Horse Pregnancy Stages

Horse breeding is not only a huge business; it also requires a certain amount of understanding and study of the animals that are involved. Horse breeding is a specialized business in an attempt to merge the best qualities of two individual animals into a single newborn creature. The bloodline from which a race horse is born plays a huge role in the amount of ability is has. Race horses, for example, are specifically bred to help stud the next generation of speed horses. Having been fathered by a champion horse is more likely to have a foal carry on the tradition. Given the size of the animals, one should surely not expect the horse pregnancy stages to be as short or pass as swiftly as in the case of other pets like cats and dogs. The horse pregnancy stages are a little more drawn out and cover an 11 month gestation period that makes sure the foal is born rather strong and agile. The mares body size and shape is unlikely to vary significantly during the first two thirds of the pregnancy.

Having mentioned the horse pregnancy length to be about 11 months, it helps to know that, unlike most other animals that are likely to birth their children roughly round the expected date, the gestation period in mares should be taken merely as a guideline for an approximate date. It is common for the mare to give birth to the foal a whole month before it is due. Because of the fact that the animal’s body is unlikely to change much during the first two thirds of the pregnancy, visibly identifying the pregnancy is likely to be harder than initially anticipated. Since a mare retains the hormones from the estral cycle for a period of weeks, a urine test is largely unreliable for the first two months of the pregnancy. As a result, most veterinarians are likely to resort to urine or blood tests taken around the 60 or 100 day mark and ultrasound a little later to confirm the pregnancy. Around the 30th week of gestation, the foal embryo is likely to be about 1 inch long with tiny bumps that are going to develop into legs. From between the 100 and 250th day of the horse pregnancy calendar, the mare enters the middle of the horse pregnancy stages and the foal will roughly weigh about 2 pounds with the extremities having been fully formed.