# can you keep a stallion and its dam in the same pasture?



## waresbear (Jun 18, 2011)

Yes, sons will bred their moms.


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## Chaz80 (Sep 29, 2015)

Yes they will breed,its just a matter of time and you don't want that to happen,unfortunately you will have to seperate them.


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## horselovinguy (Oct 1, 2013)

Breeding that close a lineage line of son to mother may not be in your best interest.
You have much more risk of the weak parts of the lineage becoming the strong points of a baby...
Poor feet, poor build, poor mind, sensitivities....to me you ask for trouble inviting such a mix.
If you want to breed, find a local stallion and have a breeding done.
Maybe trade a breeding to your stud to one of their mares of something but to me, you don't breed the son back to his mother.

If you have a "particular" stallion in mind for the breeding, then find that particular stallion and put several fences between son and mother or yes, he will breed her.
I've seen intact males about a year of age breed and impregnate a mare...oops it was. :frown_color:
:runninghorse2:...


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## QtrBel (May 31, 2012)

Yes, worst genes are often the winner in breeding close relatives. They often end up more pronounced depending on how passed as well. And yes, a son will breed his own mother. And as said above it can happen at a young age. 1 year isn't unheard of. This is the result of an 18 month old breeding his dam. That 18 month old also ended up with a fractured hock because of this incident. My MIL wanted to watch them "play" so turned him out with her. Son was mildly roach backed. Dam had previous to my ownership had two other draft foals (different sires) that were also mild roach and was bred for this son when I got her. We always suspected she carried but as I had not seen the sires for the other two we didn't know for sure. All of her other foals were fine.


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## QtrBel (May 31, 2012)

Just to clarify - You want to breed to a stallion you have picked out in hopes of having a colt that you can use and promote for breeding later? or - You want to know if you can keep that mare and her colt together for and extended period "(particularly 4 years old and up)" ? or Is it that she had a colt that is now over 4 and that is the stallion you want to breed to? 



You can't guarantee she'll have a colt. 50/50 for a filly. Better to start looking at that stallion that attracts your eye's foals and see how they perform at whatever it is you want your future stallion to excel at. Does he have points? Halter or performance or both? What are your goals for the foal if you do breed? What would you do if you have a filly instead? For a stallion to be really successful and put money in your bank in significant amounts he needs to be proven. If that stallion's get that you are interested in does really well in the discipline you are interested in then buying a stud colt of his to develop and show would get you the guarantee of a colt and not put your mare at risk. It still wouldn't guarantee success in that sport but you'd be closer to your goal. I assume this will be some time in the future. Realize that the older your mare gets the more risk especially if maiden and possibly harder to get into foal as well. Are you bringing the mare home for her pregnancy and delivery and keeping them there after or is the boarding barn set up to handle a pregnant mare and just short on pasture so they would be kept together indefinitely? In that case is this barn open to having a stallion on the premises?


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

If you are not familiar with horse breeding why do you want to have a stallion?


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## Avna (Jul 11, 2015)

Foxhunter said:


> If you are not familiar with horse breeding why do you want to have a stallion?


My question too. There isn't any livestock I know of where a son will not breed his mother. Not knowing this is fine -- everyone has to start somewhere -- but it bodes ill for your plan.


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## quarterpaints04 (Jul 8, 2019)

Thank you- though I am not alone in starting to breed horses. I have family members in the business to help me start and they told me most of the time inbreeding is okay, but, I think I want to avoid that. They essentially told me it can happen, but their stallion doesn't "mess around" with his dam, so it depends on the horse, which, doesn't help me very much.


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## quarterpaints04 (Jul 8, 2019)

Yes, I want my mare to have a colt to use for breeding- not to its dam. I know I can get a filly, though if that happens I can just train and sell it. I like the qualities and color my mare has now, so I wanted to have her offspring. Though I know buying a horse is safer than breeding. The barn is equipped to have a stallion and they have big box stalls for pregnant mares too. I will have to take my stallion home knowing this because they only have 2 pastures. (one for the geldings and mares, and one for the stallion they have) if it's a filly, she can be turned out with the herd.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

There is line breeding and inbreeding! 

Line breeding is when you have horses that are related, in human terms cousins, and you are breeding for particular traits. 
Inbreeding is mother/son or father/daughter. 

