Imprinting versus Imprint Training--The Mare Knows Best

Imprinting is an evolutionary phenomenon in precocial species, including the horse and certain waterbirds. The foal is born with a nearly fully intact and functioning nervous system needing a final tuning from the mare to function quickly. 

For horses, precocious is the ability to birth, rise, suckle, and run within minutes or hours. To imprint is to permanently learn from the immediate environment immediately after birth, hours or days. The imprint phase is the culmination of 11 months gestation, the objective being to be born and run within hours, if not minutes. Flight, born to flee.

The foal imprints on everything in her environment in the first few days of life, especially moving beings, her dam primarily, and any others in close proximity, moving things, animals, horses, humans, the like. The results of this experience are more or less permanent. 

Horsefolk need to take care to make sure the foal properly imprints primarily upon her mother, her teacher, as this is the phase in which the mother teaches the foal to be a horse. The foal is best imprinted in a natural environment when possible, a pasture, that is, with an intact social herd, or alone with the mare.

Imprint training is quite another issue involving aversive handling, restraint, physical manipulation, repeatedly putting fingers in and out of all orifices, etc. Molestation or terrorization are more accurate descriptions than imprint training, which is scientifically considered a misnomer. Leave the foal and mare alone to bind and imprint naturally, please. To interfere can take the racing heart out of a racehorse, and for this reason, most thoroughbred foals are only handled briefly to address and assure health, and perhaps be haltered. The human should focus on interacting and handling the mare, rather than the foal. Assure the foal is nursing and nourished, and then leave the foal alone to be trained by her mother.

We are grateful that Dr Miller brought forth the biological phenomenon of an imprint phase shortly after birth, where the foal is quickly expected to learn to be a horse from her mother, and pronto, so as to survive. We are not so sure that his idea to train a newborn foal is a good idea, as humans really do not have the knowledge or capacity to teach a foal what she needs to know to survive, and then later in life pass on to her foal. After the foal has appropriately imprinted upon her mother during the first week of life, then the human horse training can begin. When the foal approaches the humans, the foal training can begin. In the meantime, let the mare do her instinctual teaching. learn how to train a horse by observing the mare train her foal. Emulate those training strategies later in life. Pressure and release. Mimicry. 

Foals that are imprint trained are often deprived of proper imprinting with the mare, therefor many are improperly imprinted, rendering them difficult to train later in life. Imprint training takes something away from the foal that can never be restored. Many imprinted foals do not know how to learn, as their ability to learn was altered by uneducated horsefolk thinking they know more than the mare.  To force a newborn foal to learn by abusive restraint and inappropriate, relentless force is abusive, unnecessary, and can be harmful. First, do no harm, please. Let the mare train the foal. When the foal is ready to be trained by humans, the foal will approach the humans handling her mother. 

Humans can best serve the horse by avoiding any training of the foal until the foal is past the imprint phase. Handle the mare, let the colt ascertain the relationship between the handlers and his mother.

So yes, differentiation between the term imprinting and imprint training is necessary. 

The foal imprints to her world based on her neonatal experience and environment with her mother. The newborn foal imprints to her environment and the horses in the environment, the mare in particular, of course. If humans are in the environment, the foal will imprint upon those humans to some degree. Initially, behaviorists and welfarists insist that the foal primarily imprints on the dam, more than anyone else. If you must handle a horse in the post-partum phase, please avoid handling the healthy foal and handle the mare. Of course, if the foal needs a hands-on health assessment, or  help nursing handling is necessary, but it should be as brief and forceless and kind as possible, please.

To attempt to train a foal in the imprint phase carries the potential to cause a great deal of permanent behavioral and physical harm to the foal, so unless you know more than a mare about foals, I suggest you First, Do No Harm, and let the mare take care of teaching the foal. The mare has 60 million years of evolutionary experience at this, while you have none.

Regards, DrSid

Dr Gustafson is a practicing veterinarian, equine behavior educator, and novelist. The application of behavior science enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Behavioral and nutritional strategies enrich the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses who are willing to learn and perform.

