how many nurse mare foals have you killed and skinned?

[CaitlinandTheBay]

I’m sure many of you are aware of the nurse mare meltdown happening on Off Course. A poster (can’t remember who) suggested that questions about the killing and skinning of nurse mare’s be brought over here since, you know, y’all are actual breeders. So, how many nurse mare foals have you killed and skinned? Do you find the acceptance rate is much higher with this method? Have you ever even heard of this? Do you use a different method? Why?

Not that my personal opinion matters at all, but I think there are worse fates for a foal than being PTS (or shot in the head). Ideal fate? No. Inhumane? Definitely not. After the foal has died, what difference does it make if you skin them?

[LaurieB]

Because apparently one train wreck wasn’t enough. :rolleyes:

[Daventry]

Ugh, what a topic! Not going to bother reading through 6 pages of posts on the OC forum. I am not in the racing industry, so cannot comment on nurse mare foals. Agree with LaurieB, why bring the train wreck over here just to try and prove a point? Can’t we just contain the mayhem to one forum?

As a breeder, I will say that we had an orphan foal a couple of years ago due to the mare having to be put down due to a medical emergency. We put the foal on to one of our other lactating mares and had no problems doing so. I also personally know two other people who have had orphan foals in the last couple of years that successfully found a replacement mare who took the foals fairly quickly after doing some hands on work with the mares and foals.

Hopefully this topic stops here. Good lord!

[ise]

You don’t even have to use nursemares. You can hook up an Igloos cooler with a nipple on it at the right height for the foal and it will learn to nurse from it when it’s hungry. Also the cooler keeps the milk replacement from being too hot or too cold.

[Laurierace]

All of them of course. It would be inhumane not to kill them before skinning them.

[Simkie]

Laurie, you owe me a new keyboard :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Equibrit]

Haven’t killed and skinned any OPs to date.

[Highflyer]

I’m hoping for some appaloosa ones to make a coat out of. Just like Cruella deVille.

[Cherry]

It’s my fault this topic got dragged over here. I was hoping someone would say, " Kill and skin a nursemare’s foal?! Are you crazy?".

Someone on Off Course posted a link made by a “rescue” in OH trying to raise money by putting forth the impression that these nursemare foals are routinely being killed so orphaned TB foals would be able to have a stand in mom. I say that the resulting foals of the nursemares are kept at the nursemare farms and fed milk replacement or milk pellets, then sold to private individuals (because I have actually visited a nursemare farm and that is the way it was run).

Then someone else said that the nursemare’s foals went with them and are then killed, then skinned and the skin draped over the orphaned foal so the mare would accept it.

So, I told these folks to ask here since I’m sure someone here must have some knowledge of how the nursemare industry works…

Sorry, but they don’t seem to believe me… I guess the truth just doesn’t bring in enough donations.

[stoicfish]

Honestly that is an outdated idea. Cattle people used to do it in the ole days when a calf died but it is a ton of work and you can easily just rub the smell off to the new baby. Even most cattle people do not do it anymore. Never heard of a person killing a foal to do it, ever. I think it is ridiculous that people are discussing this like it is a common practice. There is always wingnuts but that is the exception.
There are better protocols for adoption.

[PhoenixFarm]

I’ve had two nurse mares after a fashion, after losing two mares.

One was an older broodie who we chemically induced lactation in. It was expensive and time consuming but did eventually work. We had to continue to supplement with bottles and buckets as she never produced quite enough.

Second one was a mare who, for whatever reason, the owner hadn’t weaned her 10 month old filly yet. Mare was shipped to my farm and we used scent, hobbles, and food to to get her to accept the foal. She never completely accepted her, but enough.

First mare was a quarter horse owned by an acquaintance, second mare was a Lippizaner owned by a client of my farrier, so neither were official nurse mares. But no foals were killed by in the saving of my foals.

[Texarkana]

After you finish the foal skin coat, you can make awesome boots out of their hooves:

http://www.popsugar.co.uk/fashion/Horse-Hoof-Boots-Cheltenham-Festival-14940782

But seriously… I worked with the late Dolly Pouska’s farm quite a bit in my life, both leasing nurse mares and adopting nurse mare foals. No one civilized has ever used such a cruel and archaic practice. The first time I ever heard such a ridiculous thing was when I opened the other thread over in Off Course.

