>>Why don't they just say the dog ate my breasts.

I'm rolling on the floor laughing.  I love this place.

I recently joined equine-l, an e-mail list for horse lovers and posted an
innocent question (I thought) about standard practice of weaning foals at
4-6 months -- was there any research to justify this as being good, given
that horses in the wild nurse for 11-12 months (usually til the next baby is
born).  I have discovered that people get just as emotional and dogmatic and
opinionated (with no backup from research) about horse weaning as they do
about human weaning.  Guess I shouldn't have been surprised.  Here is a
sampling of the trouncing I've been getting for suggesting domestic horses
should be allowed to stay with their mothers, nursing, as long as horses do
in the wild:

>>First, the milk has little nutrition in it after the
>first few months; it's mostly a psychological thing.

>>The colostrum is the goodie part, and that's only
>>48 hours if you're lucky. I don't think there's much
>>in the way of anti-infectives provided after that, or
>>colostrum wouldn't be in such demand, or in so
>>many freezers in case of emergency.

>>Immunoglobulins are only present in significant quantities in the
>colostrum, and can only be absorbed across the gut wall in the first 36 or
>so hours after birth.  Beyond the first couple of days, therefore, they are
>just another protein source.

>>Peronally I think that if we're going to get dogmatic about doing
>everything as it's done in the wild, then we have to tear down our barns,
>turn our horses out on the open range, and forget about riding them or
>handling them.  Weaning's a nasty thing for the baby no matter what, but
>mom will do it when next year's foal comes anyway, and frankly, in a
>domestic situation, a 2-3yo unweaned "foal" is not a pretty sight.  We all
>do have to grow up sometime.  The longer we postpone it, the worse it can
>be for us.


Any of these sound FAMILIAR??  So far, not a single poster has been able or
willing to give me any research citations to back up any of these
statements.  I told the last poster that the beauty or ugliness of a 2-3
year old unweaned foal was in the eye of the beholder!!  They'll probably
ask me to leave.  Sigh.


Kathy D.