GoodLineNotSquare
Member
We've gone through the decision-making process of "should we?" and, as the broad consensus on this estimable forum and elsewhere is yes, mares and geldings can co-exist (with caveats), the next question is how?
We've had and seen advice ranging from "the nearest they can get is staring over the fence" to "dump them in the field together and let herd dynamics sort it out".
The starting point is that our mare ("our?" she's mine!) is currently in livery where she is turned out in a purely mare field, with a gelding field directly over the fence. There are roughly 20 mares in total and about half are turned out at a given time, so she's used to being in a rotating herd. In general, she's strong-minded but well-behaved, *but* has two arch-nemeses with whom she inevitably has kicking matches. The nightmare scenario is we put her in with the geldings and she does damage to Mrs GLNS's cob or our companion old boy. I am not so worried about damage to her, as she resembles Hovis without the hypochondria.
The most plausible advice we've had is to build a Berlin Wall strip of two spaced electric fences to split a paddock, put the mare on one side and the geldings on the other, and after they've settled down, rotate one of the geldings into the mare half in turn, taking about a week for each step.
(plan B is to rehome Mr Grumpy, the third gelding, bring in another mare as a companion, and have boys' and girls' paddocks, but we've rather got attached to Mr Grumpy despite his general demeanour (yep, we've done vet/farrier/dentist/physio and the poor lad is carrying an old-ish injury and was showing other signs of lack of care, so we're cutting him some slack
))
But I digress. What would you do to bring our horses together without injury?
We've had and seen advice ranging from "the nearest they can get is staring over the fence" to "dump them in the field together and let herd dynamics sort it out".
The starting point is that our mare ("our?" she's mine!) is currently in livery where she is turned out in a purely mare field, with a gelding field directly over the fence. There are roughly 20 mares in total and about half are turned out at a given time, so she's used to being in a rotating herd. In general, she's strong-minded but well-behaved, *but* has two arch-nemeses with whom she inevitably has kicking matches. The nightmare scenario is we put her in with the geldings and she does damage to Mrs GLNS's cob or our companion old boy. I am not so worried about damage to her, as she resembles Hovis without the hypochondria.
The most plausible advice we've had is to build a Berlin Wall strip of two spaced electric fences to split a paddock, put the mare on one side and the geldings on the other, and after they've settled down, rotate one of the geldings into the mare half in turn, taking about a week for each step.
(plan B is to rehome Mr Grumpy, the third gelding, bring in another mare as a companion, and have boys' and girls' paddocks, but we've rather got attached to Mr Grumpy despite his general demeanour (yep, we've done vet/farrier/dentist/physio and the poor lad is carrying an old-ish injury and was showing other signs of lack of care, so we're cutting him some slack
))But I digress. What would you do to bring our horses together without injury?
