I was just wondering how everyone does his or her breeding?

Do you hand breed or Pasture breed?

Pasture breeding, one or more mares at a time? Do you breed on the foal heat? If you pasture breed how do you deal with the foals, or do you deal with the foals or just let the mares do it? Has anyone ever had problems with stallions hurting babies?

How about how you keep your stallions? Box stall, or turnout? Alone or with company, male or female?

If you do leave a mare with your stallion how do you handle foaling, do you just leave her in with him or do you separate them when her due date gets near and then put her back after the baby is born?

I like to hear how others do things; you learn a lot this way.

Only AI...anymore. Had too much trouble with the mares. We built a new barn and installed our own stocks and phantom. Believe it or not, it wasn't all that expensive to do.
I keep my stallions in very large paddocks with run in stalls. Then 4-5 times a week, they are turned out in our regulation size-roping arena for exercise a couple of hours at a time. They are kept alone but are side by side with a small walkway between their pens. Then the mares are kept outside of their pens with a small walkway between them and the stallions. The boys can see the mares, call them to them, but are not in with them. Therefore I don't worry about the stallions hurting themselves, the mares or the babies.
I don't breed on the foal heat. If I want to breed again that soon, I breed on the 28-day heat. I know many do it...but to me it just doesn't seem right.
Most often though I give my mares a year's break between having their foal and getting pregnant again. I feel it's best to be easy on them when they're young and their breeding lives will extend over many years.

That brings me to another question I had. I am a little familiar with air but not very, am it possible to inseminate without an ultrasound machine? I use my own stallions for my Colombian mares but I breed my ppr mare to a ppr stallion. She is very nervous and I do want to breed her back this year but am leery of loading them up in a trailer and taking them to be bred. I trust the stallion owner, but am afraid of the trailer ride (it is an hour away) none of the vets in the area have a portable ultrasound machine.

Another question, do you breed your older mares every year? (I have heard that if you do not keep the older mares in foal they may become harder to settle) and if this is true how old is old?

Oh, yes, you can breed AI without an ultrasound. True, it helps to know the size of the follicle, but no, you do not need to ultrasound. In fact, we don't ultrasound our own mares when we breed them. You simply watch them and gauge the length of there cycles just like you would using live cover. We watch and count from when they first show signs of heat, and on or about the third or fourth day, we palpate the cervix. When a mare is ready to be bred, the cervix will be very open and you can feel that with your fingers. We go ahead and collect the stallion and breed her. If the cervix is not open, she is not close to ovulating. We wait and watch her heat signs (just like with live cover) and check her in another day or two.
Now this is with the stallion on the place...if you are shipping semen, yes, I would ultrasound. You don't want to order a shipment and miss the ovulation, although you do have a certain amount of time after ovulation that you can inseminate and still hit them but it's risky. When you pay for semen you want things perfect.
I have heard the same about keeping a mare bred every year to retain her fertility. I don't know, I guess I have a 21 year old that we can't get to sustain a pregnancy at all...she takes right away but loses it before the second or third month. I will find out this next spring on my 19 year old, we haven't bred her for two years because of the drought...so we're going to try again in 2007...she's coming into regular heat cycles so we will find out if she takes or not.

I prefer live cover to AI but the method depends on the stallion and the mare involved. I keep most of my stallions in stalls with daily turnout and breed them to mares that are in heat and showing it. I have 3 stallions that stay in paddocks and keep a mare or two in with them all the time. One stallion will not eat in a stall and another digs up the stall mats and tears them up. I only put more than one mare with a stallion if the mares get along with each other. Some are like possessive women and will fight for their "man." Those are only left in with the stallion while she is in heat and they are breeding and then she is returned to the mare pasture. Once the mare is confirmed in foal, she goes into the bred mare pasture. I would not leave a mare to foal with a stallion or let the mare pasture breed with a foal at her side.

I breed the old mares every year. These also seem to work a lot better with the pasture breeding. Some that do not take with hand breeding or AI will get in foal if left with a stallion who services them several times a day. I also notice some stallions and mares do not like each other, so I choose another stallion to breed to that mare. I currently have a 24-year-old mare due to foal in early spring to a 25-year-old stallion, so the old ones are still fertile. The 26-year-old Bronchia daughter has too many cysts to carry a foal, but comes into heat every month and sure enjoys staying with her boyfriend and has no problem sharing him with the other mares. I did have to AI my mare that has cancer since she could not be live covered and then did an ET since she could also not deliver a foal. She was over 20 and took the first time with the 20-year-old stallion and the ET was successful with the recipient mare.

We do pasture breeding and hand breeding.. i prefer to do hand breeding for more accurate dates, but have let mare and stallion pasture breed. But of course mare was in full standing heat.

We only breed one mare at a time. mares and stallions can get hurt too easily when they are all trying to get the 'attention' they want.

we try NOT to breed on foal heat. first we see if the mare is receptive with baby at her side, if not, we wait until she is completely comfortable and then hand bred them on the next cycle.

Our stallion is our babysitter. when the foals are old enough to play nice we put them in with the stallion. He loves babies and he has NEVER hurt one yet.. of course that is not to say he won't because they are so unpredictable, but he is a big luv bug.

We keep our stallion out with the mares and geldings and babies. i have always heard it is the worst thing you can do to pen them up in a stall by themselves. They are herd animals so are used to being in a herd situation.

We do leave the mares out with our stallion. he has been present for each of the foalings... we moved a mare out from there about three days ago now because she is close and he knows it and won't leave her side. better to be safe than sorry...then we will put her back out with him when the baby is a couple of days old.

hope this helps.