I don't believe so-the mares are only in at night so we can watch them. Our statistics could be due to any number of things or it could just be coincidence. I personally believe the increased number of dystocias is due to the change in conformation of our mares. My great grandparents had nice big mares. They were into minis from the get go and they went around and bought the best small ponies they could and registered them when the registries first began, so they were just small shetlands, but usually in the 33"-38" range. The stallions they used were way before their time. Extremely leggy, refined stallions. Sonrisas Hajel was one of them and K T Freckles was another. I think both were about 35"-36" (though their papers say differently) and crossed with those tall, robust mares, there were just no problems foaling for them. Now, we have smaller and much more refined mares. We vet check them to make sure they are roomy enough and we usually wait until they are 4-5 years before breeding, but we still have trouble every once in a while. At one point we had fescue and that created a lot of problems and increased our dystocia rate drastically. The colt we lost this year had his umbilical cord twisted more than a dozen times in utero which killed him and then because he passed in utero, he did not get into position to come out. Things happen, but we make sure we are always there to help when they do
