i just recently retired my barrel mare. She’s only 11 but her career is done. She is not well bred so breeding g her isn’t anything I’m interested in. What are the pros/cons of selling her to be a recip mare?  I love her to pieces but have to be realistic about keeping her as a pasture pet. 

My vet is a highly sought after repro specialist. They fly in mares from all over the world to see him. He operates a huge breeding facility and probably has 200 recip mares at his clinic. I also take my horses to this same clinic for any vet work. Here are just my observations , no judgements. All of the mares are in tiny 10x10 pens. Most do have covers / shade. They are fed a flake of alfalfa hay twice a day on the ground. Some of the pens due to location seem to have puddles and bog holes most of the winter. To me all their feet look long and uncared for. To me their body condition is minimal. Not starving by any means but certainly nothing extra. If I had a mare that needed to be retired I would not feel comfortable with selling or donating her to this particular facility.  This was my observations ONLY for one facility. I cannot say what other facilities do. Here is a thought ....some people at this facility actually take the mare HOME with them for the duration of the pregnancy. That might be a great option for your mare. If someone could use her as a recip but take her home until he foals  from what I understand they return the mares at weaning time  my suggestion is to visit the facility you are considering. I also know someone who donated their mare to a plasma collection facility. Those mares are used to draw blood and plasma.  I don’t much like the thought of the procedure BUT......those horses are taken care of emmaculately! Fresh green pasture , regularly wormed , farrier care , the horses look and feel amazing  they seem to be happy. Is your mare sound enough for a kids lesson horse? That might also be a way to go  hope some of this might help  

Thats very good information.  Her long term quality of life is my biggest concern.

Is she sound enough to be a trail horse? Calm enough to be a kids horse? I mean why are you only thinking of her being a recip mare? There are other options. I had a gelding that got hurt at about the same age as your mare, I put a pile of money in him trying to fix him and keep from putting him down, end result, he was pasture sound and could trail ride but couldn’t hold up to be got in shape or compete....I ended up giving him away to a family that would love him and lightly ride a couple times a month. 

We dont know that yet.  She may not ever be sound to ride. 

I wouldn’t do it myself. It’s amazing how many people don’t feed those receip mares once they get them home. Especially considering how valuable that baby in the belly is. Many places won’t be interested in taking your mare because of her age. She’s at the far end of the age they want. Most of those mares end up in Mexico eventually. 

In my area, they are packed into pastures until bred and sent home. Yes, they are fed at the facility, but I wouldn't want any of mine to wind up there. 

All the ones we’ve had came to us looking great. They were returned in the same, if not better, condition. But sadly there are a LOT of people that return them in poor condition. It’s amazing how many people paying a lot of money for what that receip mare is carrying don’t feed them. 

It’s not the facility using the receip mares you have to worry about. It’s the people that take them home that don’t give a rats ass if they are fed or not.

Recip mares typically only sell for roughly $500-600, so keep that in mind. We have a few recip mares now and until they’re in foal, they get basic maintenance (trimming, de-worming, vaccs, normal rations), and once they’re confirmed in foal, they get treated like the other broodmares- I wouldn’t say they get lavish treatment, but they do get extra rations to accommodate the foal growing inside them, along with the basics, etc and are well taken care of.

if your mare is still a maiden, some vets shy away from them being that old to use as a recip mare, however some don’t. We currently have recips in the range of 4-6 years old, as they’re the most fertile when they’re younger and typically continue to stay fertile longer if they’ve been carrying foals. All of our current recips have been started and can be ridden safely, so if we decide to stop using them as a recip mare, they will still be usable and not just a pasture pet (not that we have anything against pasture pets). There were some recips we’ve had in the past that were not sound to ride, and they ended up becoming pasture pets after their breeding careers were over. 

We typically don’t lease our recips out, we sell them, as so many things can go wrong and we don’t like leasing horses. We do buy back our recips from our clients after they have used them, if the clients want to choose that route.

ETA: I’ve noticed that when people lease recip mares, they tend to not take as good care of them versus when they own the mare outright. Something about actually owning the mare (and the embryo it’s carrying) makes people more responsible. Sometimes not, but that’s just what I’ve noticed.

Those buying recips usually want them from 6-12 years old and have foaled before.  They send them to auction once they are outside of the productive range. 

So for $200 you can send her to a kill buyer yourself or try to sell her as a recip for $200 who will then send her to a kill buyer in a few years.   Lots are opposed to kill buyers, I'm not one of them.  They serve a valuable purpose in disposing of livestock that are no longer useful.  So the decision comes down to whether you consider your horse livestock or a pet.  If its a pet, you have a pasture ornament.  If she's livestock, then cut your losses and send her to auction/kill buyer. 

