Enjoy Life With Your Stallion! |
Our Stallion Pride with McKenzie 2008 |
Enjoy Life With Your Stallion!We receive a lot of questions about how we handle stallions. People see how our stallions act while on our live cams and wonder “ what’s the secret?” Why don’t we have the traditional stallion issues? Horse owners become frustrated with their stallion's behavior. Those issues generally come down to:
Besides being a pain these behaviors are downright dangerous! Anyone who owns a stallion must take the steps to insure he is manageable and well behaved. We believe there a several things that can be done to help this process. From our experience stallions are a tremendous addition to the ranch and are a pleasure to have around. While at this time our perspective is with the Gypsy horse breed many of the traits are universal across all types of horses. Horses, like people, thrive in certain environments and wither in others. Putting your stallion in the best possible environment will greatly increase his happiness level and reduce the unacceptable behavior issues. Is your stallion consistently isolated from other horses or is he a part of a herd? Horses are a herd animal and generally need to be with others in order to be happy. If a stallion is separated from other horses and only comes out for breeding or perhaps getting exercised common sense tells you how his attitude is going to be! That situation compares to criminals being locked up in solitary confinement with only occasional contact with others. We believe their mental health will not be good! While we don’t advocate having a stallion with other stallions (unless they’re younger, or in a Stallion herd if that works for your stallion) we do practice always having our stallion in with a family unit. Those members include mares in foal and perhaps a few older weanlings. We often have mares and young weanlings in with our stallions. If you’re pasture breeding of course you have an open mare in with him as well. By the way, stallions make great babysitters!! When a horse is isolated they have no opportunity to develop social skills. Kicking, pushing, whirling are not acceptable actions within the herd group but a separated stallion will not learn it. We put our colts and yearling stallions in with mares in foal so they learn manners from both a herd standpoint and from the mares. A stallion within a herd environment will always be much happier than an isolated stallion. It stands to reason that the herd environment stallion will then be much easier to be around and to handle. That’s been our consistent experience. The other key factor in having a well behaved stallion falls under communication. No, we can’t talk to our horses in human language! However, we can communicate in a language they understand. Every herd has a pecking order top to bottom. Put a limited number of food bowls on the ground with a herd and you can quickly see who the boss is and follow it right on down the line! The top horse is……..rarely a stallion! Of course the broodmare (or top broodmare) controls the herd. The herd follows her actions. If a confrontation arises within the herd every horse below the head broodmare will back down when she gets involved. Even when a stallion has been in a herd environment they can still be assertive and pushy. As you handle or work with the stallion you MUST assume the head broodmare role! You’re the boss! If the stallion nips at you or becomes pushy you immediately respond with a very loud NO along with movement to the stallion and a bump in the shoulder/chest area. This treatment is consistent to what he would get in the herd if he tried to do the same thing to the head broodmare. As long as your actions are immediate, you will see quick results. Do not hit the stallion in the head – he will eventually become head shy. Stay calm, do not react in anger, be immediate and consistent with your corrective actions. The results will amaze you! Bottom line is use your own good judgment. This is what WE do and it works for us. We have had such a wonderful outcome doing these simple things. We always look at each horse as an individual horse. We then use common sense to determine what that horses situation will be. A great mind on a horse is worth its weight in gold! The Gypsy horse breed truly has an unbelievable temperament. However, we’ve seen our stallion behavior get much worse under the few instances where we didn’t follow the above suggestions. Follow them and you’ll be rewarded with an unbelievable relationship with your stallion. We certainly have! |
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