What distinguishes horses living in groups from a herd of horses
Horses are herd animals and need social contact as well as plenty of exercise in the fresh air. As more and more focus is placed on equine-appropriate management, many stables are changing their concepts and are increasingly offering open stables, active stables or track system facilities in addition to daily paddock or pasture access in groups.
But there is far more to consider than simply putting a few horses together on a track and think that you have created the optimum and equine-appropriate conditions.
These groups of ‘random’ horses put together are not always harmonious and free of aggression. But why is that?
Wild horse as role model
If you look at wild horses, their groups mostly consist of an established family group of 2 – 10 horses. These are mares and a stallion, as well as their foals and youngsters. These usually remain in the herd until they are 2 or 3 years old. Young stallions are driven out of the group by the stallion when they reach sexual maturity and then usually join so-called bachelor groups until they eventually take over their own herd of mares. As a general rule, anyone who disrupts the harmony of the herd must leave it. Young mares sometimes decide to leave their family group at the age of 2-3 years in order to start a new family with a suitable stallion. This means that horses choose who they want to live with, it is not natural or a given that a wild horse can just join a ‘foreign’ herd whenever they choose to.
In the wild, horses have enough space to move around and travel about 10-15 kilometres per day when there is a good supply of food. If there is not enough food or water available, the horses sometimes cover distances of up to around 60 kilometres per day, always in search of food and water. They roam huge areas on more or less fixed migration routes.
The horse in the hands of man
In our stables, the composition of the herd is usually not the grown family unit, but a colourful mixture of different breeds, sizes, colours, genders and feeding requirements. There’s the greedy gypsy cob with the picky eater, a thoroughbred, the two-year-old hormonal and scatty teenager with the 30-year-old senior, and the mare in raging season with the late-cut gelding in one group and the owners expects all the horses to get along well and enjoy a happy being together, after all they have each other and therefore companionship?
Sometimes the result can be a harmonious group – but often it just doesn’t work.
It can quite easily be compared to us at our workplace. An open plan office or a small business, it is ultimately no different as a mixed group of the same species put together in one room:
we can’t normally choose our colleagues. We get on well with some of them, possibly developing genuine friendships for life. But with some we don’t get on at all and would never want to share a table let alone a bed!
In regard to work colleagues, it’s more simple – after work, we can retreat to our private life and don’t have to engage with them again – at least until the next day.
For our horses the situation is very different when they are kept in groups, as they cannot really escape their “colleagues”, but are forced to share a table and bed, i.e. feeding stations and lying down area, with them.
As owners, we naturally want our horse to find one or more close friends in the group with whom they can spend the day together, maintain social contacts and provide mutual security. If the horse, however, does not get on with one or more of its own kind, it will have to put up with the situation until the owner realises that his four-legged friend is in need and decides to move to a different yard.
Unfortunately, it very often goes unnoticed by the owner when their horse does not fit into the group and suffers. At our daily yard visits, we take our horse out of the group and spend time with him, during which he seems to enjoy himself and happily engage in all activities. Then we put him back into the paddock to join his group, tidy up and head for home.
As a horse owner, how often do you make time to just sit in the open stable for two or three hours and watch the horses interact “among themselves”? Only then would you understand if there is any bullying, excluding from the feeding station, narcolepsy and any other behaviours that clearly signal poor social environment for all group members.
What can be done to optimise the group?
It helps to have a good understanding of natural life and behaviour of wild horses in the back of your mind when putting groups together. Groups separated by gender generally work much better than mixed groups. Geldings like to play games together – it can sometimes get rough when fight play is on the agenda – mares on the other hand don’t participate in such activity. They prefer to groom and engage in a completely different kind of social interaction and physical contact.
In spring things can quickly become turbulent in the mixed-gender group if one or more mares are in season and the geldings are harassed by them. Dominance fights between the geldings over the mares can even be witnessed at times. This is bound to cause stress for everyone involved.
