Background behind PMU or Nurse Mare Foals

 I first found out about Nurse Mare Foals two years ago when I adopted my orphan filly named Athena. She was rescued from a farm in Canada along with hundreds of other babies. I adopted her when she was only seven days old having to bottle feed her twice a day a least wasn't always as easy as it looks in the movies. Athena a is now two years old and when people say terrible two's it goes for horses to she is quiet the Houdini when it come to getting out of the field.

The background behind this saddening topic starts here. Premarin is a very common drug prescribed to millions of women worldwide as a hormone replacement therapy. The name stands for "PREgant MAres uRINe",this drug is produced from the hormones  in the mare's urine. The horses used to produce this drug are referred to as "PMU" horses, for short. The mares are kept in small standing stalls to keep them from moving around and to keep the urine bags in place. The mares are kept in this environment for a lot of their pregnancy, normally around six months of their pregnancy. Once the mares are ready to deliver, they are turned out to have their foals. The mares are able to nurse their foals until weaning age which is about 4 months. At that time they are separated and the mare's are back to repeat the whole process again. This cycle of breeding has created an overabundance of unwanted foals, most of which are sold to the slaughter industry. "PMU" farms exist all across the USA, and are also in Canada. Conditions at "PMU" farms vary, and some farms work very hard to place their unwanted foals in a good home while many others are not as responsible.

Many "PMU" babies are well bred, and some are even registered purebreds which means that both parents are the same breed. These foals can be adopted online through multiple rescue groups, like Last Chance Corral in Athens, Ohio which is where I adopted Athena from. Unfortunately most of the foals that are bred in Canada are sold directly to slaughter houses, and in Canada, a "PMU" filly has a less than one in ten chance of escaping slaughter. A colt has a less than one in fifty chance at life. The mares suffer a much more grim outlook, as they are not sold until they are no longer able to become pregnant, and at that point many are unsafe to handle and beyond the point of being trained again so they are sold to slaughter or just left to die. This practice is beyond cruel and needs to stop! There are only so many rescues out there but way to many foals and mares in need of help.