A colt just tells you the horses age, that is, that they are newborn babies, those who are not yet one year old. As with many baby names for animals, foal is generalized, and it can be used to describe a youngster, whether male or female.
Unlike the term foal, which can be used to describe any young horse, colt may be used to describe only male horses up to four years old. If you hear Colt, it is safe to assume the male horse is older than six months.
Male horses that are more than one year of age, but not yet at least two years old, are Yearling colts, while females are Yearling Fillies. A female is called a filly, and like the males, a filly is considered to be a female filly until it is four years of age. A three-year-old or four-year-old female horse is called a filly, while a younger male horse is called a colt. More specific terms are colt for male foal, and filly for female foal, and are used up to a horses third or fourth birthday.
It is proper to refer to an infant horse as a foal up to the time it is a year old, though there are also more specific terms that can apply. Until 1 year of age, a horse may be called a foal, but after that 1-year mark, a male baby horse will be called a colt foal, or simply a colt. A male foal is usually known as a colt, while a foal is used to address foals who have begun nursing. A female horse is called a colt, a colt, or a filly, while terms such as brooding, weanling, and stud are used less frequently.
A young horse is called a foal because, while a mothers horse is in pregnancy, it is known as being in-foal, and in the process of giving birth, it is said that the mother is foal. The term foal really means any horse that is young at all, and so long as it is from a year-old or younger, a baby horse has no other appropriate nickname. A colt is a equine that is one year of age or older; this term is used mostly in reference to horses, but it may also apply to oxen. Foal is used for only foals who have recently stopped feeding, typically around the age of four months. Foals who have recently stopped feeding.
Whereas foal is horse that is younger than a year, a weanling is a youngling who has stopped nursing recently. A weanling is a horse younger than a year that has successfully made the transition from dependence on their mother for feed to following the conventional horse diet. A pony is a horse of smaller height, under 14.2 hands, while a colt is a horse younger than one year.
If you hear anyone refer to a horse as a colt, the horse may be 3 months, 1 year, or even 3 years old. When you hear the term filly, that can mean the horse is 1 day old or a little less than four years old. After that first year, and until a young horses second year, a filly is also called a stud, which changes once more until the male filly is at least four years of age.
This is a peak age for a horse, where it is not really a full-grown horse as yet, but also is not a young foal. At two or three years old, the younger horse is not physically or mentally mature enough to undergo a pregnancy and raise a foal. However, having sixteen babies would require that a horse begin breeding at the age of four, and remain fertile at least through her mid-twenties. It is impossible for horses to have more than sixteen babies in that time, and that is because horses have an eleven-month gestation period, meaning that an animal may have just one child a year.
At the age of three or four — depending on whom you ask — horses are considered adults, and thus are formally called a mare or stud. Sometimes, people call a thoroughbred young mare or young stud a horse at that age, but that is also inaccurate, since mares and studs are considered to have grown up. The fact that horses are called foals might surprise a lot of people, since so much inaccurate information has led to people calling them ponies. I am sure that countless movies and videos floating around online that people are calling foals ponies are to blame for spreading that inaccuracy.
As long as you are not saying baby horse, but rather opting for the more proper term, foal, most people are not going to question you, nor will they raise an eyebrow at the terminology used.
While we still think that baby horse is pretty accurate to most people, you now know how to name your horses, no matter their age. It can be hard to figure out what to exactly call a horse baby, as there are a fair number of terms in the industry to describe the various types of baby horses. Once gelded, colts remain bonded with their male horses, no matter their age, but there is one other term that may apply, that we will cover in a moment. The only thing that is really important here is honestly just the age of the colt, and while you might not be able to immediately say right away which colt is one year and which is six months, we can simply say you can still call any one of these as a colt, and no one would bat an eye.