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RE: [SPAM] Re: [RC] Old mares and their foals - heidi"Every bit as active?" You truly have some amazing geriatrics. I have never seen a 25 yr old horse romp and play in pasture. The closest to that scenario is when a younger horse hassles them and doesn't quit at the first gentle warning or two so they chase the youngster a few strides... or when the feed wagon arrives. Gosh, no, I don't think my geriatrics are amazing--they are simply normal. Old Muferra could still out-trot and out-run most of the youngsters on the place until the last year or so of her life (she died at 30), and did so gleefully whenever the spirit moved her. Most of my other oldsters have been similar, although not all have been quite so gifted. I am sponsoring a junior rider this year who told me at first that she thought her mare was 22. In looking at the paperwork they got from the family they bought her from, it appeared that she was actually 23 or 24. Just this week we've found out that she is a registered half-Arab and is actually 25. Now this mare has done three LDs and one 50 so far this year, including a sub-3 time on a 30-miler. She pulls MY horse down the trail a good deal of the time, and is eager and agile. I would be concerned if my geriatrics did NOT romp and play in the pasture--would make me think something was wrong. BTW, I took one of our stallions out at age 28 (I got him at age 24), won a Sport Horse In Hand class against a good showing of younger stallions, and placed 2nd in a Jack Benny English class and 3rd in a Sport Horse Under Saddle class. He hadn't had a rider on him in well over a decade. The big rub in the SHUS class was that when the judge asked for a hand gallop, he thought he was in a starting gate--he went full tilt down the rail and was one stride short of a crow-hop just for the glee of it all when I decided we might all be a lot happier if I checked him back. That little powerhouse move was what dropped us from 2nd to 3rd. <g> BTW, I was just outside, and saw a group of my mares in the lower pasture streaking full bore across the field--about a quarter of a mile--and the 24-year-old was mid-pack and going just as hard as anybody... All this is begs the point. The original poster wanted to know what to look for in selecting a 3 yr old, given similar breeding. SOME good endurance horses have a crooked leg, white feet, too big/too small a head, rotten disposition, short neck, upright pasterns, no withers, a clubby foot (wasn't there a runty little clubby-footed bay that did fairly well at the World Championships) or a 25 yr old dam. Does that mean we should seek out as our next endurance horse one who combines all the above... the best of all worlds so to speak, all qualities of SOME good endurance horses :)? No, having a geriatric dam is not in the same class as having some other fault. Having a crooked leg is having a crooked leg. Having a geriatric dam most often leaves the foal with no faults related to the age--it is just something to check about. But the majority of the embryos conceived that have these problems are lost sometime during the pregnancy. Very few go to term.It is precisely the ones that DO go full term that, compared to their brethren born of younger dams, have the highly increased chances of possessing chromasomal abnormalities. No. The vast majority of the ones that go to term do NOT possess chromosomal abnormalities, since those who have them die in utero the vast majority of the time. If the young offspring of old horses had chromosomal issues, then they would have problems that would be passed on. And that is not the case. It is the ovum itself that has the high chance--and those which ARE abnormal almost never result in live foals. Let's say a quarter of a mare's ova have chromosomal abnormalities. That quarter may or may not result in pregnancies, and those that do generally are lost by the 5th month or so. The other three-quarters are NORMAL, and result in chromosomally normal foals. What problems you describe are not chromosomal--they are the result of uterine insufficiency. And again, that does not happen in all older mares, and in most cases, can be addressed by good nutrition and supportive care. Heidi =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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