weaning

Question
% years ago I bought a mare with a 8 week old stud colt by her side, I weaned this colt at  months. they have been in different pastures for keep and rode together to many times to count.Recently I turned him out with her to do some work in his pasture, and to my shock I caught him nursing, and she was letting him..
Well I put him in his stall for a day and he was very unhappy about this.I checked the Mare and she did have some drops of what appeared to be milk. Well I was shocked and went ahead to finish the fence work and found out what was going on. To my amazement this young man has been getting out and has had access to nurse by sticking his head through the fence. I guess this has been going on all this time, since it has been 4 years since I reworked this fencing. My question is has this damaged my mare? she is only 9 and he was her 3 foal.Her Tits look fine,bag is fine. But to see this stud stretch out one leg and take a bow to nurse and her lift her leg for him just shocked me. I had planned to breed this mare this spring, now I am not sure.
 I hope this hasn't caused a problem, and why would she allow this to continue? I mean he has a very nice path from his pasture to hers, walked deep. I might add there is a pasture between them I keep cows in.. Go figure the cows never got out, but him going back to his pasture just amazes me.Can mares milk this long cause problems with him?

Answer
Hi Tilly,

This doesn't surprise me at all to hear that a mare is still letting her foal nurse for this long.  It's more a bonding thing than anything else.  There are a lot of mares out there who would let their foal continue to nurse til the end of time if they have access to her.

The mare's milk isn't going to affect your colt one bit.  It sounds like he is just taking a drink from her once in a while, it isn't constant, so it will not affect her either.

Actually, if you were to get her in foal again, she will make him quit taking a little drink from her now and then once her new foal is born.  She will finally tell him "NO!"