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An important distinction for any conversation about horse breeding is the distinction between personal breeding and commercial breeding. 

 

Horses are different than other animals, like dogs, cats, or most barnyard animals, in that they only have one foal, not a whole litter. This means if we decide to create a foal, we can assume responsibility for the single offspring, without having additional siblings in need of rehoming. In other words: each foal we breed is intentionally created, and there's no reason to create life we can't support and care for. 

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Personal breeding happens when a qualified, experienced equine caretaker makes an informed decision to bring another horse into their world. Responsible personal breeders meet the following criteria:

 

1. They consider ethics & sustainability, including adhering to the PRIME breeding standard.

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2. They typically need some sort of formal education on equine genetics and heritability patterns, as well as extensive breed-specific experience, to ensure they select an appropriate mare and stallion.

 

3. They typically need some sort of formal education in equine reproduction to ensure they can provide appropriate supportive care, or to work with a qualified professional who can provide this care for them.

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4. They need the knowledge and experience required to ensure the foal gets appropriate care during all stages of life, and learns the necessary skills required to thrive alongside humans.

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Personal breeding does NOT include profit motives, investment return expectations, or any intention of financial gain. Personal breeding is not about the money, it's about the horse. 

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Personal breeding does NOT rehoming or sale. Personal breeders intend to keep the life they create and assume lifelong responsibility for them. This means planning a "safety net" in case they can't care for them in the future (Read more about what it means to make a Lifelong Commitment to a horse).

 

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Commercial breeding is about financial return. The intention is to make money off the production of foals. As any dedicated horse caretaker can tell you, keeping horses doesn't tend to make money, so commercial breeders rarely intend to keep their foals long-term. Profit typically comes from sale, competition, or work:

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• Profit most often comes from the sale of the foal. Many commercial breeders will sell foals as weanlings, or even before they are born, but some will opt to retain the foal for a period of time and then sell them once they're more mature or started under saddle. Auctions tend to enable mass-production of horses, allowing for efficient sale of large batches of horses, often without consideration to the quality of home or any follow-up regarding the horse's long-term welfare. This allows the commercial breeders to effectively "wash their hands" of the lives they create, while still taking a check to the bank.

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• Profit can also come from competition earnings. High-performance equestrian sports are closely intertwined with gambling and deep-pocket luxury circles, so there can be a large amount of money involved. Much like gambling, though, there more losers than winners. Most horses will never win any significant earnings and few even manage to cover the cost of breeding and care up to the time of competition, let alone lifetime care costs. There is also a significant amount of "luck" involved, in that so many factors are outside of the breeder, caretaker, or trainer's control, and even the best breeding, training, and care won't guarantee a profit.

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• Profit can also come from working horses, such as those bred for ranch work, mounted policing, carriage driving, or other specialized equine jobs. This usually means the horse is a "tool" used to accomplish a job that brings in money, versus the horse being the source of income directly. Equine welfare is vital when electing to use a living animal for a job that might be feasible using machinery, and perhaps even more so if the equine is integral to the work and cannot be replaced by machine (if the horse is that important to the job, and are providing that essential labor, are they not owed the decency of a comfortable life?). Sustainability is another important consideration, not only for the horse's sake, but for ensuring longevity of the working horse and reducing the number of horses that encounter work-related welfare concerns.

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At its core, commercial breeding is about mass production of life with no guaranteed future for the foal. This includes individual farms that mass-produce hundreds of foals each year, and also the hundreds of thousands of individuals that each produce a handful of foals every year. 

 

Profit is not justification for creating life. No horse is rideable or profitable forever. If a foal is bred with the expectation that they must financially justify their existence, they are at much higher risk of being discarded the moment they stop meeting that expectation.

 

Not to mention, there are infinitely many ways to make money that are easier, more reliable, and have fewer ethical complications than breeding horses. There's no ethical reason to be creating new horses with the intention of turning a profit and passing them along. 

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Keep reading to learn more about the next key to ethical, sustainable breeding: the PRIME standard.