Lesson 1: Getting Started
Selecting A Stallion
In the same way you evaluate your mare, you should evaluate the stallion you chose. This is extremely important for this will be the major investment of your breeding enterprise. First, determine your purpose in raising a foal. What is your desire? Do you want a hors for trail riding, showing, cross country riding, fox hunting, dressage, gaming, reining, cattle work, or investment? The list goes on. That will determine what breed or type of horse you use for stud. And of course you are going to pick a stallion that is attractive to you. If your mare has a general weakness, for example she has smaller hooves then the ideal, then you should make sure that the stallion has good feet to compensate for your mare’s weakness. Always breed up in quality. An inexpensive stallion is not cheap if he weakens the strengths of the mare and the foal is inferior quality.
Where do you find a selection of stallions? Just because your neighbor has a stud colt that they chose to not castrate doesn’t mean he’s the right one for your mare. Check breed journals if you have a particular breed in mind. Check magazines and horse publications. Most have a stallion issue in mid winter when many people are preparing for breeding. The Internet also has stallion listings under breed farms or in the many ‘horses for sale’ web sites.
When you are reading ads, what things should you consider? One of the first things is the location of the stallion. Unless you will consider artificial insemination (covered later), you need to find a stallion within practical driving distance. This is variable according to your finances and your mare’s behavior in the trailer. A poor hauler can interrupt her heat cycle from the stress, or cause the foal to not attach to the wall of the uterus, thus aborting the developing cells.
Another consideration is the price. A lot of factors determine the stud fee of a particular stallion. Prices vary according to the stallion’s breed, performance, the number of mares he will cover, how his offspring are performing, and unfortunately, the reputation of the farm where he is standing. The true cost of breeding is often hidden. Sometimes a booking fee (the fee for arranging your mare to be covered by the stallion) is included in the stud fee and sometimes it is an additional fee. This booking fee is non refundable if your mare is not found to be pregnant and you need to rebred the following year. There is also the cost of stabling your mare (often listed as mare care). You may notice that there is a difference between dry and wet care; wet care means a mare with a foal at her side and in milk, thus wet. A good stallion farm will also require you to have documentation of vaccination record, a health certificate from a veterinarian, which may also include a clean culture record.
If you have found a dream horse that is in another part of the country, you may need to consider artificial insemination. This increases the cost of the stallion’s fee, but may still be less expensive then transporting the mare. Some owners also choose to use AI to protect the mare from injury during breeding; and some stallion owners bred only AI for the same reason. Besides the added cost of shipping semen, you must also include the cost of having a veterinarian come to your farm several times to palpate the mare to find the most fertile time to administer the semen.
