Featured Video: Do You Need to Breed?

Our Featured Video selections here on horseillustrated.com tend to skew towards the humorous, the absurd and the adorable. But this week, we’re featuring a more serious topic: overbreeding. British charity World Horse Welfare (WHW) recently released this short video as part of their “Do Your Need to Breed” campaign targeted at horse owners who might be thinking about breeding a foal.

How much harm can one or two additional foals do? According to WHW, small-scale or amateur breeders, those who breed between one and five foals, add twice as many horses to the equine population as large-scale breeders. And each one of those foals, even if kept in a loving home, displaces an existing horse from the pool of available homes. These statistics are based on United Kingdom numbers, but anyone who follows the news here in the U.S. knows that we’ve got the same problem on this side of the pond.

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It’s something worth thinking about and passing along to your horse-owning friends who might be toying with the idea of breeding. And next week, we’ll be sure to get back to our regularly scheduled silliness.

See past Featured Videos >>

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View Comments

Isabella says:
July 19, 2013 at 9:04 am
Very good video! Make people think before they act and possibly ruin a ton of lives that they could be saving!
racehorses rule says:
July 19, 2013 at 11:06 am
It is sad, especially since i visited a thoroughbred farm this year. really all they did was offer 11 stallions for breeding, and they said they got around 700 to 1100 mares each year! that's sad, most of those foals will probably make it to the track, but how many will be sea biscuit, man o' war, war admiral... and then the non champions will be upset, and the next years they'll try hard... and they'll have 20 horses and only 1 or 2 champions, if any.
racehorses rule says:
July 19, 2013 at 11:19 am
Anyone who gets their mare pregnant is really just picking a poor horse, putting it out of the light, and telling it sorry charlie. now, is that what everyone wants?
Donna Lee says:
July 21, 2013 at 3:56 am
Excellent video, Please stop and think first.
Galadriel says:
July 21, 2013 at 11:58 pm
Good advice.
Briana says:
October 3, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Good advice...
Marion says:
February 21, 2018 at 3:54 am
Breeding should be left up to the big time breeders of the industry and back yard people need to think twice about it! Yes foals are cute, but they are a lot of work!