Monitor your broodmares regularly, and communicate any possible problems to your veterinarian without delay. | Photo: iStock

Five complications veterinarians might encounter toward the end of a mare’s gestation

You’ve invested a lot into your mare this past year—time, money, energy. You’ve hauled her to various reproductive exams and provided her with first-rate care. And after a long gestational wait, your hopes and expectations are high. A health scare or, worse, loss of mare and/or foal, would be devastating. Fortunately, serious late-term complications—that is, within the last 100 days of the 320-365-day gestational period—are relatively rare.

“The good news is that most of the issues we see in our late-term pregnant mares are relatively uncommon, so the average mare owner or breeding facility may not see problems every year,” says Ryan Ferris, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACT, assistant professor at Colorado State University’s Equine Reproduction Laboratory, in Fort Collins. “Some complications may even be once-in-a-lifetime type of events.”