [dogs, kids, etc] and he tolerates this one really well.
One time DS went running down aisle and into horsey’s stall with me not close enough behind telling him to ‘STOP!’. I get to the stall in time to see DS dart UNDER horsey’s belly, horsey standing mid chew, eyes as big as a house with a cartoon bubble hovering over his head, reading ‘Do not freak out! Do not hurt the kid! Cause mom will KILL you!’
Sainthood has been annointed.
He just loves to stand sniffing the boy, similarly to how he sniffs me, nostril planted firmly on hair/cheek/nose suctioned there like a vacuum.

He’s obviously more astute than the other boarder at the barn when I was preggers was… I went to the barn to groom and lunge horsey when I was near the end of my pregnancy [probably around 33 weeks of the 35 I endured] and I was big as a house bloated by pre-eclmapsia. I was toting 152# on my 5’2" frame that started out at 102# pre-pregnancy.
Big. As. A. House.

I get there and the workers are doing stalls so I take horse and all my grooming crap to the far end where they’ve already completed work to be out of their way.
Other boarder arrives with her husband in tow, who tells me I have to move my horse and my gear from in front of his wifes horses stall so that they can use those cross ties and be closer to the door to load said horse on trailer even though at this time there were ample other X ties to use and still be out of the way of the workers, and various other doors to exit to go outside to load horse.
Seriously. Talk about a jerk.

[fordtraktor]

My horses loved to sniff my belly when I was pregnant. But the funniest thing is how much my old retired jumper LOVES my 6 month old baby. This horse has always been extraordinarily spooky and weird about people. I mean, he’s 20, I’ve had him for 16 years, and he still rolls his eyes at the fly spray bottle every day. But he LOVES the baby. The baby likes to bang his little baby hands on the big guy’s head to pet him, and he just closes his eyes, lowers his head and whuffs. It’s so incredibly sweet. he wasn’t like that at all when my 4 year old was a baby. he just really loves this particular baby. The little guy grabbed a big handful of whiskers the other day and the horse just stood there whuffling. It’s adorable. I think he’s turned into a gooey ball of mush. Who knew?

This baby likes horses more than my first did too. He takes his little hands and pats and pats them, grinning. Especially the big ball of mush horse. Maybe he’ll be my rider! My 4 year old is much more into the tractor than the horses.

[Sdhaurmsmom]

Yes, probably

Well, he could tell something. Maybe it was that I was pregnant; maybe that I was moving slower and was not ‘on my game’. Whichever it was, my then-horse started taking advantage of me, even to the extent of breaking away from me when being led in hand - which was not his usual behavior.

This horse was the most alpha I’d ever handled, and really relished a fight. While I was fit, I could keep my alpha position - but I quickly lost it when I became pregnant. I ended up having my trainer take him in to keep him legged up, and then sell him on. He was not a ‘lady’s ride’. :no:

[AnotherRound]

I don’t know about being pregnant, but my horse knows when babies and children are around, and suddenly becomes completely well behaved. He doesn’t dance around, fling his head - my gdaughter would pull up a step stool and stand and groom him and he would lower his head and not move a muscle. I watched her change sides by going right under him, once, before I could catch her and say don’t do that, and he didn’t move a toe. Babies, he puts his head down and closes his eyes so they can poke him all over his head.

I think alot of animals just know when babies are around, and act accordingly, no matter what babies they are. Dunno about the pregnant part.

[Aggie4Bar]

I’m sure they know simply based on the fact that you’ll smell different (hormones, chemical changes). Whether or not they react to it depends on the individual horse.

Neither of my mares has reacted to my pregnancy, but one of them is - and has always been - absolutely fascinated with babies. Species is irrelevant. Human babies, puppies, foals… She’s quite the handful under saddle, but if you throw a small kid up for a pony ride, she barely tiptoes. I’ve put both my nieces on her double, and we had to stop every few steps for her to turn and check in on them.

[LisaB]

He’s what made me do the pee test! He had the perfect opportunity to duck out from under me. Out on trail, a flock of geese took flight from the river below and it was a brisk fall day - perfect spook moment and he didn’t do it.

[sophie]

YES, my little Morgan mare definitely knew.
She never waited for me to fully get in the saddle when mounting…except during the months that I was pregnant.
During that time, she was so quiet and attentive, it’s like she was another horse. I rode well into my 8th month with both babies, and toward the end I needed to pile up buckets to get on AND park mare again next to them to get off, and she. never. moved.

We also had a scary episode when she got stuck in a snow drift while trail riding, and we more or less keeled over to one side. She could have struggled to get out of it (trampling me in the process), but she patiently waited until I was out of the way.

But right after I gave birth, all bets were off, she was back to her old self (got one foot in the stirrup? Let’s GO!)

I lost her to colic when she was 14, and I still miss her to this day.

[sparkette]

I use to hang out at Belgian farm when I was 15/16. The owner had a stallion named Jake and knew he was one. Long story short, he tried to walk all over me but after I corrected him, he was a puppy. This was in 1997/1998?

The owner of the farm got sick and had a lady who helped him with the horses: she swore up and down that I wanted the farm, etc. but little did she know that Han was family and the horses meant the world to me (they all taught me things about horses).

In 2007, my husband and I visited the farm. I was pregnant at the time with my daughter. Jake the stallion, came trotting up to me, sniffed and gently nudged my belly. After that moment, he was a different horse. I’m pretty sure he sensed I was pregnant. I do have a photo of him sniffing my belly if anyone wants to see it?

[Starhouse]

Thanks for sharing your wonderful stories I hope my mare loves my baby, too. Sparkette, I’d love to see your photo!

[Lauruffian]

I didn’t notice so much when I was pregnant (either time), but my mares were the ones who first told me I was in labor.

Too big and uncomfortable to do much beyond just be around my horses, I chose to sit in a foldable chair that day and let the girls take turns grazing in hand. My heart-horse Arab mare, who liked to be near me when grazing but typically would explore the length of the lead rope, instead made sure to stay rightnexttome the entire time. She went so far as to move my feet and graze under them. But, she–who took a piece of my heart with me when we lost her–was not the one who told me Something Was About to Happen.

It was our dominant, pushy, red-headed mini mare Firefly. Now, she’s 14 now and mellowed quite a bit, but back then (this was with my first) she was just shy of 7 and decidedly NOT mellowed. We had an incident when I was 8mos preggo where she bolted past me when I went to get her from turnout, and she pranced and danced and snorted from green patch to green patch, quite proud of herself. I waddled after her and eventually caught her and gave her a huffy-puffy-preggo CTJ moment.

Then, as now, she was RIDICULOUSLY food obsessed. So, imagine my when I took this bratty little thing out to let her graze in my swollen hands and she refused to graze. Instead, she stood and faced me and stared at me, occasionally nuzzling my belly then going back to staring at me. WTF? I’d push her away, and she’d sniff the ground for a few, but came right back to belly nuzzling and alerting on me like a pointer on a pheasant. It was bizarre. I remember saying something like, "What is it, girl? Timmy fall down a well? Am I in labor? Heh heh! Heh… :uhoh: " Several hours later it was clear–I was. Fuhreaky!

Seven years later, that baby is now her favorite person.