Pre-Breeding Season Checklist for Mare and Stallion Owners: What to Do in the Fall Before a February Start (2026)

By Brian Bickell, who raises paint and quarter horses at Bickell Ranches in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

A February breeding season is decided in October. By the time a mare is under lights or a stallion is back on the phantom, the book is set, the contracts are out, and the money dates are either on a calendar or they are not. Everything after that is execution.

The work that belongs to the fall is almost entirely decision work and paperwork, which is why it slides. Nothing on the list below has a horse standing in front of it demanding to be done. Each item is also two or three times more expensive in March: a contract clause that has already gone out to twenty mare owners, a mare whose condition needed two months and got three weeks, a stallion breeding report filed late, a shipping container nobody confirmed was available.

The Fall Calendar, in Order

By	What
Early fall	Decide the book: which mares, to which stallions, and how many outside mares are taken
Early fall	Contract template edited for this season and read by a lawyer
Fall	Mare pre-breeding examinations booked with the veterinarian
Fall	Body condition and any lights program planned back from the target foaling window
November 30	Stallion breeding report filed with AQHA and APHA for the season just finished
November to February	Booking season: contracts out, deposits in, fee dates calendared
Before the start	Shipping logistics, health paperwork, and the records set up for the new season

Decide the Book

The first decision is the one every other item depends on, and it is a business decision rather than a horse decision: which mares are being bred this year, and to what.

For a mare owner that means going down the band and sorting it into bred, carried over, and sold. The mares that came up empty last season are the hardest column and the one worth the most attention, because a mare who has missed two seasons is a different decision from one who missed one. For a stallion owner it means a book size and a mix: how many outside mares the collection schedule can actually serve, how many are going to be the operation's own, and how many slots are held for repeat customers.

The inputs to that decision are last season's records. Which mares settled on the first cycle, which took three, which ones carried long, which crosses produced a foal worth keeping. An operation that can read last year off one screen makes this decision in an afternoon. An operation reconstructing it from a spreadsheet, a wall calendar, and three text threads makes it in March.

Contracts Signed, Fees Calendared

Booking season runs from roughly November into February, so the contract has to be finished before the first inquiry rather than after it.

Two jobs, and neither is fast. The first is editing the template to match how the program actually runs this year: the method being offered, the doses per breeding, the shipment instructions, the collection days, the payment details. Those are the clauses that move between seasons. The second is the legal review, which is not optional on a document going out to a whole book of mares and which takes a lawyer longer than it takes to email one. Everything a stallion service agreement has to carry, clause by clause, is in the stallion breeding contract template guide.

Once the contracts are out, the fees are the thing that goes quietly wrong. A booking deposit here, a balance due at shipment there, a stud fee owed only on a fall in-foal certification: those are different dates on different mares and none of them announces itself. Put each one on a calendar as the contract is signed rather than promising to remember. A mare owner has the mirror-image job, which is knowing what is owed and when before the money is needed.

If any mare in the plan is leased rather than owned, the lease is its own document with its own dates, and it has to be settled before the breeding contract is signed rather than after. The broodmare lease agreement template covers what that one has to answer, including which party is recorded as the breeder and which party files the lease with the registry.

The Mare Side

Book the pre-breeding examination. A veterinarian looking at a mare in the fall or early winter has time to act on what they find. The same examination in February does not. What the examination includes, whether a culture and cytology are warranted, whether an ultrasound is called for, and whether a maiden, a barren mare, and a mare who foaled late last year need different treatment, is the veterinarian's call and depends on the mare.

Condition. Getting a mare's body condition where it needs to be takes months, not weeks, and the fall is when that lead time exists. The target, and whether a given mare is above or below it, is a conversation with the veterinarian rather than a number from an article.

Lights, if the operation runs them. Mares are seasonal breeders and day length is the signal that brings them out of the winter transition, which is why operations chasing an early foal put mares under lights ahead of the season. How many hours, starting how many weeks out, and which mares it is worth doing for all depend on the target foaling window and belong to the veterinarian.

Health paperwork. Vaccinations, deworming, and a current negative Coggins, set against two requirements rather than one: what the veterinarian recommends for the mare, and what the receiving farm actually asks for before she unloads. Those are not always the same list, and the farm's list is the one that turns a mare around at the gate. Ask for it in writing in the fall. Coggins validity varies by state and by event, so the paper's expiry date is worth checking against the haul rather than assumed.

