The BHA - all you ever wanted to know

krizon

krizon

At the Start
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May 2, 2003
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I realise that TalkingHorses has a band of experts on board, but many of us have a few holes here and there in our racing knowledge, and there are sometimes questions raised which even our experts aren't sure about. I don't know if the BHA website has been put up before, so, apologies if I'm just repeating it, but it is very useful and informative, giving a lot of insights into the whys and wherefores of its function. Plus, you can always contact it if you have a question the forum can't handle.

http://www.britishhorseracing.com/inside_horseracing/about/default.asp
 
Trying to fill one of the many gaps in my knowledge here.

At what age do fillies start 'coming in to season' ?

I was at Chepstow yesterday and I noticed that the favourite for the 2-y-o race seemed to be leaking some fluid from the appropriate place but I then realised I didn't know if it was possible for her to be 'in season'.
 
Fillies will start coming into season normally during the spring of their yearling year - ie they can be under a year old but usually they are around twelve months when they start to cycle. Hence why, nearly every year, there's a case where a 2yo will foal down, having been jumped during yearling prep by a randy colt when prep yards use inexperienced staff who walk colts and fillies out together!!
 
Songy, at what age do colts have the ability to (ahem) inseminate fillies? As in, they run out together as foals, but is there a point (in age) at which they must be separated as hormones begin to kick in?
 
Don't know about foals but lambs are pretty young. Ours are barely 2 months and one boyo who didn't get his taken off, is having a good old go!

I see the young lad who supposedly "sired" a child while aged 12 (despite looking 8), is now confirmed as not being the father. He is apparently "devastated!" FFS - you mean his opportunist father won't get any more payments courtesy of the tabloids to fund his other 9 children. If ever a story was cooked up to milk the tabloids - this was it!
 
I would guess around the 10 month old plus mark for colts - the traditional management is to run weanlings together until the New Year, when you separate them out and run single sex groups.

Having got a couple of yearling colts this year - first time ever that I can remember having two colts this age - as Jinnyj will confirm having watched them both here yesterday, they sure know what to do now!! Randy little gits !!
 
Oh, no - they just form those strong, manly bonds where a lot of mutual hugging and grabbing takes place in a masculine kinda way - y'know, like football and rugby teams: lots of nekkid guys kidding around in the showers and doing towel-flips of each other's bums...
 
I grew up on a street that faced public parkland and just about every house in the street owned a dog at some stage. Blackie and Rex (both male) were regularly to be seen having fun on the fields (Rex always dominant). Those not in the know would request buckets of water for the "mating" pair whilst the rest of us were not exactly enraptured by the sight, but quite used to it.

I know that large dogs are greatly weakened from being bred from too early; the same must surely apply to horses?
 
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