"Throw- away" foals?

[Houndhill]

I am trying to find out about a situation sounds questionable to me. I have a friend who would like to help with the expenses of bringing four “rescue” foals from Ohio, which are apparently from “racing” mares ( I don’t know whether TBs, Standardbreds, or something else) by non-racing stallions. These “throw away foals” are supposedly produced and then allowed to starve to death so that other foals, thought to have more value, can nurse from these mares (in addition to or instead of their dam, unclear to me). These mares are bred every year.

This person (owner of boarding stable where my friend rides) brought several of these “rescue foals” last year, bottle fed them and then weaned them, and boards them at her farm. She is planning to go this week and get another load, and is evidently trying to raise money from people, including my friend, to “adopt” them and pay their board and expenses.

I am sympathic, of course, but had never heard of “the racing industry” producing “throw away foals” like this, and just wondered whether anyone had ever heard of this practice.

I dont really understand the economics of this, why any breeder would do such a thing, can anyone shed any light? I hate to say it, but does this sound like some kind of scam?

It just occurred to me, could this be a farm that is producing nurse mares that they lease?

[independentlyawesome]

Exactly - these are the foals of nurse mares.

I don’t think they would be allowed to starve, but they might be euthanized if a home isn’t found.

[NancyM]

These would be nurse mare foals. But the treatment described to you is incorrect. Yes, they are for sale, and yes, they do have to be hand raised with milk feeding. But no, they are not abused if produced by a quality breeder. Bonus to owning one is that 1) Their mothers tend to have great personalities, which can be genetically passed along to the offspring. The mares have been selected for this trait. Easy going, loving attitudes, mares who will quietly accept a different foal, love it and raise it well. 2) The mare is then bred back to another TB stallion, sometimes quite nice ones, that are often not available to non racing mares, a quality TB stallion.

So, if you wish to own and raise such a foal, they are available for sale in the parts of the country where nurse mares are plentiful. Race mares who have foaled and can not raise their own babies (for one reason or another) need nurse mares. These foals are not expensive to buy, and are old enough to have received the necessary colostrum, and are strong enough and old enough to be raised by hand on the bottle/bucket by adequate horsemen who appreciate the genetic crosses that they have. Some have gone on to be successful sport horses, and very valuable animals in their own right.

Beware the emotional input of somebody trying to extract money from you for an emotional purpose.

[PeteyPie]

I would question your friend and investigate the situation carefully. What I have always heard is that the stallion is quality but the mares are selected based on personality. The nurse mare must be willing to accept a different foal and must have produced a foal in order to have milk.

The nurse mare’s job is to raise a valuable foal. There are various reasons for this need. Sometimes the birth mother is ill or dies. She might have rejected the foal. If she is valuable as a performer, such as a valuable and successful racer or jumper, the owners might want a foal but also want to put the mare back into sport, so the owners get a nurse mare to raise the foal.

Some nurse mares are found fortuitously when their own foal dies and the owners have the luck of finding someone looking for a nurse mare. Win Win. I think there may be a website or some group that matches up mares and foals in that circumstance. There is also an industry of people who provide nurse mares. In these cases, the nurse mare’s own foal will be disposed of in different ways depending on the owner. Some owners will kill the foals, some will sell the foals.

I would hope that no one would let a foal die of neglect but nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to cruelty. Surely there are laws against that kind of cruelty and if it is happening, the owners would be criminals; maybe you and your friend could push for prosecution rather than just enabling those people to continue their illegal practices.

Personally, I think the whole idea of foaling a throw away animal is distasteful and I think the practice of removing one foal for the convenience of raising a valuable animal, is barbaric.

[PeteyPie]

I want to add that I would not bottle raise a male animal. There have been many accounts about problems such as berzerk llama syndrome and similar problems in other male mammals hand-raised by humans. There may be some specific training measures which insure that the animal will turn out well but I don’t know what those practices would be, other than minimizing human contact and getting a companion adult horse for the baby to learn from and pattern.

You might want to caution your friend to do her research about bottle-raising the foals if she is a novice at this.

[beowulf]

[QUOTE=PeteyPie;7418785]
I want to add that I would not bottle raise a male animal. There have been many accounts about problems such as berzerk llama syndrome and similar problems in other male mammals hand-raised by humans. There may be some specific training measures which insure that the animal will turn out well but I don’t know what those practices would be, other than minimizing human contact and getting a companion adult horse for the baby to learn from and pattern.

