I have a colt that will be three in April and have four mares to breed him to. I am not charging since this will be his first time breeding and the mares belong to friends of mine. We have decided to just let them pasture breed. We plan on keeping him in a paddock next to the mares for a while to see how they react to each other before we let him in with them.
One question I have is do I need to have the mares checked for any kind of breeding related diseases? I don't want them spreading any kind of infection. Do the maiden mares need to be tested or just those that have been bred before? Also, how often do we need to clean thier private parts?
I am hopeing that at least one of the mare's has breeding experience. I think three of them are maiden and one isn't. Should I maybe wait until the seasoned mare comes into heat and put her with him first. Not sure what I should do if they are all maiden. Should we maybe hand breed him first to the least agressive of the mares?
He currently has a nice sized pasture to him self. I used to pasture him with my friends gelding who was the boss over my colt. The gelding was sold and my colt has been alone for the last 6 months. He has never been with more than one horse at a time that I know of.
He is intrested in mares but not agressive. I can ride him around them with no problem. He talks to them, but I don't think he relizes they might be agressive towards him. The main reason I want to pasture breed him is so he can learn how to properly interact with the mares. I know there is risk of injury any time you do live cover. I just could use some suggestions on the safest way to go about it.
I have worked on a large breeding farm before but all we did was hand breeding and AI. We always cleaned the stallions with warm water before breeding. We wiped the mares clean with a diluted betadine solution then rinsed them. For those that pasture breed on a regular basis I am wondering what systems work best for you.
Sorry for being so long winded. I just wanted to give a little history about my colt and make sure I covered all of my concerns. Any advice is welcome.
Thanks, Kelly
Sorry if I made any spelling error's, my spell checker is not working.
Sorry that this was so long. It's my first time posting here. I did not relize that this topic had been covered already, sereral times, by other posters. I read those post and they answered most of my questions. Except about testing the mares. I guess I will go under the mare section and ask that question.
Thanks, Kelly
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