# mule reproduction?



## MIEventer

There have been occassions where Mules get pregnant and give birth - but most of the time, the majority are infirtile.

They are a man made species, they lack cromosome's. Horses have so many and Donkey's have so many needed to reproduce, where Mules lack.

They have uterus's and yes, they go through heat cycles - I had a Mule name Molly who would squirt, and I've seen her breed with the Mammoth Jack Donkey that lived on the same farm *he was turned out with all the mules* but she would never get pregnant.

Can they carry a foal? I don't know - that is something you'd want to discuss with a Vet who specializes in this field.

I grew up in the same neighborhood a lage Mule Farm was. I got the priveledge of getting to know Mules and working with them on a daily basis. I learnt alot about Mules


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## JB44

great question. i spent years doing embryo transfers, and i do NOT know the answer. i will find out though. we did experiment with some spayed mares, but never tried mules.


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## JB44

apparently they can carry an embryo, if they are cycling mules. some cycle some don't. according to an article from Argentina


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## Indyhorse

I worked for several years on a guided ride farm where half our string were mules. I have a real love for them, and plan to get a mule someday. 

Mollies definitely come in heat, and the boys still need gelded because although sterile, they will develop all the normal studdish behaviors. I don't see why the mollies couldn't surrogate, all the parts are still there. I guess I never really thought about it. Interesting question, I hope someone on here will know the answer!


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## masatisan

Happened upon this by coincidence: 

"A mule has given birth to a male foal in a hamlet deep in rural Morocco. The 14-year-old mother mule gave birth on 28 August, 2002 in a small hamlet of three poor farms in the region of Oulmes, 80 kilometers south of the ancient city of Fez. The farm is nestled at the foot of the Atlas mountains, where the mother mule has become a cult. She and her foal have been visited by streams of people, many of whom traveled for hours to pay tribute to the miracle birth and bring gifts to the owner and the animal. The mule has become a local attraction The mule's aged owner, a farming woman whose face is covered in traditional local tattoos, did not realize the mule was pregnant and rode her 20 kilometers to market the day before the birth."

"No big deal, you may think, but in fact the birth was a minor scientific miracle. A mule is the hybrid of a horse and a donkey and should be sterile - except in this instance. There have only been two substantiated cases of a mule giving birth in the past quarter century: one in China in 1988 and the other also in Morocco in 1984. A horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62, so a mule is left with 63, an uneven number which cannot divide into chromosome pairs. This normally makes a mule unable to reproduce. However there have been, since 1527, (when records began on the issue) a total of 60 reported cases of mules giving birth. "The occurrence is so historically rare that the Romans had a saying Cum mula peperit, meaning 'when a mule foals', the equivalent of our 'once in a very blue moon'," explained Dr Gigi Kay, a horse vet with the charity, the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad ."









Original article from the BBC, I found it here (at the very bottom)


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## tempest

what breed would you call the baby of a mule? A jack, a foal, or a cross?


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## Indyhorse

I'm sure there has been a mule give birth in the U.S. as well, I'll have to look for it. I remember reading about it in Equus magazine sometime in the 80's *l* The molly had two foals, two years apart, both out of a donkey jack. I remember it because she named the first foal "Blue Moon" and the second foal "White Lightening" and I have a stupid memory for stuff like that. Maybe it was later proved to be a hoax or something like that.


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## Indyhorse

tempest, I think it would still be a foal. A Jack is a male donkey. A Jenny is a female donkey, and a molly is a female mule, but I can't remember what a male mule is called, or if it is still a jack. I know mules themselves are still called foals when they are born, I don't think that particular terminology is different.


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## Brighteyes

For the sake of discussion, yes, mules are always sterile. But, as there are exceptions most all rules, fertile molly mules have been reported. 

In most cases, the mule's baby is born either a full donkey or a full horse, depending on who the father was. (Mule + donkey = donkey foal, and vice versa.) In rarer cases, however, an actual baby mule (a mixing of donkey and horse genes) is born. We can not explain this. It's a wonder of nature.  One of these cases was Dragon Foal, a mule born from a mule mother in Asia, and Blue Moon and White Lighting, two mules born in the US to the same molly mare a year apart. (I believe the father, a donkey jack, was the same to both babies.)

And yes, mules can be used for embryo transplant. Their reproductive systems work perfectly well, so they can carry a baby, produce milk, ect. The only problem is that unfortunate chromosome count. Also, molly mules are famous for stealing babies from others! Some of them really, really want to be mothers. 

EDIT: 

A jack is an ungelded male mule, a molly (or sometimes called a jenny or jennet) is a female mule, and a john is a gelded male mule.


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## Indyhorse

See had to go on a search now. I'm a research junkie *l*

Seems the mule Krause that mothered "Blue Moon" and "White Lightening", in Nebraska in the 1980s, was the subject of some study because the donkey sire of both foals was ALSO Krause's sire herself. This was on one website I found:



