My mare was happily settled in a herd of 5 other mares. She left for another farm for about 3 months, and is now going back to previous farm. Will she be able to assimilate easily back into the old herd (which hasn’t changed)…or will it be starting all over again for her as far as hierarchy being established? Will the other mares remember her, and will she remember them? She is small, low to mid pecking order.
They will remember her, but how they react depends on herd dynamics and your own personal tolerance of risk. It’s not a bad idea to assimilate them one by one, I would start with the herd leader first. If your set up doesn’t allow that, then turning out her first in the AM, then introducing the lead mare a little after, so on so forth, might be a good strategy.
I used to take my gelding every summer to a different BNT as a working student. At the end of the summer I always just chucked him back into the herd. They always remembered him, and there was some running and excitement, but by dinner everything was back to how it was before I took him away.
1 Like
For a number of years I used to pop my mare into a fairly stable herd for a couple of months in the fall. There was absolute recognition and a lot of galloping around the first day and then things settled in. Once that herd was all moved off the field and back at my coaches boarding barn, the mares absolutely recognized each other in the various paddocks and got excited when I brought my mare around. She’d puff up and kind of swagger down past the paddocks. And her former herd all ran up nickering.
The last mares on the field got so interested when they saw a mare who’d been brought into the barn a year previous. OMG I had no idea you were living here now!! They definitely recognize their herd. That said, any new combination of mares and they will need to negotiate rank all over again.
The nonherd horses couldn’t care less about my mare visiting.
1 Like
In my experience, there will be more sorting out the herd dynamics, but it might be less dramatic and shorter than if she were completely new.
