Stallion Group-Keeping in Theory and Practice
Version: 2009.06.10
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Part I: Theory and Requirements [1]
"Appropriate to the Species" made in Hollywood - Castration for the Group or Group instead of Castration?
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Bet let's focus on the subject-matter: In order to occupy oneself seriously with keeping of horses "appropriate to the species", one can not get around dealing seriously and thoroughly with the contents of this term.
Appropriate the species means as much as being "appropriate" or "just" to the natural characteristics and nature of an animal, for instance of a horse. This means to not ignore or even destroy its inborn nature, such as is done with castration for instance, but the opposite, to go into it, to preserve it in all of its aspects and facets and to consider, to protect and embed it in all our plans, our keeping and our handling of it.
As much will most likely have been clear to one or the other. But what really corresponds to the natural ways and nature of the horse, there large and very large gaps of knowledge open up, which have corresponding consequences on what we think we can ask and demand of the horse under usage of the term "appropriate to the species".
Whoever wants to keep horses "appropriate to the species" or "just to the nature of the species" as the German term goes, must first of all know what the nature of the horse is, what corresponds to the species of the horse, what the species horse consists of and what its nature is. And for that one must watch and study horses when they have not been changed and adulterated by humans and their keeping. Meaning in wildlife.
And it's not sufficient to have seen old Hollywood movies of the black stallion! Unfortunately it is still the case that not only the majority of horse owners, but even owner of riding schools and boarding stables believe that "appropriate to the species" in connection with male horses means only one thing: The black stallion in the Hollywood movie.
Because of this, many horse owners defend and justify the mass castrations of male horses with the argument, that unfortunately not every one of their horses can lead an own harem in endless prairies, the way the black stallion did in the movie. But, in order to keep male horses as close as possible to this Hollywood ideal of "appropriate to the species", unfortunately they would have to be castrated. This is the comprehensible, but all the more fatal logic stemming from the education on horses made in Hollywood.
Because exactly therein lies the mistake: The Hollywood-film does not convey and represent the truth about the nature of the horse. Therefore the ideal on which this interpretation of "appropriate to the species" is built upon is a false one, one which in reality has nothing or next to nothing to do with appropriate to the species and the true nature of the horse.
Of course it corresponds to the nature of most horses, that they live with other horses in social structures and together with their friends and group members 24 hours a day (exceptions confirm the rule!). But the false, romantic and most naïve idea, that every stallion in wildlife would have his own harem, - or the slightly more "advanced thought" resulting from this naïve Black-Beauty idea, that in wildlife all surplus stallions would kill each other in fights (as otherwise the numbers simply wouldn't match), costs countless male horses their natural and inborn bodily integrity, their natural psyche and their natural hormones as they were meant for the organism by nature (with all negative side effects). Namely then, when their testicles are cut off, in order to thereby make them uncaring and tolerant towards human incapability and ignorance in keeping and handling.
If we are interested in what really is in accordance with the nature of the horse, we must stop projecting our false imaginations and our limited romantic clichés on them. We must start learning from them, seeing what is there, we must watch with scientific discipline, without intervening, without castrating, without re-forming horses to what we believe they ought to be like or what would be good for them and without piling our false and naïve pity onto them, which in the end serves only us and our egoism. We need scientific realizations as I describe them in the next section.
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