How many mares at stud in uk, ireland and usa and how many foals born each year?

Question

How many mares at stud in uk, ireland and usa and how many foals born each year?

Answer 1

First of all mares are female horses and cannot be studs. A stud is a male horse.

Answer 2

The Jockey Club expects about 34,350 foals of 2007 to be registered.  This page from their website gives annual registrations since 1990:  http://www.jockeyclub.com/factbook.asp?s...

With regard to how many Thoroughbred broodmares there are in the US, that's a little hard to estimate accurately, because obviously some Thoroughbred mares are kept more as riding horses than as breeding animals, some Thoroughbred mares are bred to unregistered horses or horses of another breed, some are pensioned and some are not bred as commercial ventures and may produce only one or two registered foals in their lifetime.

In general, if you double the number of registered foals, you'll have a number that's in the ballpark for the population of Thoroughbred mares that could produce a foal.  IOW, the Thoroughbred mare population in the US is currently around 68,000.  (The sense in doubling the population of registered foals comes from the fact that studies have shown that on average, only about half the mares that are reported bred in a given year produce a live foal.  Obviously this number will be higher for commercial stud farms that are in the business of getting mares in foal, but the small non-commercial farms and breeders counteract this. )

This number fluctuates depending on the commercial viability of the Thoroughbred market.  When the market does a dump, as it did in the late 80's-early 90's, marginal mares are taken out of production because it is no longer profitable to breed them.  When the market goes up, there are more mares in production because breeders increase the output.  

I don't have the exact number of foals for UK/Ireland, but it's on the order of 17,000 in 2006, and has been increasing for the last three to five years.  I don't know whether the registrations include National Hunt horses or not, and if not, what those numbers would be.

Answer 3

I couldn't tell you the exact figure for the mares at stud in USA but as has already been said, there are usually about 37,000 foals born each year in USA.

In GB and Ireland there are around 25,000 mares registered as "at stud" and approx 16,000 foals born.  About 7,000 of these foals are born in GB and 9,000 in IRE.  The breakdown of mares would be on a similar percentage.

The GB/IRE stud book definition of mares reported at stud is any mare that has had a foal in the last 3 years and has not been reported as dead, retired or "left stud".  Some people are surprisingly slack with their notifications of the deaths of horses.  I kow of several cases where it has taken the owner up yo a year to register the death of a stallion!