There is an old saying "Breed close, cull hard." This means if you have bred closely. Either line or inbreeding, any faults in the progeny it is euthanised. This happens more with dogs than horses. 

Problems often arise, not with the first cross breeding but with the second generation.


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## SilverMaple (Jun 24, 2017)

Yes, stallions will breed their dams.


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## waresbear (Jun 18, 2011)

If you have relatives that are telling you in breeding is okay, please stop listening to them. Exactly what are you breeding these horses for?


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## LoriF (Apr 3, 2015)

Yes, horses will breed no matter who the relatives are. Animals do not keep track of who's who in a family. In the wild it usually doesn't happen because the offspring are run off to find a different band. That takes thousands and thousands of acres and of course, a different band of horses around for this to happen.12


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

quarterpaints04 said:


> Thank you- though I am not alone in starting to breed horses. I have family members in the business to help me start and they told me most of the time inbreeding is okay, but, I think I want to avoid that. They essentially told me it can happen, but their stallion doesn't "mess around" with his dam, so it depends on the horse, which, doesn't help me very much.


Sorry to be direct, but you may want to seek advice from someone else. Family members who say inbreeding is "okay" probably should not be the ones you turn to for breeding advice. Maybe consult a vet with knowledge of genetics if you would like advice beyond what an online forum can provide.


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## AnitaAnne (Oct 31, 2010)

I have seen a lot of cases where the owner waits too long to geld their colt, thus colts as young as 1 yr old has bred their dam. 

The resulting foal often seems a bit off, mentally, (neurotic) and the bad traits can be exaggerated. 


Will also suggest if you are planning to raise a colt for breeding, please make sure the stallion is of good quality and will enhance the breed. There are plenty of poorly bred horses around, would not want to be adding to that population...


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

LoriF said:


> Yes, horses will breed no matter who the relatives are. Animals do not keep track of who's who in a family. In the wild it usually doesn't happen because the offspring are run off to find a different band. That takes thousands and thousands of acres and of course, a different band of horses around for this to happen.12


To add to this, any form of genetic weakness from in breeding will result in the progeny being killed, either from predators or weakness.


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## LoriF (Apr 3, 2015)

Foxhunter said:


> To add to this, any form of genetic weakness from in breeding will result in the progeny being killed, either from predators or weakness.



Anytime that you want to start a different breed of horse, dog, cat, or whatever, line breeding and inbreeding are done and work quite well. Obviously, this has been done thousands of times as we have so many different breeds of a given species. Here's the but. So much thought and research is put into these endeavors to intensify the traits that are desired for the intended purpose of said animal and also to keep the undesirable in check. Line breeding and inbreeding is just not done willy nilly for whatever comes along. 
I'm not arguing for line breeding and in breeding. I just think that the op is thinking that because it is done, it must be ok. 

So, for the OP, it would probably not be a good idea to have the son of your mare in the same pasture to breed to her in the future as you don't know all traits carried by both.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

The OP doesn't want to breed her mare to her own colt, she wants a stallion for breeding purposes. 

As I am reading this, and I might very well be drawing a wrong conclusion, this perspective colt will be bred to any mare that comes along. 

For me to use a stallion on one of my mares, it had to have proven itself with having performed in whatever field I am breeding for or, had progeny already competing It that field, be it a racehorse, eventer, show horse or whatever. 

People breeding just because they have a mare that they 'love' and wish to replicate her and there is a stallion 'just down the road' is not doing their mare or offspring any favours.


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## QtrBel (May 31, 2012)

" I like the qualities and color my mare has now, so I wanted to have her offspring."


Any time you breed you are getting half of the material from the mare and half from the sire so you won't necessarily have the color and traits you want passed. Color can be figured out and there are times that certain color crosses are guaranteed to result in specific colors but you'd want to know what your mare is and what a potential sire is. You may find the match could be just a hodgepodge of percentages for a wide range of colors. 



Can I ask what color she is and her parents or if she is in allbreed a link to help figure some of her color potential.


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## Idrivetrotters (Jan 5, 2013)

I'll be that person, why is it that stock and paint people feel the need to breed? For every one person I know with an OTTB mare that wants to breed, there are ten Qh or paint/palomino/buckskin people looking to fill a uterus to or to fill that uterus.


