Hi Love of Courage
If you could pick up a well bred yearling that would be the go that way you can race it first and hopefully recoup some money. You should talk to a few studs who bring stallions out and see if they can get it a bit cheaper when bringing multiple horses out at one time.
Hi Eliteblood
I don't know anything about the quarantine laws so could you please explain why a mare has to stay quarantined untill the foal is born.
Unless the rules have since been relaxed, and I doubt it, I imported a pregnant mare in 2000 and that is what I had to do.
An alternative was to bring her to NZ, let her foal there, and then bring them both to Australia.
After their usual post entry Quarantine period is up you can actually take the mare out of the facility and foal her down at home if you have 'Quarantine Approved' premises but being granted that status can be and most often is a a nice old Pig in a Poke in itself.
That is exactly what I did - double fenced a paddock with dogproof fencing and had it approved by AQIS.
The current regulations applying to importing pregnant mares are nothing short of absurd, IMO. Once they have done their time in Quarantine then they should be released forthwith.
I stand to be corrected, but some who wanted to bring back their mare last year wanted to bring her back in foal to Rocknroll Hanover but was told that pregnant mares could no longer fly to Australia. I'm not sure how true this is, but this was a very nice mare and the people that own here aren't dummys.
Does anyone know for sure??
Thanks , so it would be better to import as close to the 7 months as possible to spend the least time in quarantine then, I take it?