Edited Press Release
Information gathered and reported on by Hippomundo.
“How many foals has she bred?” It’s an age-old question for any interested breeder, whether looking at a broodmare over a field gate or stable door on a studfarm visit or scanning through her online records.
There’s no castiron answer for the average number of foals a sport horse mare produces; that figure varies greatly from studbook to country to owner.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the thoroughbred mare Maxencia holds the record (1998) for the most foals (17) produced. There’s anecodatal accounts of sport mares exceeding that number, long before the dual gamechangers of embryo transfer and ICSI procedures.
Browsing through second generations of the mares listed below showed that 16 foals was often the average number of foals for their grandams. Usually with no performance records, just straight to the breeding paddocks.
The number of recorded foals often fell off off in the third and further back generations, although record-keeping could be a factor for such pre-internet age gaps.
What we do know is that some ICSI mares are closing in fast on that 100-foal mark. 100 foals. Not a typo but the reality of commercial sport horse breeding business, as breeders look to tap into proven mare families and produce multiple offspring from successful bloodlines.
From information stored on the Hippomundo database, it was discovered that 20 mares have already produced over 50 foals.
The top three highest producing mares?
- The Diamant de Semilly mare Jenna van’t Meulenhof has 83 foals
- The mare Quasibelle du Seigneur features next with 76 foals
- Rounding out the mares within striking range of the 100-foal figure is the 12-year-old MoM’s Goya, already with 72 offspring.
Click here to see the full list of mares.
