It's great to see you back at the Avalon Equine Blog! I hope you're enjoying our commentaries & that they are proving useful! As the resident stallion manager & handler, I'm going to focus on "the boys" in my first few Blog posts, & in this one, healthy stallion management. I cannot emphasise too much that stallions are a horse first & a stallion second. And that means they respond to stimuli - or a lack thereof - in an equine manner, with a dose of testosterone mixed in. This awareness - indeed understanding - is very important as a basis for managing stallions. While one pays attention to the fact that they are stallions, & so doesn't do things which are going to lead to issues, they need to be managed as horses, not some Pariah of Society. In particular, they need social interaction with other horses. This too I cannot emphasize enough, the importance of which was demonstrated admirably by some research out of U-Pa (New Bolton) which showed that in a natural herd setting, stallions had around 200 interactions with other horses an hour.
To understand domestic healthy stallion management possibilities better, we should review what happens in nature. There are 3 different ways in which an entire male horse is "managed".
The Harem stallion is one which has a group of mares. In time, those mares will produce colts, & those colts will reach sexual maturity. There may be a few who stay within the harem herd, even assisting the dominant stallion with managing the herd (but not breeding mares), but most will leave & seek a situation in the second "management" arrangement.
To understand domestic healthy stallion management possibilities better, we should review what happens in nature. There are 3 different ways in which an entire male horse is "managed".
The Harem stallion is one which has a group of mares. In time, those mares will produce colts, & those colts will reach sexual maturity. There may be a few who stay within the harem herd, even assisting the dominant stallion with managing the herd (but not breeding mares), but most will leave & seek a situation in the second "management" arrangement.
Avalon Equine's "Healthy Stallion Management consists of stallions living in large runs, outdoors 24/7 with run in sheds adjacent to other stallions - simulating a bachelor herd environment.
The bachelor herd comprises of young intact males. We even see this in the human herd - they're the lads hanging out on the street corner, racing cars or motorcycles & whistling at the girls! The bachelor herd consists of solely males - there is no mare interaction within the herd. Once a female is introduced, competition starts (with both horses and humans!). A bachelor stallion may go off & seek a mare to breed & then either form his own harem herd, or return to the bachelor herd. There will be a dominant male within the bachelor herd, but if he leaves & returns after another colt has ascended to dominancy, there is no serious competition for the "herd boss" position, & the original leader resumes his lead position. This arrangement therefore is a very peaceful one when used in a domestic setting. Interestingly, homosexual behaviours are seen in equine bachelor herds, including sexual acts with rectal intromission.
What is rarely seen in the wild is the lone stallion. He is usually the old horse which has been driven off from his harem herd by a younger interloper stallion, & is waiting for the passing pride of lions to jump on him & eat him for breakfast. Understandably, this is not a happy situation for a stallion, & therefore should not be replicated in a domestic setting!
The ultimate "harem stallion" domestically is of course the stallion which runs with mares. We do not really recommend that, as there are obvious inherent risks to both stallion & mares. When lecturing, I invariably encounter someone who says "well, our stallion's never had a problem...", but the fact remains that he only needs a single problem if it's bad enough, & it's all over. What one can do however is have the stallion in a separate pen or stall adjacent to & in the sight of mares. These mares will then become "his" herd.
What is rarely seen in the wild is the lone stallion. He is usually the old horse which has been driven off from his harem herd by a younger interloper stallion, & is waiting for the passing pride of lions to jump on him & eat him for breakfast. Understandably, this is not a happy situation for a stallion, & therefore should not be replicated in a domestic setting!
The ultimate "harem stallion" domestically is of course the stallion which runs with mares. We do not really recommend that, as there are obvious inherent risks to both stallion & mares. When lecturing, I invariably encounter someone who says "well, our stallion's never had a problem...", but the fact remains that he only needs a single problem if it's bad enough, & it's all over. What one can do however is have the stallion in a separate pen or stall adjacent to & in the sight of mares. These mares will then become "his" herd.
Goldmaker - a Cremello TB stallion, and Colorado Skrødstrup, a Knabstrupper stallion- at Avalon Equine in a domestic "bachelor herd" environment. Stallions live in adjacent runs with a "buffer" zone between them.
Similarly, bachelor herd arrangement could be achieved by turning all the stallions out together. Again, we don't recommend this!! There are in fact some well-known facilities in Europe who do exactly this at the end of the breeding season & it works well for them, but my nerves are not that good. So as with the harem stallion, one can also have the stallions penned or stalled next to & visible to each other. While it may be necessary to move individual stallions around in the arrangement, as they can have likes or dislikes for a specific neighbour, this arrangement will typically work well for multiple stallions, although being individuals, there will be exceptions. The important key here is that there is no mare interaction - do not drop a mare into the middle of the bachelor herd arrangement, or all hell will break loose!
A dirty stallion is a happy stallion! This is Toronto - one of the Hanoverian warmblood stallions standing at Avalon Equine. Allowing stallions to live as close to natural as possible minimizes stress and helps to maintain a healthy, happy stallion!
The bachelor herd arrangement is how we maintain health stallion management with most stallions at Avalon Equine & Equine-Reproduction.com, LLC. We can have anywhere up to 20 stallions on the property at the same time, so the bachelor herd works very well in keeping the peace. Competition between the horses is minimal & even when introducing new animals, there is only about 5 minutes or so of "chest thumping" challenging, & then all go back to peacefully eating.
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