Weaning time
- Thread starter LostandFound
- Start date
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That sounds easier on everyone! It’s great to have horsey friends!
Pretty horses and they do look content. Peace is excellent.
Love the stall, it looks amazing!
Pretty horses and they do look content. Peace is excellent.
Love the stall, it looks amazing!
I really like that technique too. For us, we never breed for just a single foal. When it's weaning time, we simply close a gate between two pens where mares can come to the fence and nurse their foal if they want to, or they can ignore them. We leave them like that for about a month and then the mares go out in the mare herd or down to pasture, away from the foals. They have buddies, the mares are in their social environment and all goes smoothly.
Hopefully next year there will be 2 foals to wean together. But this year, once again, the colt will be getting weaned without a friend. The foals don't seem to have much trouble with my weaning process, it's this silly mare. I sold the colt I posted about a few weeks ago, at over a year old. And she was very upset when he left. She loves her babies a little too much.
@LostandFound Sweet mamas, I usually have broodmares who, after the first weaning, are happy for that gate to be open so they can go back to life with their mare herd. They're often done being moms! I can absolutely identify with that!
That's been my experience in the past. Not this girl. She wants all the babies. I wouldn't trust her not to steal someone else's foal. On the other hand she would make an excellent nurse mare.
Did you see the post about someone who put a mirror in with a newly weaned foal, so he could see another horse?
She will be nose to nose with him the entire weaning process. I put the babies in the stall next to the mare, and turn out in the paddock next to the mare. The only thing they can't do is nurse. I start slow. He is 4 months old now, and I will start taking him out of the stall to groom him. They can still touch each other over the stall door. Then taking her out and leaving him in. I will also start working with him right outside the paddock, and leaving him in while I take her out to graze next to it. It's all for her. I could probably just split them up right now and I doubt the colt would care. I'm scared the mare will hurt herself though.
