How to transition the racehorse for their next career
Article by Jessica Licausi
Throughout equine life, significant transformations are not only common - but inevitable. Beginning as foals full of curiosity, they progress into young athletes preparing for the demands of training and the responsibility of a career. As they progress through their peak performance years, the body and mind adapt to the rigors of intense exercise and competition. Eventually, the time comes to wind down and transition into a breeding career, an alternative discipline, or even a relaxing retirement.
Each phase requires thoughtful adjustments in care, management, and expectations. Patience paired with an understanding of the individual horse is key to recognizing what they are telling you. Transitioning a horse successfully truly boils down to careful individualization, and shying away from a one-size-fits-all type of approach. The respect for this process echoes through the practices of many skilled and compassionate horsemen.
Among those great talents, Richard Budge of Margaux Farm shares his abundance of knowledge about these incredible equine transitions. With his watchful eye as a trainer and well-seasoned horseman, he has overseen the management of incredible horses like Justify, Flightline, Songbird, and Moira. With over 40 years of experience around the world, he seems to stick to the golden rule of putting the horse first.
When asked about that principle, Budge simply replies, “Horses will talk to you; you just have to listen.” The rehabilitation division at Margaux Farm is unique, featuring resources such as an aqua treadmill, cold saltwater spa, and vortex wave floored stalls. It serves as the backbone of all equine transitions on the property for horses coming off the track. When a horse comes into rehab, the first step is evaluating any injury, as you cannot start the transition process if a horse needs stall rest, surgeries, or requires any type of restriction whatsoever. This is when you listen to what the horse is telling you, as it can lead you into what transition path you want to go down. There are certain questions that you have to ask yourself when facing this challenge. Budge questions, “Does the horse have a prior injury? If it does, can it be rehabbed well, or does the horse have no injury?” He goes on to say that “If the horse has no injury, it’s a lot faster to move on”.
The same goes for the other way around, where he remarks most horses will rehab well with time. Each horse has their own individual story with its own individual needs, and the transition process must be accustomed to each and every one of them with time. Once getting past any injuries, the ‘let down’ process continues by allowing horses to be horses again. When time is paired with the natural instincts of a horse, a beautiful transformation begins to unfold. For Budge and many other seasoned horsemen, getting newly retired racehorses turned out to pasture is a key part of the transition process.
This initial step often leads to a noticeable change in temperament - a shift that is highly recommended during the winding-down phase of a Thoroughbred’s racing career. Nutritionally, horses in rehab at Margaux Farm are no longer on a high-grain diet, as they do not have the high energy demands that require it in the let-down process. Instead, they are switched to a fiber-based diet, for they are in the process of slowing down from training, and in turn would like their metabolic and digestive health issues to be at low risk. This transition will increase natural grazing behavior and will work in hand with a settled temperament to make the horse more manageable.
For colts, Budge couldn't stress the importance of being gelded enough. He says, “If there’s a colt we would recommend gelding him first, and the majority get mellow and get well settled. Sometimes that takes a month, and sometimes that takes two months”, Budge explains. “I think a good transition would be to eventually have them with another gelding to turnout with”, he continues. Speaking for the fillies who are a lot more social by nature, they usually get turned out with other fillies to get them mellowed out. If they are transitioning to a broodmare, you are pairing them with pasture mates who will be with them for the rest of their lifetime. Budge explains that “If you put a filly out by herself in the paddocks, she’ll be nervous and run the fence or something”, further proving that choosing the right mechanism to calm a horse down in order to move on in the let down process is game-changing. With a watchful eye through their time off, the horse selects the path that it is best for on its own.
Even before the winding-down process, there was always a schedule for order and routine, or a method to prepare a horse for those peak performance years yet to come. It seems that the natural approach is apparent in both the younger and older sides of transitions of the horse. “I find the best way to prep young horses to be athletes is to not ‘hot house’ them. Let them be outside in paddock turnout as much as possible to assist in their growth and bone development. Patient handling and the breaking process is an integral part of prepping young horses. Each is an individual with different attributes and characteristics. Some take more time and patience than others, and it is necessary to adapt the breaking program to each individual,” Budge explains.
The process of recognizing individualization at its finest seems to be the key to walking horses through no matter what phase they’re going through. Expectations may change, but the ability to understand and treat every horse for their own uniqueness and individual needs must remain constant throughout their careers. Concluding, Budge left the wise words of “The trainer has to be proactive to keep a horse at his peak performance. Map out his training and cover all the bases, and know when to push and when to back up.”
