Weaning Day on a Breeding Farm

About 10 days ago I decided to do a pasture rotation. All of the horses stayed in the same groups, I just changed which pastures they were in. Horses are very, very hard on the land and tend to go back and regraze the same spots repeatedly. Since they graze by tearing the grass off with their front teeth they can graze the grass down to the dirt in their favorite spots. It drives me crazy to see them wrecking one spot in the pasture while there are acres and acres of beautiful grass just begging to be eaten all around them, literally just a few feet away!


By switching around their pastures I hoped to encourage them to change up the grazing patterns in the various fields. I was certainly expecting to have some excitement from the horses since they would be in different locations. I wasn't expecting much though. After all, they were still with the exact same horses, looking across the fence lines at the same horses, and for that matter looking across the fence lines at the same pasture they had just come from. So everybody had some fun running around exploring their new location. I could almost hear them saying to each other "look over here, I found the run-in shed." Or "hey guys, look at this awesome wooded area!" There were lots of flagged tails and many excited "horse snorts" and whinnies could be heard.


I was pretty surprised when I was still seeing the occasional gallops around the pastures, along with lots of flagged tails, whinnies and snorting a couple of hours later. The next day my farrier was here and as we listened to the symphony of snorting and horses calling to each other she asked what was going on. I told her about the pasture rotation. She summed up the situation perfectly when she said "I feel like I'm on a breeding farm and it is weaning day."


Well, it continued to feel like weaning day for a few more days. My mother called to let me know that the horses were worked up and that I should go investigate and see what was wrong. I explained the "big switch" to her and mentioned that I could hear the ruckus as well as she could. (but thank you very much for caring!) The symphony would die down for awhile and Jason and I would look at each other and think "finally, their brains have returned." But it was short lived, as someone would call out, and the chorus would start back up. The culprits were always the same as far as getting things started again. I know the horses and can tell who is talking, and Harmony, Elfin, Leo and Faune loved to get everyone started again. Over the next few days the calling became more and more sporadic until they finally just stopped.


We were all overjoyed, as peace had returned!

Happily grazing horses