What Is A Female Horse Called?

I was at a petting zoo with my family the other day and there were all sorts of animals there, but this was certainly an equine petting zoo over all.

They had so many horses, ponies, donkeys, you name it, they had ten of them!

At one point during the day, my son came up to me and told me all the different names he’d learned for horses, and in particular female horses.

I realized I really wasn’t sure what the proper term was for a female horse—I knew a few, but they couldn’t all mean the same thing.

So, I decided to look into it.

So, what is a female horse called?

A mature, breeding female horse is called a mare. This is the simplest, most catch all term for female horses. They do also have another names, such as filly, which simply means a younger female. Generally speaking, a mare is over four years old, while a filly is below that age.

There are yet more names for female horses in a few circumstances that I’ll get into, but let me just explain the basic ones first.

What is a mare?

The most common term to describe a female horse is mare.

For a mature, breeding female horse, they are always called a mare.

Other terms may be applicable depending on their situation, but they are always a mare.

Mares can be used for riding and breeding.

The term mare comes from the Old English mearh and mere meaning horse and mare respectively, probably having roots in Celtic and Germanic words meaning stallion.

This gives you an idea of just how long we’ve been using these terms, but also how they grew more specific over time; the English word, originally, just meant horse, with no gender distinction.

When it was merged with a Celtic and Germanic cognate, the word evolved to have a more particular meaning.

Though a horse’s actual maturity comes a long time before we describe them as mature, for our purposes, it is still useful to talk about mares as only being mature horses, that is to say over the age of four years old.

So, what do we call young and not fully mature female horses?

What is a filly?

When any horse is born, it is a foal.

Foal has no sex specific meaning, and is just a universal term for a baby horse—indeed there are even some other similar animals who also give birth to foals.

When a female foal is born, that foal is a filly.

A filly, then, is just a juvenile female horse, at least as long as we decide that it is juvenile.

The fact is, horses are sometimes fully sexually mature by the time they’re just 18 months old.

Not always, but they are usually sexually mature within the first two years.

There are other metrics by which you can determine ‘maturity’, but this is the primary one.

So, when we talk about fillies being non-mature female horses, what we really mean is that they’re non-mature by our slightly arbitrary metrics.

Four years is the point by which all horses are pretty much guaranteed to have fully matured, so, from the point of view of breeders or horse racers, having this ‘filly’ and ‘mare’ distinction is really important.

A lot of horses only race for the first couple of years of their life, and retire quite early, so it’s really important to know exactly how old horses are.

What is a broodmare?

So, mare is a mature female, filly is a not fully mature female.

As I said, another requisite of mares is that they are able to breed; castration in male horses is common, and this causes two different terms to be used.

Mares are not castrated in this way, so mare is more or less a universal term.

However, when a mare is actively being bred, she is often referred to as a broodmare.

Brood is simply the term for a family of young animals, sometimes brought into the world all at once—however, horses usually only birth one foal at a time.

Most wait till their mares are four or five years old to breed them, and after that point they become a broodmare, at least while they are breeding.

What is a dam?

One final term used to refer to female horses is dam.

A broodmare is only a broodmare while she’s pregnant or breeding; once she gives birth, she becomes a dam.

A dam, then, is almost like the horse term for mother, whereas broodmare might be like an expectant mother.

Mares can usually be bred between the ages of 5 and 16.

So, as you can see, there are countless terms for female horse around, and all of them do have a particular meaning.

It’s typically something to do with their maturity and whether or not they’re breeding or having foals, just as it with the distinction between a stallion and a colt.

Horses and horse breeding is an age-old tradition steeped in long history, so it’s not all that surprising that there are so many different, somewhat archaic sounding terms. Hopefully this article has illuminated their different meanings for you.