How do you feel about scheduled weaning?

My only experience is with our own children. One of our children, for physical reasons, had difficulties nursing and was thus placed on formula pretty quickly. Our other two children pretty much weaned themselves when they got too busy to be spending time nursing. My guess is the mother and foal or puppy will probably do a good job figuring this out themselves without human interference. When I was a kid, I worked for a while on a mink farm, there the kittens were weaned immediately because of the high risk of the mother killing them, but most domesticated animals aren’t as fiercely territorial.

I don’t wean my horses… I let the mares decide when to wean their own babies (usually at about a year). In cattle, the calves are often weaned on a schedule due to the desire to either milk them (weaned very early in life) or to sell the mothers and/or calves. In horses, I believe scheduled weaning is particularly dangerous. The flora in a horse’s digestive tract develops gradually over time, and horses have a very sensitive digestive system. Letting nature take its course and allowing the foal to gradually move to solid foods is best for their digestion. More importantly, the passive immunity that foals get from their mother’s milk is vital to the success of the foal. In rare cases, when a mother rejects her foal, it is still wise to find them a nurse maid with another mare so that they are able to get milk from a mare, rather than to bottle feed them. Nature is really best at caring for the young. Human interference does not help, and often harms.