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## Kaifyre (Jun 16, 2016)

@Idrivetrotters I have no idea why but I see this all the time too. Perhaps it's because there are more stock horses in this country than any other breed? Perhaps because they're so common, and it's therefore cheaper to find studs? There are a whole host of mediocre stock horse studs out there who haven't don't anything in their lives except look nice in their stalls of pastures - heck, I know a lady in my town who keeps asking for $1,000 stud fee for a 9 year old, unregistered, roach backed, solid Paint stud who ISN'T EVEN BROKE TO RIDE, has never shown in anything, and tries to bite the face off anyone who comes close because he's only handled twice a year. 

A lot of this problem, though, is people who breed with zero criteria - something that I have seen in just about every breed. If you want your animal to reproduce it needs to have excellent conformation for its breed, an excellent mind, a winning show record, and papers. A no to any one of those criteria means that your animal does not have anything special to contribute to the gene pool and shouldn't be bred. This is something that people seem to have forgotten lately. I'm seeing it more and more with Fresians and Gypsies lately as well. 

-- Kai


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## pasomountain (Dec 19, 2018)

Kaifyre said:


> A lot of this problem, though, is people who breed with zero criteria - something that I have seen in just about every breed. If you want your animal to reproduce it needs to have excellent conformation for its breed, an excellent mind, a winning show record, and papers. A no to any one of those criteria means that your animal does not have anything special to contribute to the gene pool and shouldn't be bred. This is something that people seem to have forgotten lately. I'm seeing it more and more with Fresians and Gypsies lately as well.
> 
> -- Kai


That is so true--I look at online horse classifieds for fun all the time and have seen a real increase in Gypsy and Friesian crosses lately--even a "Gypsian"! Those people will cross their studs to anything apparently. I've seen some pretty nice ones and some that were pretty funky. I have no idea why it's such a big trend right now. 

Here's the Gypsian--Gypsy/Friesian cross:

https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/grd/d/seattle-stunning-solid-black-gypsian/6926394215.html


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## Idrivetrotters (Jan 5, 2013)

Maybe it is because I am familiar with TB and STB racing, but there really isn't a shocking amount of TBs being bred and STBs even less. If you take away the racing and Amish, the only serious breeders of STBs are a handful of racking/singlefoot people. They are breeding top-notch horses that are sound and sane which I consider an "improvement" to the breed.

On the flip side, I see way too many not even mediocre stock/colored horses and do not get me started on what runs through the auctions here. The next worse "uterus fillers" are the Gypsey/Friesan-Appy crap that is showing up. The horse market cannot keep absorbing all these mediocre/poor examples of their breed. Horses are no longer cheap to maintain, even 20 years ago it was so inexpensive to keep a horse, these uterus fillers will have to stop at some point when they can't sell their horses.


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## Avna (Jul 11, 2015)

Idrivetrotters said:


> Maybe it is because I am familiar with TB and STB racing, but there really isn't a shocking amount of TBs being bred and STBs even less. If you take away the racing and Amish, the only serious breeders of STBs are a handful of racking/singlefoot people. They are breeding top-notch horses that are sound and sane which I consider an "improvement" to the breed.
> 
> On the flip side, I see way too many not even mediocre stock/colored horses and do not get me started on what runs through the auctions here. The next worse "uterus fillers" are the Gypsey/Friesan-Appy crap that is showing up. The horse market cannot keep absorbing all these mediocre/poor examples of their breed. Horses are no longer cheap to maintain, even 20 years ago it was so inexpensive to keep a horse, these uterus fillers will have to stop at some point when they can't sell their horses.


Statistics show that about 60% of all registered horses in this country are Quarter Horses and Paints. That's probably why you see so many of them -- there ARE so many of them. 

The fad of thick-built driving-type horses with colors, big manes, and hairy legs is one I wish would die out but it sure doesn't seem to be. At least Quarter Horses are a basic type of riding horse that works for a lot of people's needs.


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## ValerieR (Jun 28, 2018)

Foxhunter said:


> There is line breeding and inbreeding!
> 
> Line breeding is when you have horses that are related, in human terms cousins, and you are breeding for particular traits.
> Inbreeding is mother/son or father/daughter.
> ...


