Mother and baby together

I hope I'm in the right forum. We have a 15 month old filly. She's been separated from her mother a couple times for a matter of months each time, but we have her and her mother in our corral together and three different people have said we need to separate them because Bella (our filly) will bond with her mother instead of to our son.

We have the mom because we can ride her. Bella's too young to ride. How bad is it having them together??? The mother belongs to our friend and we could ask if we could keep a different horse of hers for riding. It's just that I want a female so I don't have to worry about Bella getting pregnant, and the other female we might be able to keep is only two years old and barely ridden. She's sweet and nice, but Nike is six years old and has been ridden a lot more. We are new horse owners.

What do you think? I can't tell that Bella is bonding too much to her mum, but what do I know. Not much.

Bella isn't really a baby baby anymore and it would be good for them to be seperated. They are going to become very herd bound and not want to go away from each other.
Bella won't get pregnant unless she is with a stallion, and I doubt that anyone is going to give a stallion to you to ride being you are new to horses.If you can't get another horse to ride that is safe, then do you have another corral you can put Bella in? You don't have to get another horse, just put them in seperate collars and don't let them have access to each other.

Agreed, it is best to separate them. Not only will they bond, but most likely the filly will begin to nurse again and the mare will begin to produce milk again. Then you would have to go through the weaning process all over again. My baby, who is about the same age as your filly, got out of his pasture the other day and was around the pen that his mom is in. The first thing he did was try to nurse over the fence and she was content to let him. It is generally just better for everyone involved if you can keep them separated.

Thanks for the replies. I guess it's clear we should separate them. We only have one corral so I will have to take the mum back to her owner. I will do that.

Which brings me to my next question. Will Bella be fine alone? I thought horses were supposed to be at least two together to be emotionally stable? We will groom her daily and lunge her and walk her. Is that enough contact with us that she will be a healthy, happy horse? There's a cat here but I'm afraid Bella will be lonely.

From the sound of your post, I think you should take some riding and handling lessons from a trainer. You need someone to help you with these decisions who knows what they're talking about.

As long as the baby is weaned, it's fine to keep them together, though I would work the filly away from mom to get her more bonded to people.

A "female" horse (over the age of 3 yrs old) is a mare.

An adult "male" horse is called either a stallion or a gelding. If you get a gelding, it's nuetered and there's no way it can get the filly pregnant.