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Young Thoroughbreds usually begin race training in the fall of their yearling year or the spring of their two-year-old year, remaining at the track as long as they show promise of becoming successful racehorses. When their racing careers are over, many of the fillies are sent on to new careers as broodmares. At that point, virtually every aspect of their management changes. Instead of being kept up in a stall, the prospective broodmare will now be turned out most of the time, usually with a number of pasturemates. Her diet will include more grazing and somewhat less grain. Free exercise in the field will replace a set training regimen of track workouts. Finally, if all goes well, she will be bred in the spring and will then carry her first foal.

The transition from racing to life as a broodmare is not as simple as moving the filly from the track to a breeding farm. It may take weeks or months to accustom the new horse to her revised schedule, surroundings, and pasturemates. Most mares won’t immediately begin showing signs of a regular reproductive cycle, and for this reason it’s an advantage to retire the race mare no later than November or December of the year before she is to be bred in the spring.

It’s a good idea to quarantine any horse arriving at a breeding farm, especially if she has been around other horses, to be sure she is not going to introduce a disease to the rest of the equine population. During this quarantine period she can be checked for signs of illness, have her shoes removed, get her teeth floated if necessary, and receive care for any injuries that require treatment. If she is healthy at the end of the quarantine period, she is ready to move on through her transition to broodmare status.

A mare coming from the track is usually kept in a stall at first, moving gradually into full turnout beginning with brief periods and adding a few hours a day. To determine feeding times and amounts, the broodmare manager will need to take the mare’s body condition into consideration. Mares in poor or thin body condition tend to have more trouble conceiving than those that have a body condition score of 5 to 7 on a scale where 1 signifies extreme emaciation and 9 indicates extreme obesity. Therefore mares in fit racing condition, though they are not truly unhealthy, may benefit from some extra feed to increase body weight and proportion of fat to lean tissue before breeding.

Instead of simply heaping the feed bowl with calories, however, managers need to consider that the mare’s exercise will be decreased considerably once she is no longer in race training, so demands on her energy will be much less. Due to this decrease in exercise and increase in grazing during turnout, extra concentrate feed may or may not be needed. In any case, the mare should be weighed and scored for body condition every week or so for several months after arriving at the breeding farm, and feed management can be adjusted as needed to be sure she will reach a suitable level of weight by the time she is to be bred.

One of the biggest changes for the ex-racehorse is being turned out with companions. On many farms, the new mare will be placed with one or two other mares of similar age for a while before being turned out with a larger herd. This allows the recent arrival to have at least one buddy while she is finding her position in the pasture hierarchy. Any new addition to the herd should be watched for a few days to be sure she is not being chased, kept away from hay piles, or blocked from accessing the water supply. A little bullying is natural, but if it continues, the mare may need to be kept in a smaller group or tried with a different companion.

Most mares that are turned out to pasture in the fall and winter will begin to cycle by the time early spring arrives. For the occasional mare that doesn’t come into season or has trouble conceiving, a veterinarian can suggest a course of treatment that may include drug therapy.

Though it doesn’t happen often, first-time equine mothers are occasionally not interested in caring for their foals. They may not allow them to nurse or may even be mean to them. In these cases, the mare may need to be restrained while the foal nurses, or the foal may need to be put in an adjoining stall for a while. Most mares will adjust to the idea within a few days, but the foal will probably need to be tube-fed colostrum and milk during this period. In the rare case of a mare that absolutely refuses to accept her baby, it may be necessary to get a nurse mare or teach the foal to drink milk replacer from a bucket. Thankfully, by the time her second foal is born, almost every mare has figured out how to be an attentive mother.

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