HOW many is too many; how much more than enough?! It makes me smile hearing commentators (invariably male) speak, seemingly with envy, of a colt retiring from the racetrack to a career at stud - as if the prospect of multiple different partners every day was a thing of beauty to behold, a just reward for services rendered!

Some of our more popular thoroughbred (TB) stallions cover four (occasionally five) mares each day, seven days a week for several months on end, with a teaser used to set the mare up. If they ‘enjoy’ their designated duties you might say ‘how bad!’. However, some novice stallions do go off the job if over-faced with maiden mares.

Some older stallions are coaxed and codded, maybe medicated, almost forced at times to perform when they might otherwise decline. Some sires become highly aggressive and a danger to handlers, get labelled ‘rogue’ and (mis)managed - so as to make our job possible but their life one of escalating misery.

Don’t get me wrong here - handling fully-grown, hot-blooded stallions at the height of their powers and in the full throes of mating with mares is not a job for the faint-hearted. But do we pay sufficient heed to their welfare needs, how these are provided for and the adverse consequences to them (as well as us) if they are not? We set up breeding enterprises structured so as to manage stallions valued at enormous figures (meaning economic stress and sleepless nights for us) but maybe causing them physical and mental stress in the meantime.

Much is written about the need for breeding stallions to be in peak physical condition. Hooves must be hard and feet pain-free – stallions do lots of parading for prospective clients. Backs must be supple, hind-quarters muscular and hocks strong to rise him regularly and repeatably into position. Semen quality and sperm counts are supported by optimal, quality nutrition. Disease-control programmes are well developed and stallions tested and vaccinated against common infectious disease. And stud farms have exercise facilities - horse-walkers, lunge rings and turn-out paddocks - to encourage movement and muscular activity.

Stallions are ‘just’ equines with the same basic needs as others –

  • for good fibre-based feed, trickle fed;
  • for clean drinking water, available ad lib;
  • for shelter from adverse weather and irritants like flies;
  • for air free from fungal spores and toxic gases;
  • for a dry, secure place with sufficient space to lie; etc.
  • But, behavioral issues in breeding stallions certainly occur and management strategies are put in place to mitigate them, generally so as to safeguard staff safety, minimise stallion injury and keep sires working at the job we require of them. Do stallions at stud have a ‘good life’ in the broader sense? For example, is it natural for them to spend long periods isolated from ‘ordinary’ (not sexual) equine contact? Not in the Mustang and Brumby movies I’ve seen!

    There is increased interest in allowing stallions such ordinary contact. Schemes include replacing solid, opaque walls with sturdy vertical bars; allowing a first season sire to live with an again sturdy older companion; allowing stallions, out of breeding season, to roam extensive areas shared with mares and geldings.

    Few owners of multi-million euro blood stallions will leap at these suggestions, being largely protective of their investment, but animal welfare science evolves all the time and new Kept Animals Regulations in development could bring new requirements.

    We must be prepared to adapt in the interests of enhancing the lives of the horses we keep; adjusting in practical ways that meaningfully improve their welfare and don’t simply speak to tired old stereotypes that wistfully ‘wish they’d retire me to stud someday!’