What is Foal Heat?

Question

What is Foal Heat?

Answer 1

A foal heat is the first heat cycle that a mare goes into after delivering a foal.  It has the highest conception rate for a mare.

Answer 2

Matthew, the foal heat is an esterus cycle which occurs approximately nine or ten days after a mare has foaled or given birth. This heat period represents the peak of the mare's entire sexual and reproductive cycle, and many breeders will breed the mare back at this time for several reasons. The main one, though, is because the foal will be born about a month or so earlier the following year than it would be if the breeder waits until the 30 day heat period to breed back. In some parts of the horse industry, this is critically important, because foals which are born later in the year do not have the advantages of those born early in terms of growth and development.  Lack of such growth can put later born foals at a huge disadvantage when it comes to starting training for sports like racing, because the younger the horse is, the more likely it is to suffer a career ending or life threatening injury. A baby horse's bones are like a child's bones- they are soft and pliable, and as such, are more likely to break under stress. It's because of this that most horses in sports other than racing are normally not started in training until they are at least 3 years old- and some do not start until after their fourth birthdays.

Racing is different- the economics of the sport put enormous pressure on the breeders and owners of the horses involved to turn a profit and get a return on the investments they make. These same forces are what drive people to start training young horses which are only a year old to saddle and racing, so they can start racing as two year olds. The result of these pressures is that these young horses often suffer serious injuries- and there are also lots of times when the injuries in question are FATAL to the animals involved. Tragedies like the ones involving Barbaro and Ruffian keep happening for A REASON, Matthew. In any given year, there might be upwards of a quarter to half a million foals born in the US- but of those, less than one tenth of the top one percent even MAKE IT to the track, and even fewer go on to become top stakes winners. The great majority of the rest of the foals get injured, are too slow, get sick, or die because of injuries. Some of them end up being put on trucks bound for Canada, Mexico, and Europe, to the meat plants there. There have been at least a couple of famous racehorses, such as Ferdinand, who met this fate. This is horse racing's dark, ugly side- the one no one wants to talk about, let alone admit to. Some of the major tracks in the country have switched to Polytrack surfaces in the hopes that this will reduce the number of injuries and fatalities- but this is just a panacea at best. What really needs to happen is that the WHOLE SPORT of racing needs to overhauled and revamped from the ground up. But because of the economics involved, I don't see this happening any time soon.

Good question!