Shipping logistics, if semen is coming in. Who ships, on which days, by which courier, to whose address, and what has to be requested by when. Whether a container is coming with it and what the return terms are. Who is inseminating and how the timing gets coordinated with the collection day. Every one of those is a phone call in November and an emergency in April.

The Stallion Side

File the breeding report. The single hardest fall deadline, because it belongs to a season that is already over. Both AQHA and APHA set the stallion breeding report at November 30 of the breeding year. APHA states it as a postmark date and sets it at May 31 for stallions standing south of the equator. AQHA's help center puts the same date on filing the stallion's exposure to mares and notes a late fee charged on each amendment made after the deadline. Both registries revise their fee schedules, so check the current numbers at aqha.com and apha.com rather than working from last year's.

Confirm the stallion's registry file is complete. AQHA's help center is explicit that a stallion must be DNA typed and have disease panel results on file before his foals can be registered. That is a fall problem with a fall solution and a spring disaster if it is discovered in May.

Set the fee schedule and the guarantee. The stud fee, the booking fee, the shipment fee, and the event that makes each one payable. The guarantee the contracts will carry, and whether a return breeding or a refund is the remedy. Those decisions are the contract, so they have to be made before the contract goes out.

Plan the collection schedule. Which days of the week collections happen, how many shipments per cycle a mare owner gets at the stated fee, and when the semen evaluation with the veterinarian is booked. A schedule published to mare owners in the contract is a schedule the farm has to be able to keep, which is a reason to decide it in the fall with a calendar rather than in March with a phone ringing.

Frozen inventory. Count what is actually in the tank before the book is sold, rather than after. A freezing log that has been kept all year answers this without a trip out to the canes.

Records, Before the Season Rather Than During It

The last item on the fall list is the one that makes next year's fall list shorter.

Every decision above reads better with last season in front of it: which mares settled and on which cycle, the cover dates and the foaling dates, how long each mare actually carried, what each cross produced. Those facts exist on every operation. What differs is whether they are readable in October or scattered across a notebook, a phone, and somebody's memory.

In HorseBook the mare-side record is one timeline per mare, cycles through covers, pregnancy checks, foaling and progeny, and it is on every plan. The Broodmare Board puts the whole band on one screen with each mare's status, her stallion, her cover date, her foaling window, and her last check, filtered by sire. In the fall that board is the planning document: the Open group is the list of mares to decide about, and the rows carry the history the decision needs. Once a mare has foaled at least once, her Gestation history card shows the earliest, average and latest she has actually carried, which is the input to a foal-watch plan that fits her rather than the textbook.

On the stallion side, the Breeder plan carries the book itself: the mares booked and their status, contracts generated from the booking, collections and the freezing log, shipments tied to the mare they went to, fee schedules split into deposit and balance parts with the event each part comes due on, and the season summary. What belongs in that book, and why each piece is there, is the stallion book records guide. For a season walked end to end on one mare, there is a mare's season in HorseBook, and for a survey of the tools that do this work, including ones that fit an operation better than HorseBook does, there is the honest roundup of horse breeding apps.

Looking Past the Cover

Two more things belong on a fall list even though they pay off much later.

The horse gestation calculator turns a cover date into a foaling window, which means the February and March covers being planned right now already have January through May foaling windows attached to them. Planning the book against those windows is how an operation avoids putting six mares in the same two weeks of foal watch.

And the foaling kit is a fall job for exactly the same reason it is a fall job every year: it is assembled in daylight by somebody who is not tired. The foaling kit checklist is the supplies list and the record sheet, and the box takes an afternoon.

Same List, Smaller Book

Three mares and one stallion runs the same list, shorter. The same decisions about who is being bred to what, the same contracts, the same veterinary lead time, the same November 30 filing if a stallion is standing, the same records question. The small operation gets to the answers faster and has less room for a single miss, because one mare that does not settle is a third of the season rather than a twentieth.

The list costs a few evenings in the fall. It is the cheapest work in the whole breeding year.

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Brian Bickell is the founder of HorseBook and raises paint and quarter horses at Bickell Ranches in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Registry deadlines in this article were checked against apha.com and AQHA's help center in September 2026 and should be confirmed against the current schedule before they are relied on.