Re PMU farms- just did some google searches and talked to my vet. There are very few farms now, and conditions are much more stringent than in the past, at least here in Canada (ie hours in stall, size of stall, turnout). More often than not, they have a good stud so the foals are nice cross breds and sell for decent sums.
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Good to know!
“Anyone who knows anything about breeding is aware that mares in the TB industry ship pregnant to the farm of the next stud they will be bred to, foal out there, and are bred back with foal at their side [not necessarily literally]… unless they are able to be at ‘home’ and ship to the next stud and back without having to be boarded at the stallions farm.”
Actually, quite a few mares foal in a particular state, or in Ontario, to make the foal eligible for state-bred programs, and then ship to Kentucky with foal at side. I saw this a lot when I lived and worked around Lexington.
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That’s right @ejm . Mares and foals shuttle around like crazy these days thanks to state-bred programs. It’s always an exodus to whatever state is hot and just increased their incentives.
Yet mares still raise their own foals…
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Yes, you’re right. I should have written ‘most’.
But neither scenerios involve a nursemare, which was the point.
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Have to tell a pretty good nurse mare story. Years ago, I worked at a farm that had a very fancy mare ship several hundred miles to be bred to a high-dollar stallion. She had just produced her first foal, and the owners did not want to ship a young foal of that value but wanted the mare to learn to care for her foal properly. So, they found a nurse mare foaling at the same time and swapped foals, and this elegant dark bay TB mare arrived with a nearly all-white paint baby at side while her own foal stayed home with a nurse mare. He was quite a sight out in a field full of conservatively-colored Thoroughbred mares and foals, and was a staff favorite.
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That’s been true for at least the last decade. There was one farm breeding some very nice warmbloods. Lots of very nice performance bred QHs as well.
For the curious, you can find some of the ranch websites here:
http://www.naeric.org/ranchers.asp?strNav=2
It’s a much smaller list than it used to be, the industry itself has taken a hit with research and less demand, along with competitors being produced overseas.
Interestingly Regumate is synthetic progesterone. One time when it might make sense to use pregnant mare urine 
but they just use synthetics.
The one thing people tend to forget is when LCC is saying that all racemares have their foals pulled and use nursemares for when they go to rebreed the tb mares is there’s at least 30,000 tb foals born in the us every year. So where’s the 30,000 nursemare foals?
TB farms do not want to use nursemares because if they don’t have any of their own, it’s expensive to lease one. Plus you have to make sure that mare gets back in foal or have to pay an extra fee. It’s so much better for the mom to raise her own foal but sometimes shit happens and she can’t take care of her foal. Whether she needs surgery, doesn’t produce enough milk, rejects the foal or dies. those are the reasons for nursemares and it’s not just the racing industry.
A lot of people will say oh just raise the orphan foal. Yeah ok. When you have a large herd, short staff and maybe 1 or 2 “orphaned” foals of different ages, it’s not going to work. It’s so much easier to have a nursemare take care of that foal and teach it how to be a horse.
Another misconception is how the nursemares are treated. They’re treated just like the rest of the mares in the barn and when it comes to introducing foals, they tie up the nursemare where she can still get to food and water, put a blindfold on her, then introduce the foal. It goes pretty smoothly and usually the mare isn’t tied up for very long. I have worked on many TB farms and worked with maybe 10 nursemares over several years and on different farms and it’s nothing like LCC or any other place is saying.
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But what happened to the nurse mare’s foal?
As far as I know they stay at the nursemare farm. After awhile I see ads for bucket foals for sale and they look better than the foals at LCC
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Scribbler- pregnant mare urine has high levels of estrogen, Regumate is progesterone, as is depo-provera (the human equivalent!) Premarin was originally made fro PRegnant MAre urINe- . I am not sure how many menopausal women receiving estrogen replacement therapy knew the source of the hormone, even tho the pharmaceutical company was pretty clear when it was named!
Ah ok thanks!
Why does lcc do this? Money and LOTS of it too. This is their 990 from 2015. $339,312 in donations…that is a third and over of a million dollars…yet they only ‘save’ 200 foals…or less?
They are raking in money hand over fist.
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[URL=“https://ayankeeinparis.com/2016/10/10/nursemares-why-we-need-them-and-how-to-stop-the-production-of-nursemare-foals-a-rebuttal-to-last-chance-corral/”]This is a good piece to read.
I spent 8 years working at a breeding farm in AL. 11 years ago is when I first heard of the ‘secret shame of the TB racing industry’.
So I wrote to the founder of lcc…and lower case is what fits that group too.
I thought maybe, since our mares were bred to stallions standing in FL, that maybe this went on in KY, so I inquired as to where this was taking place, and that in 8 years I had never heard of this, nor seen it.
