Postpartum Impression
March 1, 2013
Your new foal can learn a lot in the first 72 hours of his life.
A foal can benefit from imprinting techniques within in the first 72 hours postpartum. Journal photo.
From The American Quarter Horse Journal
The first few hours after a foal is born is a window of opportunity to shape that foal’s behavior for a lifetime, according to Dr. Robert Miller of Thousand Oaks, California.
A horse can be taught how to behave later in life, but it might take a lot longer.
Dr. Miller gets a head start on these conditioned responses before the foal stands to nurse.
“They actually have greater capacity for learning in those first hours of life than anytime in their lives,” he says.
Ideally, he suggest several follow-up sessions during the foal’s first two weeks.
“The first training session should be done immediately after birth in what is known as the ‘imprinting period,’ ” Dr. Miller explains. Many people, of course, aren’t inclined to bird-dog a mare in foal closely enough to see the neonate take its first breaths. However, the foal can still benefit from imprinting techniques if they’re done within the first 72 hours postpartum.
The objective of Dr. Miller’s imprinting technique is fourfold:
1. Bond the foal to the human, establishing a relationship of security and trust. This is done by rubbing, stroking and handling the foal.
2. Habituate the foal to all sorts of stimuli it will experience later in life, like a saddle on its back or clippers buzzing around its ears. Each stimulus is repeated until the foal is desensitized. When the foal accepts the stimulus, it will relax completely.
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3. Sensitize the foal to other stimuli. This is a conditioned response like picking up his feet when asked, following the lead rope without resistance or moving his hindquarters laterally when cued on the side.
4. Inspire submission, getting the foal to accept the human as a benevolent leader. “When the foal is handled before he ever gets up, the human is actually preventing the foal from rising,” Dr. Miller says. “Right there, the foal starts learning submission.”
This in itself is not revolutionary. A horse can be taught all these responses later in life, but it might take weeks or months of training. Dr. Miller gets a head start on these conditioned responses before the foal has even stood to nurse.
Errors to Avoid
Insufficient Habituation
The most common mistake people make is not
repeating a stimuli often enough to habituate the animal. Dr. Miller suggests 30 to 100 repetitions on each side.
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Not Establishing Dominance
This is the cardinal sin of proper imprint training. The mildest result will be rude behavior, but the payback can be much worse from a horse with a dominant personality.
“It’s really tempting to let the foal suck on your fingers or let it rub all over you, but for his sake as much as yours, you need to dominate that foal,” says Dr. Miller.
“If he nips at me, I give him a quick flick with my fingers on his nose. It doesn’t hurt; it just makes him think, ‘Hmm, that wasn’t pleasant. I’ll not do that again.’ My actions always let the foal know that I can touch him, but he can’t touch me. I can rub on him, but he can’t rub on me. I am the leader.”
Dr. Robert Miller retired from 32 years of private practice to write and lecture. He gives clinics on imprinting, animal behavior, veterinary science and horsemanship. He has written several books, including one on foal imprinting, and produced a video on the subject as well.
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7 Comments on “Postpartum Impression”
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June 18th, 2009 at 8:33 am
One foal I worked with was very nippy right form the get go and fliking and pinching the lips made no impression on his thinking. So I started with presenting my hand and the phrase look, smell, touch, lick. Now I can get him to touch and lick pretty much any thing. Kinda handy when it comes to feeding dry drugs he just licks them up
June 18th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
My daughter cures of her colts from nipping by putting her finger (or two ) on the inside of their mouth and rubbing the bars or gums a little bit every time the try to nip———quick cure and it has worked on every colt we have used it on—even some pretty confirmed 1 – 3 yrs old colts that we have purchased ————-easy and effective /// just the ticket and permanent results.
I believe Mary’s answer but I have a friend whose horse licks and I absolutely HATE THAT!!!
March 1st, 2013 at 10:21 am
Yeah my 2yr old turned into a monster that cornered me in the stall and bit the */?* out of me. So I bought Dr Miller’s book, studied it, had my little foaling kit ready to go and the mama up and had the new foal with no warning signals, no wax, no drip, nothing….but the new baby doesn’t have the same attitude. He is sweet and gentle and going on a year old. I think a lot of it is genetics. Same mama, different stallion.
March 1st, 2013 at 11:29 am
I don’t usually peak out about this kind of stuff but I feel impressed to say something. Imprinting is good if you do it completely right, if not you’re gonna have a hard to handle, disrespectful horse. I study a lot of horse training techniques and cannot think of one professional trainer who that trains performance horses that recommends imprinting. It’s just too easy to ruin a horse doing it.
In the performance horse world you want your horse to be light and sensitive to you, you can’t have that if you’ve been hugging and rubbing them etc. from birth. I’ve seen it in my babies, it just doesn’t happen. Just leave them alone for the most part, still teach them the basics as babies(trimming feet, loading, tying etc) but wait a little bit. Then just keep them at pasture until they’re old enough to start. You want them to recognize humans and not be afraid of them, but still have that respect. THIS IS HOW ALL THE TOP TRAINERS DO IT. I think that’s sayin’ something! There is a really great article about this here http://www.horsetrainingvideos.com/foals-weanlings.htm I don’t agree with everything he says all the time, but I do agree with him a lot.
I understand how if you do it right you may end up with a great horse, so if you do decide imprinting is the best for you I would study a lot about it before you try it!
Good Luck Everybody!
March 1st, 2013 at 5:56 pm
Great point Olivia. We have never had a sensitive horse that had been imprinted. Performance wise, I’d much rather them be pasture raised. They tend to have more respect and aren’t as dull or slow to react as imprinted horses. Just depends on what someone is looking for, I suppose.
One mare we did have, however, was imprinted and she was imprinted wrong. Talk about a disrespectful holy terror. People were beneath her on the totem pole no matter what exercises were done to attempt to correct it. If someone isn’t 100% accurate and confident when imprinting, its better to not do it and spend time with the foal down the road.
March 2nd, 2013 at 6:58 pm
My new performance horse was imprinted badly (his old owner used to “box” with him as a colt), and now he is sometimes disrespectful. We’re working on the totem pole, and hopefully one day he will realize I am the leader. I feel that had he been imprinted properly, it would have had a major effect on his personality and he may have been much easier to work with.
March 5th, 2013 at 7:00 pm
Like Olivia, I don’t normally comment on articles here, just read alot of them to strengthen my training knowledge, etc. But, I feel as if I HAVE to chime in on this one. I breed AQHA for a couple foals a year as a personal “hobby”. My breeding and training goal is to produce sensitive, easy to handle and trainable kids or novice mounts that aren’t pushing 20 or 30 yrs old before they get to that point. Ok, I see alot in the AQHA WP ring and showmanship ring with EXTREMELY sensitive horses, so much so that they seem to react at the drop of hat, especially outside the arena. So I don’t think extreme sensitivity is a good thing, personally. Enough said. I personally imprint all of my foals at birth, and consistantly for at least 12-15 days, every day, several times, although I rarely find one of my foals less that 3-4 hours old (my mares are sneeky
) ALL of my foals are extremely easy to work with and train. I have never had a foal buck or even attempt to on the first saddling, first ride, etc. I have sold most of my foals as 3-4 yr olds with only 60-75 rides over a year period (I am not a professional trainer by any means) to young showmen and riders with absolute success. I credit almost all of this behavior to the imprinting done early in life. Excellent article and suggestions.