> **Can Mules Reproduce?* Or FERTILE MULES? (Mules giving Birth/Mule gives Birth/Mule has a foal) Do they have normal anatomy?
> What is the offspring of a horse and a mule called? Can a mule have a baby?
> 
> Short answer - No, mules (both male and female) are sterile. Both have normal anatomy internally and externally. The males must be castrated, as they have the equipment but do not produce the essential element needed (we're trying to keep this PG here...) Females may come into heat and may need hormone shots if heat is a problem.
> 
> * For those who are following up with "Okay, what about the fertile mule we have read about..." *- Fertile mules (hinnies) are a 1 in 1 million case occurance. All known fertile hybrids in the equine world have been *female *mules or hinnies. Why these few is still scientifically a mystery, and there is still scientific debate over the verification of some "Fertile"; cases. The most well known and documented cases are of Krause, a mare mule with two mule sons, and a fertile hinny in China, who;s offspring, Dragon Foal, is considered unique. The complications for Krause's cases is that her sire, Chester, is also the sire of her sons. However, DNA testing has been cataloged as conclusive that both foals, Blue Moon and White Lighting, are Krause's foals.
> In most known cases of mule fertility, it has been noted that the mare mule passed on a complete set of her Maternal genes to the foal. Therefore a female mule bred to a horse would produce a 100% horse foal. Thus was the case of Old Beck, who was at Texas A&M in the 1920's;. This mare mule had a mule daughter, Kit. She was brought to TX A&M for observation. She was bred to a saddle horse stallion, and produced a horse son, Pat Murphy Jr. Pat Jr was fertile, and sired horse foals. Beck aborted a third foal, sired by a jack, which although deformed, appeared to be a regular mule.
> There has more recently been a case of a mare mule in Brazil who has foaled two 100% horse sons. Tests in the future will hopefully prove them to be normal, fertile stallions.
> Dragon Foal, instead of being a donkey foal from the mating of a hinny to a jack, is a unique hybrid, with combinations never documented before. Visually, she appears to be a strange donkey with some more mule-like features, and her chromosomes and DNA test seem to confirm this.
> 
> A mare mule in Morocco foaled in 2003 and was genetically confirmed to have been the dam of the male foal. His DNA shows him to be a mixed karyotyped hybrid like Dragon Foal, approximately 3/4 donkey and 1/4 horse.
> 
> In the spring of 2007 a mare mule in Colorado gave birth to a live foal. DNA from both the mare mule and her foal has been tested by two different labs to date (July 2007). Both labs have thus verified that the foal qualifies as the offspring of the mare mule, and that she (the mother) is a mule and not a donkey or horse. This is just one more case of mule fertility that will be under investigation. Unlike other cases of fertile mare mules, this foal appears to be a mixture of horse and donkey phenotypes (ie, visually he looks more donkey-like than mule-like at this stage). Study of the gene mapping will show later if he is a true mixture, as in the case of the Moroccan mare mule, or Dragon Foal in China. Krause, the fertile mare mule in Nebraska in the 1980s, contributed a complete maternal gene set to her sons, making them pure mules (not a 3/4 donkey 1/4 horse mixture).
> 
> In the feline world, there are hybrids of Jungle cats and domestic cats, crossed by breeders to have a large cat with the wild markings and still be a pet. The first-generation female hybrids (F-1) are fertile, but the males are not. It is not until the F-3 generation (F-1 Crossed back to domestic cat is F-2, F-2 back to domestic cat again is F-#) that the males become fertile again.
> 
> There have been no recorded cases of entire male mules (Male mules are always gelded for use and show, no stallion mules are allowed) ever siring a foal. The cases of fertile Mare mules are so low that the F-3 generation has not been documented or verified in order to test this theory. There is one case (which has no scientific backing) of a mare mule whose Mule daughter was also fertile, and foaled a male "hule" (very horselike in appearance but with some mule characteristics) but no testing was ever done on the hule, and it is not known if he was routinely gelded or was left entire.
> 
> Basically, donkey x donkey is a donkey. Donkey x horse is a mule. Donkey x horse hybrids, called mules or hinnies, are sterile and cannot have babies.


This was from Frequently Asked Questions


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## tempest

that's freaky. thanks for the info.


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## haviris

Very informative! Thanks! So in the studies w/ the spayed mares, were they able to carry a foal?


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## farmpony84

I borrowed this from a website: All About MULES! 

The *Mule *is a cross between a donkey stallion (called a jack) and a horse mare. *Hinnies *are just the opposite - a stallion horse crossed to a donkey jennet. For all purposes, hinnies and mules are classified and shown together under the general term Mule. A mule or hinny may be a male (horse mule or horse hinny) or a female (mare mule or mare hinny). Sometimes horse mules (the males) are called Johns, and the mares are called Mollies. Both male and female mules have all the correct "parts" but they are sterile and cannot reproduce. A VERY few (about 1 in 1 million) mare mules have had foals, but these are VERY, very rare. No male mule has ever sired a foal. SO if you cross a mule to a mule - you get nothing! Mules and hinnies must be bred by crossing a donkey and horse every time. (Male mules should also be castrated, since they are sterile. They can become dangerous with too many hormones, so should always be castrated. You can't show an intact male mule, anyway, and it is useless to keep them a stallion).


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## LadyDreamer

Mule's foal fools genetics - The Denver Post

Wiley InterScience :: Session Cookies

http://www.westernmulemagazine.com/image/webimage/SURROGATE-MULE.qxd.pdf


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## haviris

I couldn't get the second two to work, but I've read the first one before! I'm pretty sure there is, or was at one time some youtube videos of mules that have foaled.

Sounds like they should be able to carry a foal! That's really interesting!


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## MacabreMikolaj

It makes sense when you think about it. It's the progression of nature and life. We like to think of ourselves as so clever, but nature will always have the upper hand. Breeding hybrids, literally speaking, makes nature angry because it's not a sustainable birth - they cannot reproduce, and therefore are useless to nature. Nature and evolution will ALWAYS find a way to beat us, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if in another several thousand years, we discover hybrids actually becoming fertile.


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