Instead of answering me…victoria changed her website to reflect that just because ‘someone has limited experience in the TB industry didn’t mean it didn’t happen and that those people hadn’t been out behind the barns.’
So I investigated, our farm had 38 head of broodmares and I hauled those in foal mares to FL, left them at layover farm, who foaled out the mare, and then took mare, (with her foal or without if foal was sleeping) to be bred. These breedings are done like clockwork, not like they are jetting stallion and mare to Paris for a romantic dinner. It simply doesn’t take that long, as you have an appointment time.
**It is also worth noting that states have breeder incentive programs, and mares that are bred to a stallion standing in those states, will have foals that will get a percentage of the purse for the owners of any races won in that state. And those foals have to have been foaled in that state too. Which is why we hauled mares down to FL at around 9-10 months. And brought mare and her foal back home when confirmed in foal for the next year.
I watched over the years as lcc’s lies grew more and more unbelievable, and the amount of ‘poor orphan foals’ being rescued by new groups every year has grown. And it is all based on a lie. lcc routinely claimed that every TB foal was 'ripped from its dam, so she could go back to racing or be bred, while the nursemare’s own foal was thrown on manure pile to die or beaten to death with shovels. Numbers ranged from 20K to one rescue claiming 50 thousand TB foals were put on nursemares. Jockey Club registry each year hovers around 23K TB foals registered.
So I wrote to the Jockey Club and asked them about it, linking to the outrageous stories I was finding on the 'net. They too said that nursemares were not an industry thing. I wrote to various state TB organizations, MD, KY, FL, CA and a few others linking again to the groups telling these lies. And I think that is why lcc started claiming that the Standardbred racing industry was also doing this, first time I saw STBs thrown into this was maybe 2014-2015 in lcc website. I wrote to Stacy Westfall about her involvement with lcc…you would think with the ‘poor deaf and mute girl riding for her father’ in free style reining videos daily making the rounds, she would understand that not all is as it is touted to be. But nope…she is still falling for their lies.
As for where do the foals come from? Not that hard to lay hands on foals. In our county we have at least 3 ‘I buy horses for cash’ buyers…one man has over 400 head of horses, BLM brands included, and not that hard to have stallions in separate bands, pull foals off and sell them as ‘poor orphan nursemare foals’ to lcc or to anyone else wanting easy money. And these rescues also are pulling foals from the herds roaming the abandoned mines in WV and KY as well. Which is why you see these foals called Appalachian Warmbloods in some cases.
And for a rescue group that decries abuses of these ‘poor orphan foals’…WHY on earth would lcc drag these poor, sickly babies to the VA Horse Expo as she did last year…and does this at several expos. This right here shows 2 foals that should not have been hauled anywhere. All for money from people who do not know any better. [ATTACH=JSON]{“alt”:“Click image for larger version Name: nursemare foals at va horse expo.jpg Views: 1 Size: 11.2 KB ID: 10060560”,“data-align”:“none”,“data-attachmentid”:“10060560”,“data-size”:“full”,“title”:“nursemare foals at va horse expo.jpg”}[/ATTACH]
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As for victoria’s claims about 'this is the fault of the Jockey Club for insisting on live cover in hand only breeding…
Do the math. She is complaining about that? Live cover results in one foal per ejaculation of the stallion. One foal per breeding.
AI can result in 3 or more foals, depending on the extender, and if all of the straw is used on one mare. Last year a DVM that stands a stallion, and does AI, dropped in on a ranch he had sold 2 straws of semen to, as the mare didn’t take with the first straw. While he was there, he found out there were 7 horses from those 2 straws on the ground. The mare owner had lied, and bred several mares, and had frozen semen for 2 years.
ET results in who knows how many foals.
But both would put double the foals on the ground, if not many, many more. And how is THAT good for the horse industry in any way, shape or form.
Back in 2013 when the EU was banning horsemeat for human consumption from US, China was all on board with that, which I thought was very odd.
Found out China has the PMU farms, (couple of other 3rd world countries have a few too) and of course that means China has the PMU foals…which they sell for horsemeat.
Google, or Bing “nursemare foals” and the sheer numbers of these ‘rescues’ is appalling. All pretty much take their playbook and wording from lcc…and in one case, and am doing more digging on that one, seems like they have a alter website in CA now.
This actually made me laugh…at one point I made the suggestion that “we need to picket the nursemare foal farms” as did some others…thought lcc was going to stroke out…
Real quick to then post “oh we don’t want to upset the nursemare breeders”??? REALLY??? Why not? Seems to me if your knickers are in a twist about them, you would be GLAD for hundreds of people to be out front picketing…
We know why not…doesn’t want to lose cash cow.
