Horse breeding considerations — suitability, heritable-condition screening of the stallion, mare/foal care costs, UK overpopulation (UK DEFRA code)
Source: UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), “Code of practice for the welfare of horses, ponies, donkeys and their hybrids” (December 2017), gov.uk. Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0 — verbatim quotation permitted with attribution; C1 substring-verified against pdf-raw/horse-welfare/horses_welfare_code_2018.txt.
This topic covers breeding decisions under the UK welfare code: whether the horse is a suitable candidate, whether the stallion is free from heritable conditions, the special requirements of mares during pregnancy and foaling, and the UK's horse overpopulation problem.
Claims
If you decide to breed from your horse, there are a number of considerations to be taken into account. You should always consider whether your horse is a suitable candidate for breeding, whether the stallion you intend to use has been inspected and is free from heritable conditions and whether you could buy or rehome a youngster rather than breeding a foal.In addition, mares have special requirements during pregnancy, foaling and the post-foaling period and you should make sure you are aware of these before breeding from your mare. The care of a young foal can be expensive and requires a large investment of time, and there is no guarantee that the foal will mature into the animal that you want.At the time of publication of this code, overpopulation of horses is a problem in the UK, and the foal’s individual future should be realistically taken into account.These may include uncastrated males (colts, stallions) and “rigs” (a stallion with undescended testicles or a horse which has been incompletely castrated).Stallions and colts can live with mixed herds but this may lead to unwanted breeding and is not recommended.