Since I am going to have my first foal in a number of years
(and possibly my last foal ever) I am contemplating all these issues for my
foal. I have had four foals in the past. My first was when I was pretty
new to horses. I still have the copy of Robert Miller’s book about
imprinting, and I did many of the exercises soon after he got here.
Mostly though I just was at the barn every day playing with him and I was able
to take him trail riding just loose with his mother and he was in a herd from
day 10 or so. My next foal was dead upon arrival which was really awful,
but I bred the mare back and had a great foal. The only problem was that
I was 4 months pregnant when he got there, so I wasn’t able to handle him
like I wanted b/c he was the size of a full sized pony soon after birth.
My last foal was a TWH baby born to a very standoffish dam. She was born
in the pasture and from day one was not a trusting baby. I worked her,
kept her up in a round pen, handled her every chance I had, but each time it
was like I had never done any work with her. There was no opportunity to
imprint her at all as her mother wouldn’t let me touch her for close to
24 hours. After 2 years I sold her and the folks who bought her really like
her, but I never did have the relationship with her I wanted.
Since my daughter is going to involved in the upbringing of
the foal, I’m determined that she not play with the baby, but yet I want
us to develop a great relationship and do early training that will make the
later training easy.
