What is the difference between a Cold Blood Horse and a Hot Blood horse? In my experience, horses can be loosely divided into three categories according to their temperaments. Generally speaking, the Coldblood Horses are the draft breeds. This includes such well-known breeds as the Percheron, Belgian, Clydesdale (right), Icelandic and Shires. They were developed… Read More Training Theory: Cold Blood vs Hot Blood Horses
When to wean a foal? We believe that the dam has a huge influence on her baby’s actions and reactions, so we leave our foals with their dams until 6-7 months old. This decision is predicated on the fact that the mare is healthy, has superb temperament, is easily handled, and is relaxed in all… Read More Weaning a Foal
Many people believe that it is the dam that dictates a foal’s temperament. However, a horse’s temperament has to be divided into what is affected by nature (heredity and genes) and what is affected by nurture (the environment surrounding its life). At birth, a foal’s temperament is derived from the influence of its parents’ genes… Read More Temperament: Nature vs. Nurture
In the past, most of our mares were pasture-bred to one of our in-house stallions. It was natural and easy. We had several premium stallions to choose from, we knew the mares were clean and there were no outside breedings to bring VD’s into the herd, and the breedings took place with little interference from… Read More Horse Health: Breeding on Foaling Heat
Genetics and breeding for specific traits is a little like playing poker. A face card wins unless someone has two lower cards together. Example Genes for explanatory purposes: Each horse has two genes for each trait. B= Black; Upper case genes are Dominant Genes. They are the face cards in the deck. Any horse with… Read More Understanding the role of genetics in breeding: Made Simple!
Imprinting endows a foal with trust and willingness, and it takes fear of and struggle against humans away. Konrad Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a “critical period” between 13–16 hours shortly after hatching. When I was about 12 yrs old, my… Read More Foal Imprinting