#2

#7

Very interesting enjoyed reading your blog post.

Horses are herd animals and live together their whole lives if left alone. Especially mares and foals. Go watch a few wild horse documentaries. No one weans the foals. The mares wean them when it is time to wean them. I considered myself really lucky to watch an abandoned mare we took in raise her foal. The Mom teaches her child so many things. I had always heard that the Mom poop was the first food of horses in the wild......that the enzymes, etc in the poop is especially processed by the hormones in the mare's body. I watched the mare push her foal towards a little pile of poops and nudge her to eat them, during her first day of life. I left a few poops every time I cleaned the stall. The Mom taught her to eat out of the feeders, and to eat mare and foal pellets out of their tub. Some of the things were funny. The foal watched her Mom rub her rear on a tree when we turned them out to play. She seemed to say "WHAT" then OK, whatever......and went and rubbed her rear end on the tree. It was so funny how her little face got it. She said in her little horsey way, THIS IS FUN and really liked it. She learned to go to the paddock fence and take carrot bits and cookies from the riders who came to visit her. She learned to play with the dogs, and the kids who loved to run back and forth and scream and laugh while she whinnied and played with them through the fence of the paddock. At about 18 months, her Mom just said, NOPE, and gave her a kick. So we moved her to her own big girl pen next door. She has done fine, with NO stress, no problems, and as I promised her Mom. gets to grow up with her Mom next door. I grew up on ranches and farms and around wild horses, even the dairy cows did not have their babies taken away from them. My Grandmother said, if I can't make a living without abusing a mom and her baby, shame on me. Her female cows grew up their whole lives with their mothers, who taught them about calving and getting milked............the little steers got neutered, and when the day came, usually around two to three years old, the butcher came when the cows went in to be milked and the steer they needed was cut into a little pen and slaughtered humanely and fast. The last of the Vikings were featured on a program, they are exclusive equine therapists..........and their horses range free. It was awesome to see, and it shows there really is no reason for us, as humans to "civilize" animals to our wants and needs and harm them. When those Vikings move to an new pasture area, they fold up their tents, and load up everything on pack saddles and loaded up old granny and the little kids on horses that were just loose and off they all rode, the herd.........to the new pasture area.