The broodmare season: the weeks before, the foaling, and the foal

A broodmare is not a twenty minute event. She is a season. And the losses do not all happen during the birth: some are set up weeks before it, and some happen in the days after, when everyone has relaxed.

What it costs when it goes wrong is not a vet bill. It is a foal, sometimes the mare, and years of breeding decided in one night. Most studs cannot staff a night watchman for ten mares spread over four months, so the nights land on the person who owns the place.

Weeks before the foaling, not just the last hour

A pregnant mare who is not behaving the way a pregnant mare behaves is telling you something two, three, four weeks before term. That is a window where a vet call still changes the outcome, and it is the part of the season nobody else looks at. Nothing you strap to the mare can speak in that window, because nothing is strapped on yet.

TEO, our model, measures the behaviour of the horse in the box every minute, recognises behaviour that is not normal, and flags it. Nobody sits in front of a screen, and it runs on the cameras you already have.

The foaling: the call reaches you about twenty minutes before

When the foaling starts, you get an automatic phone call around twenty minutes before it happens, in 90% of cases. Not a notification you would sleep through. A call. That is the difference between being in the box for the birth and finding out about it afterwards.

Where belts, magnets and tail sensors leave you short

They all fire on one physical event: the mare going flat, the magnet being pulled, the tail lifting. By the time any of them goes off, the foaling is under way. They warn you late, and late is the whole problem.

They also say nothing in the weeks before, nothing about the mare who has been restless for an hour, nothing about the one whose behaviour calls for a vet rather than a foaling kit, and nothing at all once the foal is on the ground. And they cost you time every single day: fitting them, repositioning the magnet, running a new wire, changing batteries, and getting out of bed for false starts.

After the foaling, the mare and the foal both stay under alert

Foaling is one night. The days that follow carry their own risks, and a colon torsion in a mare who has just foaled is high on the list. She stays under alert, she does not drop off the system because the foal has arrived.

So does the foal. A newborn who has stopped moving the way he did an hour ago is abnormal behaviour, and it gets flagged like anything else. That is often the call that matters most, and it is the one no belt and no tail sensor will ever make.

Nothing to install weeks in advance

TEO is already trained, on more than 25 billion records and over a thousand real cases. There is no learning period for each horse. Around thirty minutes of the horse being in the box is enough for it to work, so a mare brought in from the paddock late tonight is under alert that same night, and a boarder who arrives close to term is under alert from the moment she arrives. You do not have to decide in November what you will need in March.

Several thousand broodmares, this season

Several thousand broodmares went through this season with us, on three continents. Among them Stetchworth and Middle Park Studs in Newmarket, who came through their first season with 26 foals and not one foaling missed, and their stud manager tells it in his own words here. Among them too XIT Ranch in Texas, and Normandie Breeding in Normandy, whose story is here.

See it on your own boxes

Ask for a demo and we will show you what the model flags on a night in a yard like yours, before the foaling and after it: request a demo.