You might want to caution your friend to do her research about bottle-raising the foals if she is a novice at this.[/QUOTE]

Not to hijack, but can you cite studies or anecdotes to these problems?

I know of horses who can be a bit pushy or not attune to human space as a direct result of being orphaned and/or bottle fed, but not any personality disorder?

[ReSomething]

Yard sale foal is the name of a thread we had here about this once. http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?104279-Rescue-foal-from-a-yard-sale&highlight=yard+sale+foal

I also know a woman that brought home two of these (with her “rescue” halo on of course). One died of malnutrition/starvation/insufficient appropriate food for it’s age. Evidently many of these foals are sold at auction here in the Kentuckiana area.

My trainer used embryo transfer to bring a valuable foal into the world - that is a win win to me. Sweet, friendly pan footed draft horse Cheyenne had a beautiful little saddlebred foal while the foals genetic mom wasn’t maternal nor held her foals well. But the JC wants live cover and that means no embryo transfer either AFAIK.

The foals will be born regardless because the nurse mares have to be freshened. The mares are very definitely good moms, but I can’t say a thing about the potential of their foals, about the stallions that are used, I know nothing. They are not for the inexperienced. In the yard sale foal thread the foal was close to death and the owners had bought foals previously that had died, our cother went to work with milk replacement and good care. My friend was not a complete neophyte in the world of horses, but not experienced with the needs of a foal needing bottle and bucket feeding, and didn’t have a good veterinary team supporting her.

[ReSomething]

[QUOTE=beowulf;7418805]
Not to hijack, but can you cite studies or anecdotes to these problems?

I know of horses who can be a bit pushy or not attune to human space as a direct result of being orphaned and/or bottle fed, but not any personality disorder?[/QUOTE]

Anecdotally, the pony was weaned at four months or less, and taken into his previous owners home as a “pet”. He lived on the porch and ate out of a feed dish in the kitchen with the dogs, he was their 6 year old DD’s best friend. He was also left ungelded for at least a few years and by the stories they told he eventually became dangerous to the adults in the family, bulling the husband right through the barn door at which point he was gelded.
He is extremely pushy or can be, and behaves differently than our other gelding. I’ve never been herded by a horse until I met him, he doesn’t use the facial expressions at people, in the pasture he wants all his cohort together and he broke from the mares, trotted up alongside me and cut in front of my line of travel as if to haze me back to the group. I broke step and kept going, he circled back and did it again before he gave up. He is also mouthy and nippy, not a pet by any means. Not a horse that you can really relax around.

[beowulf]

[QUOTE=ReSomething;7418852]
Anecdotally, the pony was weaned at four months or less, and taken into his previous owners home as a “pet”. He lived on the porch and ate out of a feed dish in the kitchen with the dogs, he was their 6 year old DD’s best friend. He was also left ungelded for at least a few years and by the stories they told he eventually became dangerous to the adults in the family, bulling the husband right through the barn door at which point he was gelded.
He is extremely pushy or can be, and behaves differently than our other gelding. I’ve never been herded by a horse until I met him, he doesn’t use the facial expressions at people, in the pasture he wants all his cohort together and he broke from the mares, trotted up alongside me and cut in front of my line of travel as if to haze me back to the group. I broke step and kept going, he circled back and did it again before he gave up. He is also mouthy and nippy, not a pet by any means. Not a horse that you can really relax around.[/QUOTE]

Oh, he sounds lovely…

But, where are the published studies indicating personality deficit/disorders from orphan/throw-away/bottle fed foals?

I’ve met a couple bottle-fed citizens and they were very friendly, alert and respectful. Not a means I would go to, but as a last resort, it is the only resort…

[Appsolute]

Yes, like others have said, these are “nurse mare foals”. You have some of the facts mixed up.

It is not that a racing mare’s foal that is in need of rescue. The racing foal goes to the nurse mare, and the nurse mare’s foal needs to be rescued.

TB is bred - foal removed
Off breed mare is bred - foal removed and replaced by race foal.
Off breed foal needs rescue.