This is actually incorrect. By definition, inbreeding is simply breeding animals that are considered "related" to one another. The inbreeding coefficient represents how closely related potential parents are and is used in determining the probability of passing a heritable character to the offspring. Linebreeding is a livestock and animal introduced term, which refers to breeding along a "line" for concentration of desirable traits but that is generally considered not as "incestuous". In my genetics work, I have heard the term "linebreeding" very loosely defined, whereas inbreeding is a term with a set definition. 

As far as first inbred cross not necessarily leading to problems and second generational allowing issues to arise, this is also incorrect. Inbreeding does not cause mutations or "bad" characters, it simply increases the probability of homozygosity, therefore allowing phenotypic expression of recessive homozygous alleles. In some cases, this is undesirable. If you continually breed along a particular bloodline, you will increase the inbreeding coefficient and increase the concentration of particular heritable characters as there are more of a certain allele present within the breeding pair, but this isn't about WHAT GENERATION you breed at, it depends on how inbred the parents are. 

Not trying to be rude, just wanted to clarify the genetics terms.


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## ValerieR (Jun 28, 2018)

Idrivetrotters said:


> I'll be that person, why is it that stock and paint people feel the need to breed? For every one person I know with an OTTB mare that wants to breed, there are ten Qh or paint/palomino/buckskin people looking to fill a uterus to or to fill that uterus.


As a stock horse owner (2 QH's), this is vastly different from my experience with the breed. I started my riding career in the Arabian show horse world, and I can tell you with certainty that the breed standards are, in general, MUCH stricter for QH's than they are for at least Arabians. QH's are very popular and as a result, people get to be exceptionally choosey about what they want, resulting in very specialized horses. I own one foundation/cow bred mare who will eat a cow for breakfast and is strong enough to pull a freight train, and an exceptionally well bred race/barrel colt. In both cases, you can look at their papers, see what they should be good at and be correct. We breed because we know what we desire in a horse, know what bloodlines to go to to get that resulting colt, and can breed with the reasonable expectation that we'll get what we're shooting for if we know what we're doing. This is not the case with some other less popular breeds. 

For example, in Arabians (or at least when I was showing them) it was commonplace for a horse who was bred to trot to end up a western pleasure horse. They're versatile and I'm not knocking Arabians, but you're less able to look at one and say "that one will eat a cow and go down the fence" based off of a picture and pedigree. Sure there are backyard breeders who booger the horses up and that's more common for QH's because they're so available, but those people are the plague of all breeds. The popularity of stock-type horses has allowed us extremely wide options as breeders and has demanded some superior athletes in order to be competitive. That's why we breed. Uterus fillers are the exception, not the norm.


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## AnitaAnne (Oct 31, 2010)

pasomountain said:


> That is so true--I look at online horse classifieds for fun all the time and have seen a real increase in Gypsy and Friesian crosses lately--even a "Gypsian"! Those people will cross their studs to anything apparently. I've seen some pretty nice ones and some that were pretty funky. I have no idea why it's such a big trend right now.
> 
> Here's the Gypsian--Gypsy/Friesian cross:
> 
> https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/grd/d/seattle-stunning-solid-black-gypsian/6926394215.html


Cute foal, but $10,000??? Seriously who would pay that and why?


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## Avna (Jul 11, 2015)

AnitaAnne said:


> Cute foal, but $10,000??? Seriously who would pay that and why?


Same reason people pay $5000 for an uncomfortable designer chair no one wants to sit in, or an English Bulldog puppy that can't breathe properly, swim, or reproduce naturally.


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## Kaifyre (Jun 16, 2016)

@Avna Well as someone who drives, and is vertically challenged, and likes colorful horses, I have to say I've seen some gorgeous Gypsies that I wouldn't mind having around. They're a tad bit TOO hairy for me though … Even Thunder the Shire is a bit much, and I weed whack his mane and tail all the time to keep it thinned out and reasonably short and tame. And with the mud, stickers and sagebrush we have around here I just cringe internally when I think of off-roading a team of Gypsies. There's a gorgeous blue roan Gypsy with high whites and a nice blaze I've been drooling over, and I just saw a purdy buckskin with a bald face the other day. I'm a fan of color though. : )

-- Kai


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