Should I keep a bad tempered Mare?
Had a Throughbred Mare given to me. Good bloodlines etc, good looking animal and good conformation. Put her in foal to our own Andalusian Stallion to replace a Stallion what had to be shot. She is nearly six months in foal. I am hoping for a Colt foal. Trouble is the mare has a nasty streak in her. Always got her ears back at anytime, kicking out, trying to beat up on our Mule, who has now got her manners. I fear the foal may have her traits. My husband wants me to get rid incase she kicks me but I know she will throw a beautiful foal. What would you do?
She may be like I was when I was pregnant - miserable. Wait until she foals to judge her temperament. I used to have a nasty Arabian mare who was just awful, ran the geldings around. We had to keep them separate. Oddly enough she was pregnant when we bought her and in good temperament at that time. Only after foaling she was a stinker. We gave her away to be sure she got a good home.
I would wait until the foal hits the ground and then see how she is. If she is still nasty, I would sell her with full disclosure.
The woman who gave her to me never mentioned she had this mean streak and she was very quiet when she first came. I have only just had her tested to see if she was in foal. Over here the Vet's do not come out to test, so I got an old fella who is a horse dealer to take her to the Vet's for me. The plan was that if she was not in foal, the old fella would have taken her straight for Slaughter. Sounds cruel but my fear was of her ending up with some young girl and doing damage then being passed around from pillar to pole before being slaughtered or even worse being dumped in a field starving. I feel a bit tight on the woman who gave her to me for wanting shut of the mare, but then I think she dumped her on me for the same reasons.
I have seen pictures of Andalusian cross throughbreds and they are amazing. I think I will just hang in and put up with her evilness a bit longer. If she foal's down and its a filly. I will put her straight back in foal and sell her with the foal at foot. I only keep stallions usually (not for breeding) I do Dressage. A mare on the same yard as Stallions has caused nothing but trouble in my experience!
It's possible she's just hormonal.
If, however, she is also showing stallion-like behavior (such as trying to mount other mares, or maybe that poor mule) then you do need to have her ultrasounded - she may have a GTC tumor, which causes JUST this kind of thing in pregnant mares. It's treatable, so I'd definitely have her checked out if you can.
At 6 months, though, that's perfect timing for it just to be the pregnancy grumps.
Please, though, if she is still nasty after she foals, don't breed her again. IF she is an overall nasty mare, then she WILL teach her foals to be the same way.
It does sound like it's pregnancy-related, though.
There is no bad horse, just bad owners. If your horse is acting this way, it's because of a previous owner. It seems to me that if she is acting this way, she is either doing it to protect herself or she has just been allowed to and nobody has corrected her.
Your mule, who you say, "now has her manners" has them because you have not corrected your mare and has picked up on this. That being said, the same will eventually happen with your foal if you don’t show authority. If you plan on keeping the foal, ground manners/training should be taught to your foal as early on as possible- the sooner the better.
About your mare, if you do wish to keep her, you need to have the time to. Horses are a huge time commitment and if you keep either mare or foal, you need to have time (and lots of it).
That being said, you need to start laying the law down with your mare NOW. The longer you let her keep acting like this, the worse she is going to be. This doesn't mean acting all macho and tough, you just need to stand your ground and correct her when she lashes out. If you are going to keep your mare, I suggest consulting with a trainer and a veterinarian if you do keep her, just to be on the safe side.
I wish you the best of luck
There could a few different things going on,and Im picking this could be hormonal,but you wont know till after the foal.Horses are not nasty by nature,she may have had previous bad treatment and is afraid of humans.
Could be she is an alpha type mare and doesn't accept your leadership.If you are trying to approach her in a small space she will feel very threatened and probably needs a lot more space to learn to trust you.People do not give anything away for no good reason.She will pass her distrust of humans to her foal,you need to be able to handle her.Find someone experienced in natural horsemanship skills.Any horse can be worked with successfully,but it takes time, knowledge and patience.cheers and all the best
by michael and rayna 15 years ago
it is not cool they can be nice and pretty but people don't think that way they can't help being fat they try to lose weight but they will still have loose skin come on yall have some niceness in u an stop picking on these kids.
by Alexander Thandi Ubani 13 years ago
Why are short [wo]men always hot tempered? Is it true? What do you think
by Alan 9 years ago
Anger is the Mask that Hurt wears.Before "blowing up" it's important to ask yourself (why) this bothers/hurts you so much. Is it really about (this) incident? Are you just angry in general because you feel people have taken advantage of you, disrespected you, or deep down you simply...
by Tammy Cornett 6 years ago
Just curious...I have to admit--I've gotten into some strong back and forth discussions a few times on here, but have never been called a name.But on Facebook last night, I politely(honest!) defended my son,who was at work, against a teenage girl, who came back on and called me an "Old...
by Mel Flagg COA, CPT, CHC, CNC 10 years ago
How do you get a nasty odor out of a plastic rubbermaid food storage container?I just found a container that had been in my fridge for (apparently) quite some time (I was wondering where it was). After emptying it, letting it soak in hot, soapy water and washing it several times, it still stinks....
by Money Fairy 9 years ago
I had this nasty squirrel eat away at my pumpkin this morning?? I am on the 4th floor in an apt. complex so the squirrels must be pretty desperate for food? Any suggestions on how to get rid of them or deter them just until halloween is over at least
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |