Foal Weaning: Need for Re-Thinking Breeding Practices?

We use to maintain a breeding herd of TB mares and we weaned the old fashion way: at about 4 months we separated the mare and foal cold turkey moving the mare off the farm. This meant several days of running, challenging fences, yelling and hollering, but usually took about a week and then was all fine. We hated it but this is how it was done. A chief benefit was an opportunity to teach the foal to lead without following his mother. This is an interesting study proposing a different way. It has much to recommend it but it is harder to teach a 9 month old to lead but then again if you are consistent about haltering and leading the not yet weaned older foal and doing some amount of training to move away from the mare, I don’t know, it might work.
DrO

Animals (Basel). 2020 Feb 23;10(2).
Domestic Foal Weaning: Need for Re-Thinking Breeding Practices?
Henry S1, Sigurjónsdóttir H2, Klapper A1, Joubert J1, Montier G1, Hausberger M1.

Author information:
1. Univ Rennes, Normandie Univ, CNRS, EthoS (Éthologie Animale et Humaine)-UMR 6552, F-35000 Rennes, France.
2. Faculty of Subject Teacher Education, School of Education, University of Iceland, Stakkahlíð, R105 Reykjavík, Iceland.
Abstract

Artificial weaning is a standard practice known to be one of the most stressful events in a domestic foal’s life. Research has mainly focused on ways to alleviate weaning stress. However, there is still a need for more detailed research on what should constitute best practices with respect to animal welfare. The aim of this review is to address this issue by examining the natural weaning process. We first provide an overview of the scientific literature on the natural temporal dynamics of the dam-offspring bond in horses: it is to be noted that the natural process of weaning is little documented, individual variations have been poorly investigated and immediate effects of weaning on the mare-foal relationship remain unexplored. To partly address these gaps, we performed a study around the weaning period on 16 mare-foal pairs kept with minimal human interference. Most foals were weaned spontaneously when 9-10 months old, with individual variations mainly due to the conception rate of mares. Natural weaning induced no stress response in either partner and was performed without clear signs of rejection by the dams either just before or after. We lastly open up the discussion on the need for rethinking weaning practices under domestic conditions.