What to feed growing foals-Part 1, the source of nutrients.

New research shows that young horses do not need to be fed high calories or cereal-based supplement in order to grow well. For years we have supplemented our foals diet starting at about 3 months of age all the way to weaning and beyond with a combination of beet pulp, soaked alfalfa cubes, minerals, and some commercial diet formulated for foals (we use Hoffman developer-as it has no added grain or starches- more on that later). The idea was that beet pulp and alfalfa, being high in fibers, we were working with what nature intended for horses to eat but the added minerals and commercial diet supplements contributed...

How tall will my horse be?

Perhaps the most common question we get as breeders is: "How tall will he be?" Can you actually predict the future height of a foal? The answer is yes you can predict its future height if you are willing to accept a range.  There is however NO methods that can give you a definite precise height (16.1 1/2!)  and we will see why. You will find a few rules of thumbs here and there (the string method and the cannon bone method are the most commonly used and mentioned- I will touch on that later) and a whole lot of anecdotal evidence of this and that. Some will...

From foal to maturity.

As foal mature they change of course, but how much? How can you tell what the foal you are looking at might look like at maturity? How do you train your eye to see into the future? One way is to look at a lot of foals as they mature and train your eye to see what changes and what stays the same. Here is some examples to practice on. Those are some of the foals we raised and we were able to get conformation pictures of later in life. The old adage 3 days, 3 months and 3yrs might be a fun one to remember but frankly,...

We are foal raisers

  We are breeders, yes but we are, perhaps most importantly, foal raisers. All our foals are handled, hugged, scratched, groomed, and loved from day one. They learn to wear a halter in the first week of their lives and they learn to trust us over the next few months as they pick up the basics of good horse behavior. They come in from the fields every evening for some handling or simply for some attention. We pick up their feet regularly, trim them as needed, and if not we still make them feel the rasp so their first trim is not such a ticklish experience! We make...