Ideally, the group of mares should be accompanied by a self-confident gelding who shows no tendency to mate with the mares. This imitates the herd constellation in nature to a certain extent and can ensure a harmonious group of mares, and generally stops bickering amongst them.
Every square metre counts
Aggression in the group can be greatly minimised if sufficient space is provided for escape. Various studies have shown that the level of aggression and stress in group environments is directly related to the size of the turnout area: the more space, the less aggression and stress.
Accordingly, the lying down area should be large enough for all the horses in the group to sleep at the same time – even if they don’t normally do so because a few horses are always on guard.
Eating connects
Horses must always be provided with roughage 24/7, not only for digestive physiological reasons but also for social reasons. You should also make sure that there are more feeding places available than horses, so that every horse can eat in peace, even if it does not tolerate a neighbour next to it. Eating is not only a tried and tested social ritual for us humans, but also for horses. If roughage is only supplied in certain periods, the break in between feeding times, lead to an increase in stress and aggression.
Mixed group compositions are often difficult to manage, particularly in terms of roughage supply ad libitum. Especially when ponies and other draft breeds are kept mixed with full blood type horse breeds that struggle to put on weight as well as Senior horses, who are also harder to feed and keep a healthy weight. Often it causes problems amongst the group and appropriate feeding structure as well as amongst the owners who then feel they pay more than what their horse eats.
While a Warmblood in full sports training, for example, needs more roughage without strict hay net limitations, can tolerate hay with a higher sugar content and graze pasture with rather unfavourable (because high in protein or sugar) vegetation, this can be an absolute nightmare for a native Cob breed, Spaniard or Appaloosa. On the other hand, a thoroughbred or a senior with poor dental health in a group with the best conditions for ‘good doers’ – i.e. low sugar/protein hay, close-meshed hay nets, strictly limited grazing on excess grass – will quickly become extremely ribby and lose performance.
It can be challenging to manage a performance horse with the native pony as a companion.
Horses speak various dialects
Different breeds speak different dialects in their body language, so to speak, which is one of the reasons why certain breeds such as Shetty’s, Dartmoor’s or Welsh Cobs prefer to keep to themselves. This is why you can often witness unhappiness in both equines when a Warmblood has a Shetland pony as a companion. These dialects in body language are far too subtle for us humans to recognise, but they lead to considerable “misunderstandings” when different breeds are integrated into a group and need to be clarified accordingly, which leads to problems for everyone involved.
This is one of the reasons why it makes sense, when keeping horses in groups to put same breeds or at least similar types together. For example, a Dartmoor in a Welsh herd may not have an easy start but can usually fit into the group more quickly than an Arabian or a Warmblood. If you have the option of separating the horses by breed – as is logically often the case in breeding stables, for example – then you have to realise that purebred herds such as Welsh Cobs, Shetland Ponies or other native breed groups usually work really well, and the integration of new herd members is much more smoothly than in mixed herds in open stables yards. Of course, it also makes feeding management much easier if all the horses belong to the same breed. Unfortunately, it is not very realistic as space is usually not given to allow single breed scenarios.
When putting groups together, look for similar types that have similar needs as it will make group life a lot easier:
Draft horses with different types of Draft breeds, Thoroughbreds with Warmbloods and Senior horses in their own group as they generally looking for a quiet life with less engagement from others.
If you put an Iberian in a group of Icelandic horses, it is quite possible that he will become a victim of bullying in no time, just like the Tinker would be in a group of Spaniards or the Warmblood with his Shetty.
Senior horses have different requirements and need more rest, a different quality of hay, a softer bed and more time for everything than a young horse that is growing up and actively moving around. As a result, Senior horses in mixed age open stable groups are all too often overruled. They constantly get moved down the pecking order, are driven away from the feeding station, no longer dare to lie down and therefore must stand outside in the rain instead of being allowed into the shelter.