The need arises in the racing industry because thoroughbreds require “live cover” and at times - if the owner wants to breed the mare back during her “foal heat” the TB’s foal must be taken away, as the foal can not travel to the breeding facility with the mare etc.

The TB gives birth, the foal is taken away and put with a “nurse mare”, and the TB mare is sent off for breeding.

The resulting “nurse mare foal” (the foal that was the result of breeding the off breed mare) is taken away so that the TB foal can nurse.

It is that off breed foal that is in need of rescue.

Here is some info:

http://www.lastchancecorral.org/foal-rescue

[PeteyPie]

[QUOTE=beowulf;7418805]
Not to hijack, but can you cite studies or anecdotes to these problems?

I know of horses who can be a bit pushy or not attune to human space as a direct result of being orphaned and/or bottle fed, but not any personality disorder?[/QUOTE]

I think all of my information is anecdotal, but compelling enough that I would not personally take the chance. There is a citation below from a vet at some obscure university, but I don’t know of any double-blind university studies done on this subject. It would be nice to find one. In the meantime, I really think people taking on a bottle-fed male baby should at least read what is out there, talk to experienced breeders, and really educate themselves about the subject. An aggressive adult horse is nothing to take lightly, and the opinions and anecdotes are cautionary to say the least. Here are a few sites I found quickly. I will edit this with more if I find them:

http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/herdmed/applied-ethology/Bottle-raised%20males%20can%20be%20very%20dangerous.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_llama_syndrome
http://www.iz.org/llamas/berserk_male_syndrome_article.html

Another anecdotal example was the bottle-raised stallion in the 2011 documentary, “Buck” about Buck Brannaman. A client brought a problem horse to one of Buck’s clinics. She had hand-raised the stallion and he had injured her. I don’t remember all the details. My impression was that the woman was a hoarder because she had a bunch of intact horses in her herd. I do remember the caught-on-film moment where the stallion savages one of Brannaman’s assistant trainers. It was very frightening. Again, there may be techniques to prevent this behavior in a hand-raised animal. The point is, I don’t know those techniques and I think many other people don’t either, so I would be very careful to learn more before taking on such a project. It could be as simple as gelding at the right age, I don’t know.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said “mammal.” Another example was in the turkey movie where the guy hand-raised the turkeys. One of the toms suddenly attacked him viciously in a way that no wild tom turkey would ever do. The explanation was that the turkey viewed him as another male to fight off. Of course, this is not scientific in the sense that it is a double-blind experiment with a repeatable outcome, but my opinion was that the turkey saw the guy as a rival.

[Appsolute]

And hahah googling “berzerk llama syndrome” revealed this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4MBPGdg3sk

(I like how he never lost hold of that beer )

[beowulf]

[QUOTE=Appsolute;7418886]
And hahah googling “berzerk llama syndrome” revealed this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4MBPGdg3sk

(I like how he never lost hold of that beer )[/QUOTE]

Right? I know enough about the internet to know that googling “berserk llama syndrome” would not have turned up anything scientific.

[Where_sMyWhite]

[QUOTE=Appsolute;7418873]
TB is bred - foal removed
Off breed mare is bred - foal removed and replaced by race foal.
Off breed foal needs rescue. [/QUOTE]

Not sure this is all quite correct. As I understand it, a normal process is the TB mare is re-bred with foal at side. The race foal is removed as an exception; mare is ill, rejects foal, dies. In this case, a nurse mare is needed; but only as an exception.

[Appsolute]

I didn’t mean to imply this happens with EVERY TB mare, I would say it is largely an exception rather than rule. But I do not think it is only used in cases where the mare can’t care for the foal.

It IS used in cases where mares need to be shipped off to breeding facilities - too dangerous to ship the foal, insurance constraints, etc, and it is just easier to put the foal with a nurse mare, and send the highly valuable brood mare off to be bred back.

[Appsolute]

I didn’t mean to imply this happens with EVERY TB mare, I would say it is largely an exception rather than rule. But I do not think it is only used in cases where the mare can’t care for the foal.

It IS used in cases where mares need to be shipped off to breeding facilities - too dangerous to ship the foal, insurance constraints, etc, and it is just easier to put the foal with a nurse mare, and send the highly valuable brood mare off to be bred back.

