Nurse Mare Foals? Why don't people know about it?

That's a good point. I'd said "race horses" without really thinking, might have been high dollar thoroughbreds but can't be within the racing industry; I looked it up and yeah, it's a no-no withe Jockey Club, despite the fact that the intended dam can be bred live cover - it's the growing embryo that's transferred afterall. I don't know their reasoning behind not allowing things like ET and AI so there could very well be a good explanation, but it seems silly to me when we can confirm lineage with DNA testing these days. Maybe in time they will allow it, sounds like a win-win situation to me.

I have to say, I agree with previous posters who say to take this with a grain of salt. Mammals have this amazing knack of producing enough milk for however many babies they need to feed. It's called supply and demand. If the babies nurse more, the mother starts producing more milk. This happens with all mammals - and every mother mammal will go through this! Even a single foal will have "growth spurts" where they will nurse very frequently. This is a biological response that is solely to cause the mare to produce more milk to meet the foal's needs.

But even if the momma could produce milk for more two or more babies it still wouldn't work out. The Jockey Club does not usually want their race foals to travel anywhere in a trailer with the mom since it is to dangerous. And since the dam has others jobs...she wouldn't be aloud to take care of her foal. So that is another reason they bring in the "second" mother and that creates the nurse mare foal problem. Theres more info on this website: Last Chance Corral :: Ohio Horse and Foal Rescue - Available Foals

My aunts mare died in birth. We had another mare who had foaled about the same time, and she nursed both foals. When/if we noticed her struggling to produce enough milk, we helped and fed the foals goats milk as well
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Thoroughbreds are not allowed to have ET, it has to be live cover.
I have helped with ET at the clinic I work at, quite interesting to see how the egg is flushed out of the mare and put in with another one. It is done with show horses, alot. I think that beautiful reining mare that just died has other foals because of ET's. I imagine her owner is very very happy that she has that mare's bloodlines to carry one with. I have seen nurse mares used and usually , at least the ones I have been involved with are just given the second foal and gets to keep her foal.
Internet and the humaniacs who use it spend their days trying to make a simple thing bad. Nurse mares are needed, and I am sure some foals are not treated well, but I bet the majority are treated just fine and raised by hand.

Nurse mares can be needed in helping an orphan foal live and become healthy. So there is a time and a place for the need of nurse mares. But using them for healthy race tb foals that already have a mother is not the right time. It is not fair to the nurse mare's real baby. And its not that the nurse mare foals are just "not treated well".....they are killed. They do not get to live.....they are born to die. Unless someone comes along and rescues them....but there are very few people that do that. There are 100s and 100s of nurse mare foals that are bred for the sole purpose of getting the mother to come into milk for a tb race foal....and those 100s and 100s of the nurse mare's actual foal that the mare gave birth to....die. Every year.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the majority of the foals aren't just killed after birth. And what "other jobs" are you referring to in regards to the TB broodmares? Mares are not bred while they're still being raced. There wouldn't be any way to keep them in racing condition while they were pregnant. Yeah, a lot of times they'll re-breed the mare when she comes into her foal heat, but that typically doesn't require the existing foal to be given to a nurse mare. The only time I've heard of a foal going to a nurse mare while it still had a healthy living mother was if the dam rejected the foal completely.

I don't know if you've been around a TB breeding farm, but after they're retired for breeding, the brood mare's only job is to make and raise babies. Where are you getting your information from? Not everything you read online is true.

Nursemare foals aren't a stretch of the truth - they are real and there are quite a few farms of them out there. I have one horse that came from a nursemare farm in my pasture.

Unfortunately they have a high mortality rate because not all of the farms allow the foal to have colostrum before being pulled (though I have heard many of the farms are getting better about this). We lost our first one due to foal pneumonia - believed to be caused by not allowed to have the colostrum before being pulled. The rescue lost almost the whole lot of foals from that specific nursemare farm but had better luck with foals from other farms. Our second replacement foal also had the pneumonia but survived. He will be 7 this spring.

They won't. The reason has nothing to do with genetics, nor horses.

It's $$$$$. They make a bundle off of mare owners who send the mares to them to be foaled out/bred back, etc (farms do). It's a huge industry in many states. IF they went to AI, the economy in a few states would be crushed.

The TB broodmare is usually bred directly after she gives birth to her foal. Which is considered "her job" to be bred and have tb foals. So once the foal is born they take the broodmare away from the foal to be bred again. This leaves the foal without its mother and without milk. Which would mean a nurse mare would be needed to provide the foal with milk. Which leaves the nurse mare's foal without a mother and without milk...usually left to die....unless someone comes a long and rescues the foal.

Also the Jockey Club deems it to dangerous to put newborn foals in a trailer with the mother so they are seperated IF the broodmare must be trailered somewhere. This also leaves the foal without a mother and in need of milk. Which would mean a nurse mare would be brought in. Which leaves the nurse mare's foal without a mother...and usually left to die....unless the foal is rescued.