Are you looking to own a horse or expand your herd? Wondering whether to get a stallion or a mare? Stallions are male horses, and mares are female. There’s another type of horse, referred to as geldings, which are castrated male horses.
The best way to begin your herding experience is to get horses that have mellow personalities that you can raise and gain experience from. Here’s everything you need to know about stallions and mares before taking the plunge.
Stallions
A stallion is a beneficial purchase because one horse and a few female mares can essentially make you a herd. Generally, we recommend getting a mare as your first horse because they’re more well-behaved and easy to train. Stallions have an aggression problem because of their high testosterone.
Like most animals, stallions have a pecking order, which will bring issues, especially if you already have other stallions in your herd. Stallions may exhibit aggressive behavior such as biting and kicking each other to exert dominance. Considering that stallions weigh about half a ton when healthy, breaking up a fight can be tough.
Stallions for Breeding
Horse owners don’t just pick any stallion to breed with mares. They go for strong stallions such as top showjumpers or top racehorses to continue the line of strong genes. Strong stallions don’t stay long on the market because most owners retire them early to begin their breeding career.
Stallions have to be healthy and physically fit before they begin the breeding process. To produce strong foals, stallions have to eat nutritious meals and be in a conducive environment for breeding. When maintained well, strong stallions can breed way past their 20s.
Stallions have two seasons in a year, the breeding season and the off-season. They mainly breed during warm weather, and it’s important to provide them with the correct diet and supplements beforehand to get them ready.
Before breeding season, be sure to keep your stallion sound, watch out for abnormal behavior such as increased frustration that could indicate pain. Stallions mostly require about 25% more nutritional maintenance than foals, geldings, and mares.
They should roughly eat 1.5%-2.5% of their body weight every day. Their body condition scores should be at around 5 to 6 all year round so that they’re ready to mate. It’s also essential to place your horses in a harem band where the stallion, mares, and foal socialize.
Gelding
Generally, castrating a stallion should be done early on in their life, preferably at 1 year of age. When you castrate a horse late in life, they retain stallion-like behavior such as aggression and hardheadedness.
When done right, castration results in fewer mood swings and teachability which is why horse owners prefer this type of male horse. Nowadays, castration is a straightforward procedure.
In the past, some castration procedures would go wrong, and the gelding was left with some testicular and epididymis tissue which messed up with their hormones making them aggressive. Today, if you find an aggressive gelding, then they’re most likely cryptorchids.
Mares
Although mares are less aggressive compared to stallions, they come with their own set of problems, including hormone-induced moodiness, especially during their oestrus cycles and during pregnancies. A mare’s oestrus cycle lasts for about 21 days, with most starting their cycles during spring.
There’s a lot of female horse terminology to learn. A dam or broodmare is a female horse for breeding. Dams typically represent mares who’ve already had at least one foal. The bossiest female in your herd is referred to as a boss mare.
Breeding a Mare
Both mares and stallions have to be fertile for a pregnancy to happen. The best way to confirm this is to have a vet do the test before the breeding season. Both horses have to be in good physical and mental health for a successful pregnancy.
A mare should be bred during her cycle, just before she ovulates. You can either choose to impregnate the mare through artificial insemination or natural breeding. The semen in artificial insemination can either be fresh, chilled, or frozen.
Mares Exhibiting Stallion-Like Behaviors
You may notice your mare showing signs of aggression, frustration, and trying to exert dominance above the rest of your herd.
This behavior change could be due to several reasons:
Pregnancy
A pregnant mare will start exhibiting aggressive behaviors when the pregnancy is about 4 months along. This is when the fetus grows their reproductive organs, and testosterone flows from the fetus’s placenta to mum. This situation will return to normal around the final trimester.
Estrous Cycle
Some mares get a testosterone boost during their cycle. This doesn’t happen for all mares, and sometimes you won’t even notice your horse going through the cycle.
Ovarian Tumors
The most common ovarian tumor is the granulosa cell tumor. Around 40-50% of mares suffering from these ovarian tumors exhibit a higher percentage of testosterone, which will most likely affect mood.
Pseudohermaphroditism
This is a rare condition where a horse looks female but has male reproductive organs.
Urinary Tract Infection
Urinary tract infections can cause an inflamed vagina, which is quite painful. A vet can check the mare out using a vaginal speculum to confirm the problem. The best way a horse can communicate its pain is through a behavior change.
Lameness or Pain
Having a good bond with your mare will help you gauge whether they’re just going through their estrous cycle or if they’re in pain. Aggression from pain or lameness is continuous as opposed to aggression caused by painful ovulation or estrous cycles.
Final Thoughts
Overall, stallions, mares, and geldings have different benefits and disadvantages depending on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a horse to play with your kids and not looking to expand your herd, then a gelding is an excellent option for you.
You get a friendly, trainable horse without the mood swings and temperament issues that stallions and mares exhibit.
When expanding your herd of horses, picking out parents with the best genes is key. The environment you’ll keep them in and the food you give them also matter. Even though stallions can breed for years, a mare’s fertility will wane when she’s about 15 to 16 years old.
If you’re looking to breed a mare or stallion more than once, purchase them while they’re young.