[LaurieB]

@Appsolute;7418873

The need arises in the racing industry because thoroughbreds require “live cover” and at times - if the owner wants to breed the mare back during her “foal heat” the TB’s foal must be taken away, as the foal can not travel to the breeding facility with the mare etc.

The TB gives birth, the foal is taken away and put with a “nurse mare”, and the TB mare is sent off for breeding.

I don’t know where you got your information about foals being routinely removed from mares so that the mare can be bred, but it is incorrect. The only times I’ve heard of nurse mares being used is when the dam dies or comes to grevious harm during foaling–with the exception of a handful of extraordinary mares who cannot or will not raise their foals, but are bred regardless due to the quality of their offspring.

There were 23,000 TB foals born in the U.S. last year and the vast majority of them were raised by their dams, even though most of those mares were bred back. For mares that live within easy driving distance to the stud farm (like mares in central KY) the foal is simply left in its stall for an hour or two while the mare is vanned to the breeding shed.

Mares being bred to stallions at a distance have the option of either shipping the mare to the stud farm pre-foaling, or else shipping mare and foal together at breeding time. In that instance, the foal would typically wait in the van while the mare is bred.

The use of a nurse mare is an emergency measure in the TB breeding industry, not in any way the norm.

[Appsolute]

I am sorry I have been misinterpreted. I did not mean to imply this happens with ALL foals, most foals, or a high percentage of foals in the racing industry.

The OP stated:

[QUOTE=Houndhill;7417940]
which are apparently from “racing” mares ( I don’t know whether TBs, Standardbreds, or something else) by non-racing stallions. [/QUOTE]

I was just trying to clarify the fact that the “rescue” foals are NOT from racing mares - they are from “Nurse Mares”.

I was under the impression that the racing industry was the largest market for “nurse mares” but perhaps that is not the case? Maybe even more of these nurse mares go to the sport horse industry?

OP here is another article on nurse mares:

http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/nurse-mares-four-legged-mary-poppins-to-the-rescue/

Some larger farms keep their own band of nurse mares, while others lease nurse mares as needed. Bill Roseberry, who manages Roseberry’s Nurse Mares in Central Kentucky, said he gets calls throughout the foaling season, although this year seems especially busy. He’s already sent 26 mares out to help struggling foals and has received an additional 60 or 70 calls requesting his mares. Roseberry keeps close to 100 mares on his farm, many of whom are Quarter Horses and Tennessee Walkers.

Because nurse mare foals are bottle-raised, they tend to be very gentle and people-oriented, making them easy to market as riding horses or 4-H projects. Roseberry said he sells many for this purpose, keeps a few to add to his band of mares, and works with a farm in Ohio to successfully place those that don’t find homes right away.
(Last Chance Corral - the rescue I linked to above is a Nurse Mare foal rescue in Ohio)

[Texarkana]

I have worked pretty closely with several professional nurse mare farms and their operations were top notch. The mares and foals were treated wonderfully and the foals were raised professionally. These foals were later available for adoption for a nominal fee and an application approval process including references. The nurse mares were only available for “rental” in the case of death/injury/illness to the dam of a foal, or the occasional maiden mare who turned violently aggressive towards her foal.

Bottle-raising foals is not ideal for many reasons: aspiration risk, risk to the handler, labor intensive, inappropriate “orphan foal” lack of boundaries.

Bucket-raising is a better solution, but also is very labor intensive, with foals requiring milk replacer 4+ times a day for several months. And you still run the risk of inappropriate boundaries if not careful.

The purpose of the nurse mare farm is to leave the bucket-raising of orphan foals to the professionals. And they do an excellent job with it.

[Texarkana]

@Appsolute;7418995

I was under the impression that the racing industry was the largest market for “nurse mares” but perhaps that is not the case? Maybe even more of these nurse mares go to the sport horse industry?

The racing industry has the highest demand because the foals are worth the most. If you have a 5, 6, or 7-figure foal, you don’t want to run the risk of ruining him to bottle/bucket raising. The mares are also worth the most and I swear, it always seems the more valuable the mare, the more risk of complications! Nurse mare farms are also usually located near big race breeding hubs.

Nurse mares also go to sport horse breeders and even private backyard breeders. Some of the reasons it’s less common include cost, location, and general lack of knowledge about the existence of the nurse mare industry.