From: Yvonne
Dear Jessica,
I have only recently discovered horse-sense, but am so impressed with it have informed my bulletin board forum members, my boarders, my fellow trail riders and basically, everyone I know that they NEED to subscribe!
I do have a question, and searched in the archives (and in my own books, online, in google, everywhere I could think of) to see if it is okay to separate an almost 3 month old filly from her mom at night. My poor mare just does not have room to lie down at night, as her baby is very large and of course, takes up the entire middle of the 12x12 stall. The mare has lately been lying down out in the pasture several times a day, but either the filly or one of the other horses disturbs her. IMy question is this: since the baby is quite able to eat hay, grain and grass and drink from a bucket, does she have to be in the stall with her mom at night? Can she go in the stall next door? I will be weaning her in September, anyway, but would this intermediate step be harmful to the mare or the filly?
Thanks so much for all of your wisdom! Yvonne
At three months old, your filly needs her mother for security, reassurance, and lessons in manners and deportment - not so much as a source of nourishment. If she has to be kept in at night after weaning, she would probably be fine spending her nights in the stall next door, as long as she and her mother can see, hear, and touch each other. But at three months, she's a bit young for this kind of separation. Is there a foaling stall on the property, or two ordinary stalls that can be converted to a foaling stall by removing the divider between them? If so, that would be a good place to put both mare and foal for the night... again, IF they have to be in a stall at all! And that is a big, big "IF".
So my question to you is this: Why are they spending their nights indoors? They would both be healthier outdoors in a clean pasture, able to get up and down comfortably and walk around and graze as horses were designed to do.
If you see your mare lie down for a little while in the pasture, then get up, it doesn't mean that her sleep has been interrupted. She wasn't going to sleep for eight hours - or even for three or four hours! She was taking a short nap, which is exactly what normal horses DO. That's how they get their sleep.
Horses don't sleep through the night the way humans do. They take their sleep in small doses, ten or twenty or thirty minutes at a time, throughout the day and night. The total amount of sleep adds up to about four hours out of twenty-four. You and I wouldn't do well on that amount of sleep, especially if we had to take it as a series of short naps, but it's what's natural for horses. Asking a horse to lie down and stay down for six or eight hours, as humans do, would not only be asking it to do something entirely unnatural, it would be putting the horse in physical danger. Horses' bodies can't stay down that long and remain healthy.
Young foals sleep more than adult horses, because young foals have only two speeds: fast-forward and asleep. They run and bounce and play until they are exhausted, then go flat on their sides and nap until they recover their energy and are ready to run and bounce and play some more. That's normal and natural, too.
Here are the main reasons that foals - and adult horses - should spend as much time as possible outdoors, and should spend their nights there unless there is some compelling reason (dangerous ice-storm? wolves? coyotes?) to keep them indoors for a night or two.
Horses of ALL ages need to be moving around as much as possible, all the time. It's what they were designed to do, and it's what keeps them healthy. Their circulation, digestive system health, and respiratory system health depend on being outdoors and moving. A horse confined to a stall can't move around the way it should if it's going to be truly healthy. A foal confined to a stall can't move around the way it should if it's going to develop properly and become a healthy mature horse. It's VERY important to keep foals in a field for their first year at least - the development that takes place during that first year cannot be compensated for later. And... there are other reasons.
Foals have very delicate respiratory systems. Because foals sleep flat, it's especially important for them to live outdoors where they can breathe clean air while they're lying flat on the ground. In a stall, no matter how well-managed the barn is, and no matter how often the stall is cleaned, there is going to be ammonia at ground-level, and any foal that spends a night in the stall will inhale some of it. There's no avoiding it. The dust level in barns is also higher and more dangerous than the dust level outdoors, because the dust that's most harmful to the respiratory systems of horses isn't dust from dirt, but dust from HAY.
Why not let your mare and foal stay in the pasture? If you have a special reason that they need to come in on a particular night - for example, if there's a big storm with heavy hail predicted - then one night in stalls (shared or adjoining) won't hurt them. But if there's nothing actually threatening them, they'll both be healthier and happier if you leave them in their pasture. Your mare will have plenty of room to lie down, and if the filly wants to tapdance while her mother is having a nap, at least there will be enough space for her to do it without jumping on her mother in the process. If you leave them out and watch them for a few hours, you'll see a lot of walking and grazing on the mare's part, a lot of playing and napping and a little bit of grazing on the filly's part, and two very happy horses.
One more thing: If you leave your mare and foal in the pasture 24/7, together with their pals, the whole process of weaning your filly is going to be much easier and much less traumatic. When the day comes, you'll be able to take the mare away and put her in a pasture on the other side of the farm. The filly will be in a familiar place, with horses that are already friends of hers, and she'll be used to you taking her mother away for an hour or two at a time, so when you take the mare away and don't bring her back, it won't cause a huge crisis in the filly's life. The other method - where you remove the filly - is much more cruel, even if you're moving her to a larger pasture, as it means that EVERYTHING in the filly's life will change at once. She'll be in a new place, her mother won't be there, and none of the other horses she knows will be there... that is a far more traumatic way to wean a foal. It's much better to leave her in her familiar environment with horses she knows.
I hope this helps. Good luck with your filly!
Jessica
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