What mares want

Like all horses, mares are mostly interested in the best things in life – eating, playing, socializing with their friends, and being comfortable. They don’t like to be alone, and prefer certain friends to others, just like people. They look different from male horses with their less cresty necks, more feminine features, and usually very sweet personalities.

Leadership

Other things mares have to do include providing leadership to the rest of the herd and their foals such as where to go to eat, when to go to drink, when to rest or sleep, and where to get to shelter. Mares are usually the leaders of the herd, even in the wild, the stallion is not the alpha horse in the herd. People often misinterpret their efforts at leadership as being mean – when all they are doing is enforcing the will of the herd for the good of the herd. When they pin their ears, they are using their body language to politely tell the other horse(s) to move or back off. If they actually have to reach out to bite that horse, that simply shows that horse was not respecting their space, nor their polite invitation to move. Mares rarely have to actually bite or kick to get things done, once a horse knows their standing in the pecking order of the herd, they normally acquiesce to their leaders easily.

Estrus cycle

Mares are subject to a similar hormonal cycle to all other female mammals – the difference from people is that they come into estrus or “heat” about every 21 to 28 days. This means that they are receptive to a stallion for reproduction purposes. It does not mean they love the stallion, simply that Mother Nature has prepared their reproductive tract to be able to maintain a pregnancy if inseminated at this time. (Geldings have it easy – they don’t have to worry about breeding, or being bred, or raising foals. They just eat !)

Raising foals

This is a huge responsibility that many people take for granted. (Just let them have to raise an orphan some time and they will have new respect for how much WORK it is to feed, direct, and protect a foal !) Mares have to make sure that their foals learn all the behaviors appropriate for a member of a horse herd, like manners around other horses, how to groom, who goes first or last in the herd to eat and drink, etc. Much of their reactions (kicking, rearing, spooking) are instinctive since they are prey animals, but the rest the foal must learn from its mother.

Make a better mare out of them

The best thing a person can do to make a mare more valuable is to spend time training, riding and playing with them so that they are good partners to their humans. If they understand what you want, they will give it to you. Make them stand out in whatever their discipline is – get points and ribbons on them so that they have a job to do and are more valuable both to you and to any potential buyer. (That guarantees to keep them out of the viscous cycle of killer buyers ). That will also help you determine if you should breed your mare later on – if they can’t cut it in the performance ring, maybe you shouldn’t think about breeding them. If you want to make better potential mothers out of them, you should spend a lot of time with them working on ground manners and interacting with them (grooming, feeding, relaxing, petting them), so that when they have a foal it will have a more positive opinion of humans by watching the mare – every time the mare comes to you when you call, the foal is learning to come, too !

Mareish behavior

Sometimes people think that mares are overly sensitive or “witchy” during certain days during their estrus cycle. A lot of this is uninformed stupidity and anthropomorphism to people, but sometimes it is valid. Fortunately for the mares and their owners, there are several management strategies for helping them get over it. There are some mares that get a tumor on their ovary that makes them VERY aggressive and dangerous to handle, like a stallion – these mares should be spayed.

• The first is to be patient with them, maybe they are a little more sensitive that day. Do you feel wonderful every single day? Probably not. Try grooming your mare more and giving her time to focus on the task you want her to accomplish. Don’t get into a fight with her over the task. (In other words, don’t blame her hormones for YOUR bad horsemanship !)
• The next is to use a hormonal regulator to prevent a mare from coming into heat – this is common in show horses and essentially is a method of temporarily spaying your mare using chemistry. (I’m sure you can understand – sometimes at a show they will be looking at the same stallion that makes YOU catch your breath – and you don’t want your mare stopping to raise her tail, squatting to pee, or generally not focusing on her job !) There are herbal products that may or may not work for you, and there are proven drug products (Regumate is the most common) that you would get from your veterinarian.
• The last is a surgical procedure that is being more and more commonly used in mares that are either not good breeding prospects, injured, or the person just wants to enjoy the mare and not have to worry about the emotional rollercoaster of their estrus cycle (or for mares with a tumor on the ovary making them dangerous). Spaying a mare requires that the ovaries must be removed either thru a flank incision (makes a 4 inch scar on the flank) or thru the vagina.

NOTE: One of my friends rescued a beautiful mare, but had to have her spayed because of her extremely aggressive behavior, otherwise the mare was going to have to be put down. Now the mare is happy and being ridden and spoiled rotten !

Choosing a stallion

Horses do not mate for life, they mate to produce offspring. However, they have opinions, too. Since humans are usually making (often poorly informed – whatever happened to breeding for the quality of the feet and legs ?) the breeding decisions for them about to whom they will be mated, this sometimes leads to problems, especially for hand breeding. If a mare does not like that stallion or he scares her, she may not tease to him, or stand to be bred, maybe you should consider Artificial Insemination ?

Please choose a quality stallion to breed your mare to, the best you can afford – not just the stallion that lives down the road. There are over 50,000 horses a year that cannot find a good home and go to slaughter, and for every one of those, there are 2 or 3 more that are standing in the back of someone’s home – unwanted, unkept, neglected, and hungry. Do not breed your mare unless you can take on the responsibility of keeping up with that foal for LIFE – that is the only way to ensure that it has not become among the lost and lonely.

Is your mare an OUTSTANDING example ?

One last thing - NOT EVERY MARE can be an excellent breeding prospect. Be choosy. If your mare isn’t going to improve anything and has obvious faults – please don’t breed her. Way too many people have mares that can’t be used for show or performance due to injury or poor conformation, etc. and they just throw them out to be broodmares. This is irresponsible.