Herd Dynamics

I have a question for the board about herd composition and the best way to manage it. But first an observation from my own herd. For the most part I keep my herd in a single pasture unless I have some particular reason to separate individuals. I have had my "babies" - the yearlings and up to 2 year olds in a separate pasture because I supplement their grazing/hay with grain and in one case, chopped hay. I bought a coming 2 year old filly last fall. She had a nasty habit of pinning her ears whenever anyone would approach. Her previous owner said she had always done this and she thought Sage had picked the habit up from one of her other mares. She also told me Sage was at the bottom of the ladder socially and could be picked on sometimes. She did not pin her ears as much at the previous owner.

We turned her with the main herd after a few days getting to know us and though she was at the bottom of our herd too, she seemed to be fitting in well enough. She continued to pin her ears and nearly gave our care takes a cardiac when they were feeding for us once because we forgot to warn them. She never, ever exhibited any negative behavior or tried to harm anyone, it seemed just a bad habit. I still hated the habit because when a horse does that you never know when they DO mean business and so I have been trying to figure out a way to eliminate the habit without much success.

Fast forward to about a month ago- end of winter and I notice she is too thin. Not alarmingly so but I like my horses to have more weight than she had. So we wormed her again, just in case, and moved her to the front with the babies so we could supplement her with feed. She began to improve immediately and we were very surprised at the suddenness of it. Gradually she has almost completely stopped pinning her ears at us. She has a lot more energy and just seems overall in better health both physically and mentally. In fact, though she is an appaloosa by breed, she now trots everywhere much like our haflingers..lol..

Now I have a 15 month old gelding that was just gelded yesterday. I'm trying to decide where he needs to be pastured and whether or not he would do ok in the herd at large. He was with the babies until we had to stall him to await gelding. I don't have enough cross fencing yet done to have separate pastures for weanlings, yearlings, geldings etc.. So my question is, how do others pasture their varying aged horses? Sage is a 2 year old and fairly large in size so I was surprised she did not thrive with the main herd.

I would put him in the herd he is accustomed to for a week or so, then once he's healed up attempt to put him in with the big horses. Sounds to me like Sage is very submissive and was getting run pretty hard with the big herd. Sometimes; even though a horse has been with a herd for awhile it will be picked on by another horse. If that happens it is more than likely a personality conflict (one horse just doesn't like the other) and there's not much you can do to change it.

We have to keep him stalled until the weekend to be sure he can't breed any mares but he never did try to so I don't think he would. Then I'll put him back with the babies for another week or so and let him get fully healed before introducing him to the others. Hopefully, he will fit in just fine. I only have one other gelding with the large herd besides Festus the donkey and he is leaving soon (the other gelding, not festus..lol). Thanks for the advice! I hope she isn't conflicting with another of the horses to the point she thins out and is super stressed. I never saw anyone giving her any problems but somebody must have. I don't want to keep her with my yearlings. We are paring back this year and undecided who exactly to sell at the moment. I may put her up for sale instead of my wap mare. I just have the hardest time deciding. Just no fun at all. We aren't planning to breed anything at all next year. Going to have full hands taking care of the foals we get this year and I am really looking forward to working with them.

Personally, I am a firm believer in keeping all one's horses together - unless of course you have a very serious issue like a stallion/gelding issue or a horse that is sick or hurt. No domestic horse ever starved to death because it was low on the pecking order.

The likelihood, although not absolutely 100% of course, is the problem is your #2. In a natural pasture environment, the #2 horse is the enforcer, thus the one that generates fear in the rest. The boss rules by attitude and intimidation - #2 enforces by actual physical force. So keep an eye on whatever horse is #2 in your pecking order, and if you feed, feed #2 at one end and Sage at the other.

I'm sure a lot of it is she is new, but IMO isolating her with horses she can dominate only prolongs the adjustment that will have to be made eventually.

Just my opinion...

Thanks for the opinion! I plan to keep a closer eye once we put her back with the herd. I want to leave her with the youngins for a little while longer. I'm trying to decide whether to send her out for training first this season. She is only 2 in Feb. but she is a big girl and could benefit from some regimented training I think. I believe it would give her some confidence that might actually help with her interaction in the herd.

I asked my husband about number two mare (haflinger) and he said she did tend to run everyone except the lead mare and biscuit (who doesn't really bother anyone but also doesn't get pushed around much) away from the hay bin until she got her fill. But we have free choice all the time. They never ran out. So it should not have kept her from eating once the two heavies were doing something else. We are going to be selling number two soon but I know another will take her place ;o). Thanks for the info.

I just saw this was under breeding. Sorry! I thought it was a general questions category.

Do we have a general questions category? If so, can you move it to the appropriate place?