[Simkie]

What I don’t get about the whole “skin the foal” thing is this:

LET’S JUST SAY that you can kill and skin the mare’s foal without her totally losing her mind. Let’s say she’s calm and quiet and ready to be introduced to her adopted foal. You have the skin, you have the orphan. How does the skin not just smell like BLOOD? And how is smelling the dead foal’s blood supposed to help with the introduction at all? Or, if you rinse the snot out of the dead foal’s skin to remove the smell of blood, aren’t you really essentially washing away all of the scent you’re trying to use to get the mare to accept the new foal??

I just don’t understand how anyone with two brain cells to rub together can possibly think this would ever work.

[rodawn]

What’s even worse, is it is not even necessary.

There is no need to specifically breed mares to make them into nurse mares, then kill her foal so she can accept a more expensive/valuable baby to suckle.

All that needs to happen is get a bunch of healthy, retired or rescued, barren mares with good temperaments and use this protocol to get them to accept the expensive/valuable foal. I have had 2 breeder friends use this protocol. It was easy and successful. The only criteria is that the adopting mare has had at least one foal herself and was a good mother.

http://www.thehorse.com/articles/22344/drug-protocol-turns-rescued-mares-into-nurse-mares

[roseymare]

From what I have read only about 80% successful and 40% of the foals still need supplemental milk. Plus it can take up to two weeks to get one in milk. So farms would need to have a induce a mare and then handmilk her just in case they need one. I guess nurse mare farms could do this instead of breeding mares but farms do sell foals and some are even registered.

[PhoenixFarm]

I didn’t look at the article, but assuming the protocol is the one I used, it was not my definition of easy, involved some scary drugs (for humans), and was only partially successful and took closer to a month. It was 8 weeks before the mare fully accepted the foal as her own, and her production never ramped up enough to save us from bottle duty.

Not saying it isn’t useful, or shouldn’t eventually be implemented in lieu of the current nurse mare model, but it wasn’t a walk in the park either.

[Calamber]

Too many Hollywood movies or somebody watching the “All Creatures Great and Small” series and having a psychotic meltdown. There are not enough real problems in the world, why not create one to divert attention?

[kookicat]

I just want to point out something some of you are missing- no-one is killing living animals to skin them to use for bonding. Sometimes, if the foal/lamb/calf is stillborn or dies soon after birth, people will skin then and use the pelt to help the mama bond to the new baby. A farmer near me raises sheep, and he’s done it a few times in tricky cases.

[Calamber]

Right Kookicat but being rational is not part of this equation/discussion. Those who are convinced it is happening with living foals, will not accept the facts, no matter how real.

[Bluey]

[QUOTE=kookicat;7906379]
I just want to point out something some of you are missing- no-one is killing living animals to skin them to use for bonding. Sometimes, if the foal/lamb/calf is stillborn or dies soon after birth, people will skin then and use the pelt to help the mama bond to the new baby. A farmer near me raises sheep, and he’s done it a few times in tricky cases.[/QUOTE]

Yes, the story goes that, the rare time they had a dead cow with a newborn calf and a dead calf, some may have tried to draft the calf to the cow by skinning the dead calf, covering the newborn with it and so making it smell like her own did.

I don’t know anyone that did that and don’t think cows are that dumb not to know who the calf is anyway.
If a cow adopted one such calf with the skin of another on it, it was because she was nice and would have adopted it anyway.

Here, decades ago, when we were breeding, if a very young foal lost it’s dam, the vets and everyone would get on the phone and see if anyone had a mare that had lost a foal or one with a foal old enough to wean and the right disposition to accept another foal.

If no one was found, we would at times provide them with a milking goat trained to jump on a bale of straw and let a very young foal nurse.
Doesn’t work with older, bigger foals, that may injure the goat, but for a few weeks, it may get a foal thriving enough to make it.

Never heard of anyone killing nurse mare foals.
No sense much today, with the hormone shots to bring a mare into milk and milk replacer if necessary.