The Orphan Foal

Here at Middleton Stud we are one of the only studs in the country who specialise in hand-rearing orphaned foals. To date there is a widely held belief that hand-rearing horses makes them become too "humanised", however we are proving this theory wrong time and time again.

 Hand-rearing and fostering came as an unexpected addition to our services when 'Summer' came to us in 2016 as a week old foal because her mother went off to foster another foal. we hand-reared her and word soon spread, we got sent more and more and started to realise a desperate need for this service. We have been offering this specialised service since then and so far our orphans from previous years are doing very well in their own fields of work. Some of the thoroughbreds have gone on to win races. The non- thoroughbreds have excelled in the show ring, eventing and jumping. Summer who started it all is still excelling at being a foster mare herself for us. She has to date had 10 foals and successfully fostered 9 times and is back in foal again ready for next year, with all of her own foals being hand-reared by ourselves.

We teach the foals to drink from a bucket and we keep them under close supervision at all times to ensure they are settled and feeding well. Having several orphans means that they get turned out together so they learn to interact with other horses and not humans, and learn how to play with each other. We then introduce older horses as nannies keeping them on the straight and narrow and expanding their education! We raise them this way which ensures they never become dependent on us, they only associate us with food and coming in, learning how to become a horse just like any other foal!

We do fosterings as well as hand rearing, either here or we can come to you. We do also provide are own foster mares including Summer our first foster mare that started it all.