Using FoalPoint as a pasture breeder

Recently, we've spoken to some breeders who run their operation through pasture breeding. We thought this might be a good time to go over how you can use FoalPoint as a pasture breeder!

While many breeders choose a more "hands on" approach, depending on the breed and your business model, you may be able to breed your horses out on pasture. Pasture breeding has its own benefits as long as you have the proper set-up and objectives. Pasture breeders often have fewer veterinary expenses and save on time and labour but they also have a smaller stallion selection, need to provide mares with a few weeks of time for ample exposure, and have less control over mare's reproductive health and her ability to get in foal.

While FoalPoint has the innovative capabilities of tracking and graphing your mares reproductive cycle, recording ultrasounds, hormonal therapies and other reproductive assessments, there are many things you can use the system for if your pasture breeding activities don't involve monitoring reproductive markers.

As a pasture breeder, you might consider yourself to be pretty "hands-off" or tech free but you probably keep track of a lot more information than you realize! Here are some ways you can use FoalPoint to record, organize and simplify the information you need for your mares:

Gestation Tracker: Even though the exact conception date may not be known, pasture breeders still need to keep track of when a mare was exposed to a stallion so that they have a better inclination of when they need to prepare for foaling the following year. Enter this estimated date into FoalPoint and let the gestation tracker keep count for you.

Fetal Monitoring: Any palpations or monitoring throughout the year for both mare and foal health can be logged

Herd Health: routine records including vaccinations and deworming is something that all breeders should be tracking

Expense Tracking: Even if you don't have a "stud fee" or ultrasound scans to account for, expense tracking can be done with any activity whether that be the farrier or a dewormer. Even as a pasture breeder, you should still keep track of how much your broodmares are costing you.

Foaling Records: Pasture breeding or not, when your mare foals you want to record the details associated with each foaling.

FoalPoint Score: Keep track of your mares behaviour and physical signs as she approaches foaling.

Custom Reports: Anything you can imagine! If you find yourself needing to write something down, why not log it under that mare's profile and do away with endless binders full of paper?!

The best part is that with the FoalPoint Mobile App you can log all this information right from your phone! That's a convenience any type of breeder will appreciate!

If you're a pasture breeder and interested about using FoalPoint, visit www.foalpoint.com and start your free trial! Don't forget to send us feedback about how FoalPoint has worked for you.