Another perspective comes from the viewpoint of science, and an internal look into how the equine body responds to these transitions. Carly Schuerger, a graduate student earning a Masters degree in Exercise Science at the University of Kentucky, provides knowledge on a much deeper level. With a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology and many years of experience working at different tracks and farms nationwide, she incorporates a scientific understanding into her work with racehorses.
Within the course of a racehorse’s career from start to finish, the changes that we see only skim the surface of what is happening within the athlete in terms that do not meet the eye. According to Schuerger, the early years of a thoroughbred are very much an upward slope of fitness. Schuerger explains, ”When a horse is bought from a yearling sale, then later on is being broke for training, they are put through a training protocol that is going to accelerate how quickly they build their aerobic capacity. Having a high aerobic capacity is associated with more endurance. Horses tend to gain aerobic capacity as they get older due to inevitable increases in heart size, blood volume, and muscle mass, but this process is accelerated with training.”
This is a gradual process to describe how young horses are being worked up to as weanlings, yearlings, two year olds, and into their most lucrative years as a peak performer at their individual highest level- a true transformation indeed. According to Schuerger, there are a lot of physiological changes in the body that occur as training progresses that would not occur, or at least not as rapidly, with aging alone.
“You start to see increases in the quantity of mitochondria and other enzymes within muscle cells, increasing their capacity to uptake oxygen and create more energy at a higher rate. These changes help improve work capacity and offset fatigue. Although when a horse’s training ceases for whatever reason, the number of mitochondria and other muscle enzymes will decrease. However, when you bring the horse back into training again, it takes less time to build those adaptations back than it did initially.” Gradually introducing high speed galloping to improve bone density was also highlighted as a critical aspect to consider throughout the development of racehorses.
Furthermore, Schuerger adds “Although we have a general understanding of what changes from training may be occurring physiologically, every horse responds to the same exercise differently. One horse may improve in fitness a lot, the other not as much. It takes a good horseman to know which horses you can keep increasing the training load on, when to level off or pull back the training a bit, or change the training all together- especially horses being rehabbed back from an injury.” It was mentioned by Schuerger that a horse’s proportion of different muscle fiber types, genetics, nutrition, and mental soundness greatly affects the degree to which a horse’s fitness is enhanced with a given training.
Schuerger emphasized that although it is important to understand the science behind training from a physiological perspective, the psychological aspect of training cannot be ignored. “How a horse is progressing through training psychologically is just as important. Some horses may need to train in a way that doesn't really make sense physiologically, but they need it to improve their mental wellbeing.” The importance of catering the training to the individual both physically and mentally was emphasized by Schuerger. “At the end of the day, they can have the fitness, but they also must learn to be a racehorse too.”
As a previous collegiate cross country and track runner, Schuerger is able to make real life comparisons to horses that can directly connect with a human perspective. Schuerger described her experiences when she would go from running 40 to 60 miles a week to suddenly taking time off from training after the season or from injury, “Going from that high level of training to suddenly no structured training at all was very tough on me mentally. I suddenly could not focus in my classes or study as well, and had trouble sleeping. I struggled to keep still. I had all this excess energy and endurance from all of the training I had been doing. Thoroughbreds coming from straight off the track are similar in that sense. It takes time to lose some of that conditioning and calm down mentally.”
This is the transition we are seeing, as described by Budge at Margaux Farm. Even though the majority of horses in Margaux’s rehab hope to get back on the track, this process is the language to determine their selected pathway as told by the horse.
As we gain a more accurate, full circle perspective into the world of training and understanding thoroughbreds, the transitions in which they go through for their lifetime continue to be the greatest teacher. It’s a time that calls not only for structured management and skilled horsemanship, but also for patience, empathy, and willingness to understand each horse as an individual. Perhaps ‘listening to the horse’ becomes less metaphorical, and more of a calling to pay attention to behavior, health, needs, and readiness for a change.
Through both lived experience and a scientific background, we begin to understand that what’s happening inside of a horse during these phases are just as significant as what we are seeing on the outside. To muscle fibers, to social behavior and temperament; every element of a horse’s being is becoming adaptive to a new rhythm of life from start to finish. Whether you’re a trainer, hot-walker, veterinarian or owner; the role you hold in a horse's transformation is a powerful one, and one that is meant for intent and purpose. By embracing this intention with no means to rush or standardize it, your respect for the horse will set the stage for a rewarding, successful, and meaningful story for whatever chapter is next. In the end, the art of transition within the equine world is not just about where the horse is going next, but about how we guide them there, and the trust we build along that journey.
