WWYD Retirement options

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retired_girl

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Birker2020 said:
You have to bear in mind that there will be scuffles to start with, your horse may/will have bite marks on them and get bullied to start with. Nearly every individual horse that I have seen introduced to our retirement herd has stood on its own for the first few days, looking very sorry for themselves, you know straight away they are new by the way they are on their own by the gate, 20 acres away from the herd. And then gradually, day by day they get nearer and nearer to the herd, grazing on the periphery until they all become one. This is a process that can take anything from a couple of days to a couple of weeks or more as in Lari's case. For some reason he was terrified and I mean terrified of the one horse, the one day it started walking towards him from about 50 foot away and he shot behind his friend and stood at the other side of him out of sight of the horse, I couldn't believe my eyes how frightened he was. Yet they share a bale of hay now without issue! And he's a really nice horse, nothing nasty about him so not sure why Lari reacted the way he did!

We have about 40 acres though and lots of fields, into fields, into more fields so they do tend to stretch themselves out. It can be quite disturbing to start with. When Lari was bullied he was put in a two acre field with a friend (an old quiet boy) to allow him to build his confidence and then when he went back in with the herd he continued to jump out the y.o split the herd which was incredibly kind of her, but obviously this couldn't continue. Then the week we were going to pull him out and take him home two new horses joined (friends with each other already) and they stuck by Lari and shooed off the other horses. He never stands with them now, but for some days he was stuck by their side by glue.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that all herds are different, and all personalities are different. Just because this happened to my boy doesn't mean it will happen to yours but you do need to be aware that the pecking order will need to be established and it doesn't make for comfortable viewing at times. So you staying all day for a couple of days you might only see a very small percentage of what could happen further in the future when your horse is accepted so don't be tempted to make a decision to pull him out too soon. Good luck.

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thank you for this insight, hope your lad continues to do well.
 
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