How many thoroughbreds actually race

Others will mount within minutes of entering the barn. With hundreds of mares to cover on the big farms, extensive training is given to novice stallions to ensure the job is done as efficiently as possible. Once the stallion is firmly inside the mare, the foreleg will be released to allow her to take the weight of the stallion. About a fortnight after covering, the mare will be undergo an ultrasound examination to determine whether she is pregnant, and to see if she is carrying twins.

If the mare conceives twins she is highly likely to lose the pregnancy. Very few twin pregnancies go to term, and those that do often result in foals that are poor racing prospects. If twins are discovered, the veterinarian destroys one of them. This allows the surviving embryo to go to term, but unfortunately this also allows the genes for twinning through to the next generation.

There she will be observed for 24 hours a day until she foals. Foaling staff also provide immediate postnatal care to the foal. This contrasts with what happens the wild, where mares separate themselves from their herd to foal alone. Should a mare be unable to care for her foal, nurse mares may be used to rear her foal. Nurse mares can be hired from specialist providers or are maintained at the stud. There is no official data on the number or fate of nurse mare foals, or the average age at which they are removed.

Orphan foals can be difficult and costly to hand-rear and may be prone to health and behavioural issues later in life. Health issues can arise if the orphan foal has difficulty adapting to the abrupt change in diet from mare milk to milk replacer.

Behavioural issues can arise due to the lack of socialisation with other horses during the hand-rearing period.

The use of hormones to induce lactation in nurse mares without the need for them to be pregnant or give birth to a foal shows promise as a means of reducing the production of surplus foals from nurse mares. At least 2, of these foals will never be registered for racing and only around 2, will eventually go into breeding, which means around 8, adult Thoroughbreds will exit the Thoroughbred racing industry every year. The number of Standardbred harness racing foals born has also fallen from over 10, in the late s to below 4, in Approximately 1, of these foals will never register for racing, will go into breeding and 2, adult Standardbreds will exit harness racing each year [ 2 ].

We do not know exactly what happens to these horses as there is currently no accurate or transparent lifetime traceability system for racehorses.

However, a number of surveys have been conducted in recent years in an attempt to determine their fate: these have reported a range of sometimes contradictory outcomes. Unfortunately the full details of this study have never been published.

None of these horses were reported as having been sold directly for slaughter. Survey results like these are likely to underestimate the number of horses that are sent for slaughter for three reasons. Firstly, trainers may not wish to admit they have sent horses for slaughter; second, such studies may exclude horses sold interstate to saleyards; and third, they do not take into account those horses that left racing for other reasons but were subsequently sold for slaughter.

Around 9, horses are currently slaughtered in abattoirs each year and this study suggests that around half of these may be ex-racehorses. She is cross-referencing up to recently discovered human genes for fitness and performance in a bid to track down equine equivalents. These genes are involved in traits related to the cardio-respiratory system, muscle strength and metabolism, she says. However, the analysis of thoroughbred genetics is also revealing the other side of the coin, notes Matthew Binns of the Royal Veterinary College in London, UK.

Many negative traits are associated with inbreeding in the diminutive gene pool, he says. But as well as allowing breeders to select for performance-related genes, elucidating the horse genome may allow researchers to breed out negative traits, he says. Trending Latest Video Free. Paralysed mice walk again after gel is injected into spinal cord New mineral davemaoite discovered inside a diamond from Earth's mantle The surprising upsides of the prions behind horrifying brain diseases New COP26 draft text adds caveats to fossil fuel subsidies phase-out How Minecraft is helping children with autism make new friends.