MUSTANG BREED
The North American Mustang is a light horse breed. Light horse breeds generally weigh less than 1,500 pounds. They are typically used as riding horses for leisure and trail riding. Being agile and swift, many are also used on the racetrack, in the show ring, and for work on the ranch.
The mustang is descending from horse breeds first brought to Northern America by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. The horses eventually broke free to run wild and breed on the open prairies. The mustang rambled free in great numbers than any other wild horses on earth, banding together in herds to protect themselves from wolves, coyotes and other predators.
Mustangs come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, with the average height being around 14.2 hands. The commonest colours are bay and sorrel, but they come in buckskin, appaloosa, zebra striped dun, grulla ( slate grey ), roan, palomino, and paint.
Pony CARE AND FEEDING
The Mustang’s ancestors ran wild in the Americas, and they grew into a hardy breed with simple nutritional necessities. Mustangs had to survive on small quantities of grass and brush so they have a tendency to be straightforward keepers and maintain weight on reasonably low amounts of feed.
The Mustang is a fairly low upkeep breed that does well in most settings. The breed does just as well in pasture or in a barn or box stall.
PATTERN
Mustangs form tiny herds that provide friendship and defense against predators. A herd consists of one stallion and his harem of 2 to eight mares, their foals, and diverse young mustangs. A herd will ramble and graze in a particular territory. It’ll put up with the presence of other herds on the fringes of its range, and will infrequently join them in warding off attacks from predators. When the herd is challenged by an attacker, an older female, called a lead mare, will lead the herd away from danger while the horse remains to test the aggressor. It will snort wildly while pawing the ground with his front hoofs to raise a cloud of dust.
BREEDING
The breeding season is from April to July. The foals are born the following spring. When it is time to give birth, the mares leave the herd and bear their foals alone in well-hidden locations. Though adult mustangs have a wide selection of coat colors, newborn foals have coats that blend in with the dusty ground of their habitat.
The foals can stand within a couple of hours of birth. After 2-3 days, ma and foal join the herd and remain with it for a year or more. When the male colts reach about 3 years of age, they’re driven from the herd by the stallion. The colts are too junior to attract female, so they form a herd of their own with which they wander for one or two years. They infrequently challenge the leader of other herds, until they’re successful in building a herd of their own.
FOOD AND FEEDING
Like all horses, the mustang is a herbivore, eating nothing except foliage. However because of the scarcity and low nutritional value of the coarse grass, sagebrush, and juniper which it eats, it has adapted to survive on a diet that would not sustain trained horses. Centuries of living in such harsh conditions have enabled the mustang to go without food for a couple of days if necessary. The mustang has additionally learned the simple way to break open frozen springs and to clear sediment-clogged water holes by splashing and digging to displace the waste. It’ll even gnaw prickly pear cactus to get moisture from the plant’s juices.
MUSTANG AND MAN
By the late 18th C, mustangs were well established in 9 western states and numbered between two and five million. Then, as settlers moved west and began to cultivate the land, the mustangs were driven off and finished by the thousands. The greatest destruction of the mustangs has happened in this century ; enormous numbers were held and utilized in both the Boer War and World War I. Others were caught and used as cow ponies, and many more were shot to be used as pet food and manure. By the mid-19608242;s, their numbers were conjectured at between 18,000 and 34,000, and by the early 1970s, there were less than 10,000.
Video Brochure Horse Barn Stall
