The PMU Industry has changed radically. Originally this website maintained a "Save a PMU Foal" section, but far fewer PMU farms are still in operation, resulting in fewer animals needing "rescue."

The sudden close-down during 2003 - 2004 caused a tremendous upsurge of pregnant mares and foals needing immediate rescue from going to slaughter. By now the industry seems to have stabilized, with fewer producers and fewer at-risk foals and mares. The few farms still inexistence are able to sell their quality stock to interested parties, without generating a "rescue" situation. PMU groups are now "placement" rather than "rescue" groups. One by one they all wrote me, asking to be removed from my list of Rescues, so I no longer maintain that part of the website.

PMU farms, which are mostly located in Canada and the Dakotas,  collect the urine of pregnant mares, which they sell to pharmaceutical companies, for the manufacture of Premarin, PremPro, and similar hormonal medications.

Some PMU farmers use the PMU income to supplement family farm income, and primarily see themselves as breeders of high-quality horses. Others rely primarily upon the PMU contracts, and tend to "dump" the foals at auction at their earliest opportunity.

Many PMU foals are well-bred animals, from registered Draft, Quarter Horse, Thoroughbred, Canadien, and Paint breeding stock. There are even some Arabian, Fjord, Appaloosa, and Morgan PMU farms. Many PMU foals are sturdy draft crosses, which are becoming popular as "Warmblood" sport horses.

Michael using "Pressure and Release" to gentle Annie M's new PMU Shire-QH warmblood, "Amelia."

Most PMU foals are wild. Most people who adopt them don't realize this - despite the best educational efforts of the placement organizations. PMU foals can be gentled in exactly the same way as mustangs. If you plan ahead and learn some basic concepts, most of these babies will come around quite fast - but it is worthwhile to learn all you can BEFORE your foal arrives!

Gentling the new PMU foal is one matter. Raising it is another. PMU foals, who are mostly drafts and half-drafts, grow very big very fast. In the hands of the typical warm-hearted but often inexperienced adopter, (and it seems the majority of PMU adopters are people with good hearts but not much experience training horses) they can become dangerously pushy and disrespectful if their adopters spoil them, which is easy to do. PMU adopters should study up on their horsemanship skills, so that their foals grow up to be well-mannered, safe horses who can reach their full potential - which is considerable.

The PMU scene is changing rapidly. If you are interested in acquiring a PMU foal, do a Google search for PMU foals.

Jerry Tindell's GROUND WORK or Rick & Kitty Lauman's GROUND WORK FOR SUCCESS (coming soon) are both excellent sources of instruction - each presents the steps for learning and teaching each skill very clearly, making it easy to understand and easy to teach your horse.

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