This causes them to lose weight, which the owner then tries to compensate for by feeding them all kinds of senior muesli. In these kinds of cases, a kind of ‘Senior flat share for horses’ offers itself, where horses are of similar age and therefore have similar needs. If that is not possible, then it should be considered to separate the senior horse overnight, so that he can rest, sleep on a soft and warm bed has access to soaked hay cobs and suitable nutrient hay that can be eating in comfort and peace. Many older horses can then compensate well for the day in a somewhat restless open stable group, as they can regenerate better overnight.
Often putting growing youngsters and senior horses together doesn’t work for exactly these reasons, young horses are full of beans want to be active and initiate constant play whereas senior horses want to eat, doze and rest. This combination just doesn’t work for either age group.
Colour mobbing in the open stable
People love coloured horses and everything that is not bay is becoming increasingly popular – from the colourful tiger pinto to the delicate cremello. Colour sells! Breeders know this too well and many now choose their breeding programmes based on bright colour choices rather than for their ‘level-headed’ temperament.
What the buyers of coloured horses are not aware of is that grey and piebald horses don’t have an easy life in a group environment. This is based on natural behavioural patterns, that have ensured the survival of horses over the last 50 million years – due to their strikingly bright colour, colourful horses attract predators and therefore pose a risk to the group. They are therefore deliberately pushed out of the group by the darker horses, which are well camouflaged by their colour in the wild.
Accordingly, grey, piebald and other strikingly coloured horses are either found at the bottom of the hierarchy in most groups or they fight their way to the top. There, however, they are often not sovereign herd leaders, but despots, which means permanent stress for the whole group – including the leader.
A herd with several or even exclusively grey and pinto horses can therefore work better than the one PRE-Perlino or the one funny spotted Knabstrupper among lots of bay, chestnut and black horses.
Integration takes time
It is common knowledge in most yards by now that it’s not advisable to just add a new horse into an established group without any upfront preparation. There usually is an “integration area” where the new arrival can live while getting to know the other horses over a fence until the time is right for the newcomer to join the group. For many yard or horse owners, this means the integration process has been completed. But unfortunately, it doesn’t happen that quickly.
In general, it can be assumed that a new arrival will need around three months to correctly understand all the dialects spoken in the new group and thus be able to correctly interpret the signals of the others and behave accordingly – assuming that he has not been “de-socialised” by humans through years of being kept alone, as is often the case with late-cut stallions or former sport horses, they simply can no longer communicate properly with other horses. These first three months are also the period in which many “skin scratches” occur, i.e. superficial injuries caused by bites or kicks, which are an expression of everyday misunderstandings. In addition, it usually takes another three months for the hierarchy to be re-established, for everyone to feel comfortable in their position and for peace and harmony to return.
Within these first six months of the “herd-finding phase”, two horses move out and three new ones move in as an average at most stables. As a result, the open stable groups in many stables never come to rest.
Frequent changes of horses in the group or frequent changes of stable for an individual horse represent a considerable stress factor!
What do I do with my open stable group now?
If you notice that a horse just doesn’t fit into a group, it makes more sense for everyone to choose a different group, a different stable or possibly a different management for this horse altogether. After all, the horses should feel at easy where we place them. This can be very individual.
A competition horse that has spent its entire life in an isolated stable box management without being allowed any social contact in the field only through the bars to the neighbouring box or paddock fence may be completely overwhelmed if then suddenly place in a retirement herd or open stable yard. The same applies to a stallion that has been used for years as a breeding stud and is now, no longer in fashion, after castration then sold as a leisure horse and placed in an open group scenario. Or the same applies to the senior or the grey horse that is being bullied within the group.
There are definitely horses for which sole group management – which is equine-appropriate – is not a suitable solution, perhaps a combination of box at night and joining the group during the day could be the more suitable choice.
Group management is therefore much more complex than box management and requires good observation skills, experience and sensitivity on the part of the stable manager. If a group is newly formed or there is an unfavourable social climate in an open stable, the above tips offer pointers for optimisation, which you should consider and put in to practise where applicable.
PS: As always, exceptions confirm the rule and, to everyone’s delight, even very different types of horses can sometimes become “best friends forever”.
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