Can my mare shut down her cycle.?

Question

My mare has not shown in season since March, can she shut down and if so what can I do to bring her back in. An injection has not worked??

Answer 1

Mares can and do shut down when under stress situations.  Has your vet checked her ovaries?  I had one TB mare who had to have one removed as a younger mare and that seemed to have been the only piece of her history that followed her.  Nobody knew she'd been a class A conformation hunter or anything else about her outside the fact that she only had ONE ovary.  When I had my vet palpatate her, he found only one and was thankful I'd told him.

We hit her with the "shot" twice and she did come in, we covered her and she'd go out and no foal.  The third time she came in under her own power and we covered her, she took and 11 mos later, I had a bouncing baby colt foal.  After your vet checks her leave her be and see if she doesn't come into season on her own.

Answer 2

Mares can have "silent" cycles, so that even if you are checking regularly, they are very difficult to catch.  I had a mare like that, hauled her to a world champion stallion and explained that it was difficult to detect her cycles and they just laughed and said, "then how do YOU know when she's in?"  And guess what, they missed her first cycle!!  But to answer your question, yes, they can  skip cycles, and sometimes it's just a matter of being patient if you've done everything the vet has suggested.