Stallion Group-Keeping in Theory and Practice
Version: 2009.06.10
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Part II: Practice Example and Experiences [1]
Stallions
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To give the practitioner as many clues and aids for an own stallion group-keeping, I here want to give as much know-how and as many experiences as possible through an extensive practice example.
A friend of mine, Ferdi Wirth from the Canton St. Gallen in Switzerland, is keeping four stallions, an Appaloosa, a Haflinger, and two ponies, in a group very successfully since 1997.
The four stallions, Chicco, Sturm, Indio und Winnetou on the all-weather paddock.
That stallion group-keeping supposedly is impossible in Switzerland due to the small spaces available, that it supposedly works only with certain stallions, that the stallions have to have grown up together or that they at least must not be socially impaired or disturbed through a life in box-stalls, all these imaginations were in large parts given the lie by Ferdi Wirth's stallion group-keeping.
The first thing that I noticed back then, in the summer of 1998, during my first visit at Ferdi's stallion group-keeping, was that it consisted of four very unequal stallions. This made Ferdi's stallion group-keeping a lot different from many examples in literature. Most stallion group-keepings which I had read about were group-keepings of stallions who were similar to each other both in size as well as in age, what, according to the authors, makes group-keeping easier because then the strength, activities and the behavior of the stallions isn't so different from the other stallions'.
The four stallions of Ferdi's stallion group-keeping consist of the following animals:
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Winnetou: Shetland pony stallion, born 1992, bought at the age of about 5, had previously bred several times before and had probably always been kept in box-stalls. |
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Sturm: Haflinger stallion, born 1995, was saved from the slaughterhouse as a 2-year old. |
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Indio: Appaloosa stallion, born March, 6'th,1991, bought at the age of 6, had previously bred already and had also been kept in box-stalls all his life. |
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Chicco: Pony stallion, born April 28'th,1996, was bought as a yearling and had been strongly neglected by his previous owner. |
All four stallions had neither grown up together, nor were they brothers or had otherwise known each other, but all came from average circumstance in which they had been kept in solitary confinement and partially had been neglected severely.
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