I donated a mare to Performance Equine Vets in South Carolina. They got her pregnant within 30 days. While at their farm, she was in a 15 acre pasture with other recips. They sent me updates and pics when I requested. Once safely in foal, the owner of the embryo took her home for the duration of her pregnancy. The vet center works closely with the owner, so they sent me updates occasionally. Then, the month before she was due to foal, she was brought back to the vets. I received an email last week that she was a “rockstar” and had safely foaled. They wish they had 10 more like her. This was a mare that had severe navicular and some other sort of injury in her hindquarters that I was unable to treat. I’m happy with my decision. They update, they communicate, and she’s in great shape. The embryo owner is requesting her again. As a bonus, they provided me with a tax donation letter for her value (thousands) which greatly helped to offset my loss. 

Forgot to add: in the contract, I get first rights to her if they can no longer use her. 

Depends on where she goes. 

We have a herd of recip mares and we take as good of care of them as we do our regular horses.  They are very well fed and taken care of as they are carrying very valuable babies!   Some of my recip mares have been here for 10 years now!

I visited a very reputable program in OK. I olly visited a couple times but the Recip mares all looked great. She said they had pretty strict criteria, age and height requirements mostly but they lives in a big herd in big pastures. I didnt notice any of them looking poor.

Coming from my perspective, most of the recipient mares that I have seen have been used by people who were financially well off. I used to work at a really high end cutting training facility. They had about 5000 acres. They had a huge herd full of recipient mares. They were well taken care of, were on pasture 24/7 on an alfalfa field and during the winter they were on high end round bales. Half of their business was breeding, and their recip mares were carrying their high-end show horses babies, that were bred to high-end studs like High Brow Cat  (I can't remember the others they were bred to, but they were pricey cutting studs). They could not afford to risk their own horses carrying the foals due to needing them to show, and also in case there were complications. We had to check on the mare pasture every day during foaling season. We had a mare and foal that didn't make it, and they would just count it off financially. We had a few foals that did not make it or were born stillborn, they would just count it off. It was sad, but that was their business and it was all money to them. 

I also have another friend who has a really big breeding program and she said she had a recip mare once. Again, these horses were well taken care of and the owner understood that the mares are the heart of the program, and were treated like Queens. Personally, my friend told me that she did not like the recip mare because the mare kept getting injured, so they had to pull her from pasture and keep her in a much smaller turnout by herself until she foaled. 

I doubt if you lend your horse out that she would not be able to stay at your place unless your planning to pay for the expenses. Having a recipient mare is NOT cheap, with the flushing and the AI, and timing ect., if I were doing that I would want my eyes on the mare whenever I could spare it. Plus it could put your mare at risk, what if she has complications? Talk to a breeder, it's not all sunshine and rainbows all the time!Also, talk to your vet and get the pros and cons of lending out your mare. 

I went through this recently with one of mine. She's 4 this year, was green broke and couldn't hold up to be ridden, but was sound to live in a pasture. I called around a couple places and spoke with people who knew about some local vets with recip herds. Around here, it's mostly the situations described above with mares in little stalls at the vet until they get in foal, then maybe they get to go live somewhere else during their pregnancy, then come back... then probably get sent to the sale once they can't get in foal or become too sore to carry more babies. It took awhile, but I found someone (out of state) with a herd of recips that live in a pasture. I spoke with her about what she does when they don't work out, and we were on the same page that if the horse became too sore to carry foals, she'd euthanize her.

It's tough... no one wants pasture pets, horses are too expensive. At least this option is available to mares so that they can have a life. Just keep in mind that she may not work out for someone as a recip mare, so you probably want to clarify with whoever takes her what's going to happen to her if that happens.

Since I know who your vet is and have had them do my embryo transfers, know his right hand man very well, have even helped with the operation, have brought several recipient mares and I currently have one of their recipients right now, so I feel I can accurately adress your statement...

I don't think the facility is perfect and have seen it looking shabby when they were having a hard time hiring good help, but I feel like the picture you painted was not accurate. I was there a lot last year flushing and freezing embryos and never saw the conditions you're describing. I'll be back over there in about 2 weeks for the first time this year, but I'm not expecting much has changed.

They are definitely fed more than you think. If customers came to pick up their recip and they were not in good condition then they would not be doing as much business as they are, espeically with a high volume of repeat customers. Especially considering a lot of those recipeint mares the customer has at least $10k tied up in to the procedure alone. They have 12'x12' and 12'x24' pens. They keep them up in the pens when they've had a transfer done and until they leave to their new home. This is because they're handling them more frequently, preg checking, they need medications and of course for risk mitigation so they're not in with general population getting beat up. The rest of the time there is a huge pasture just south of the clinic where the mares are turned out and then they bring them up to the barn to be checked and then they get turned back out until they've had an embryo transferred. 

After 45 days, they want the mare gone from there. They will board for a short amount of time after that but they don't encourage people leaving their horses for a long term boarding situation and they do not foal any mares out there, they send them to another farm in San Jacinto.

Here's my recipient mare straight off the trailer when I picked her up last year at about 45 days in foal. She looked pretty good to me