One of my goals, is to develop the racehorse mind.

What equine behavior principles do you follow to develop the appropriate competitive mindset to persevere and prevail? Or perhaps, what do you avoid beyond the obvious (harsh weaning, for example). Time and again, I see unnecessarily induced stress, fear, and pain, as men attempt to isolate and confine their weanlings and yearlings. The poorly planned unorchestrated movement restrictions result in injury. Chain-shank handling, punishment and force applied during these critical stages of development ruins many thoroughbreds, rendering them unfit to race. 

At Keeneland, the inappropriate horsemanship was devastating. A growing horse’s potential to run and win can be harmed with coercive, chain-shanked sale preparation. Halter or saddling training must be a good deal for the horse to maintain their racing spirit. When pain is inflicted to achieve handling compliance, the side-effect is ruining a horse's competitive spirit, especially fillies. 

Imprint training newborn foals falls into this category of coercive training. It is believed interfering with the mare/foal bond in the first hours and days, or even weeks, can harm the foal’s future confidence to race. The mare/foal bonding is critical, best achieved uninterrupted. If one feels the need to interfere, handle the mare, hands off the foal early on. The mare is the preferred teacher, the one who knows with near certainty if she has been properly nurtured through life, herself. It is she and other broodmares in the herd that instill the winning mind into the foal. Humans have no idea. The mare and herd enhance the foal’s flight survival mechanism to win derbies. Abusive attempts to subdue flight when haltering and handling has the potential to subdue all subsequent flight. Chain shanking is counterproductive. Imprint training is counterproductive. To be effective, training must be a good deal for the horse.

Too often, at all stages, I observe trainers and handlers damaging the horse’s inherent desire and confidence to win. To preserve the inherent flight responsiveness needed to win races, training of the foal should be delayed until the foal approaches the humans, save the early haltering and perinatal preventive medical measures, best done slick and quick. Avoid products that damage or interfere with the mare and foal’s sense of smell. 

This imprint phase is critical. Coercive handling can cause great psychological and physical harm. No interference unless nursing assistance or health monitoring is indicated helps ensure the future is one of heart and try. 

Development of future willing partnerships between race horse and rider, requires that the foal be taught to be horse as taught by the mare. Winning the Kentucky Derby has to be the horse’s idea. 

The dam nurtures and sprouts that genetic seed during the imprint phase, or not. Humans can only interfere with the essential process. 

The minutes, hours, and days following birth are a critical learning period due to the precocious nature of the horse. Birthed to run within hours to survive. The mare is the long-evolved teacher here, and the immediate ability to flee is the foal’s long-evolved survival mechanism. No one teaches a foal the notion of flight better than her dam. Humans can only get in the way. 

Interference is to be avoided if it is races you want your foal to someday win. There are safer methods to teach the foal to be an easy-handler later in life. Taking away all urge to flight via imprint training may be appropriate if the goal is a service pony desensitized for life so as to be un-reactive to the environment altogether. 

Care must be taken to not inadvertently take flight away from competition horses by interfering during the imprint phase. Observe from a distance. Handle the mare, and let the foal learn by observing your relationship with the mare, and make sure that relationship is a good one beforehand, please. No shanking the mare, either, please. European horsefolk demonstrate appropriate training and handling. Very few chain shanks are used or needed. Their yearlings are trained to willingly enter the horse-friendly ring. Please note there are a wide variety of foal birthing, handling, and graining protocols, and each must be crafted to favor the horse. Creating a natural a setting as possible to allow the mare to safely teach her foal to rise, suckle, and run in the first hours of life is the preferred method to breed a Kentucky Derby winner. 

We have secured talent from the genes with our breeding, soundness with your appropriate nutrition. To facilitate and ensure sway we put the mare in charge and stay out of the way. 

How do you help ensure that your weanlings develop the confidence to paddock and load, and to then run by and through horses in tight company to win tough races, please? In Europe, they emphasize enrichment training in earnest, and at their sales the yearlings are handled with dignity.