Over the road lives a fine stallion of Connemara blood, of strong, heavy type, with dark, soft eyes and a full, flowing mane that falls over his crested neck in long, wavy locks. He runs free with his mares and foals over open acreage on the hill above us. Free to court his mares, and chasten his colts. A rarity in the equine world where risk of injury to expensive animals is high, and thus breeding is usually a tightly controlled affair involving “teasers”, restraints and padded partitions. Indeed, this stallion’s predecessor was knocked out of action by a kick to his crown jewels that ended his career. It happens. Horses be horses. But the risk of that kind of injury in horses living free to express their natural behaviours with the space to get out of each other’s way is minimal, and far outweighed by the benefits of robust, resilient health—physical and behavioural.
The land my neighbour’s stallion and his herd run on is open and rugged, cut from limestone and shale, its sparse patchwork of dwarf scrub and highland grasses grazed tight, revealing strewn about boulders, cliffs and crevices. A few small, lone, windswept willows offer no shelter from the driving, heavy rain. The horses stand in dips between rocky hillocks with their backs to the wind and rain that runs rivulets off their bare backs. They wear no rugs. Their natural, ungroomed coats are thick and greasy and impervious to our wild, north Atlantic torrents. They wear no shoes, but their hooves are worn hard and their action is sound. They move about freely over the rough terrain, free to play, fight and run, to graze freely on the sparse forage of the hill, and their fitness and condition shines.
As far as I can see my neighbour’s horses don’t get a lot of handling, yet on occasions when I have helped move and handle them they are calm, relaxed, unafraid and complaisant. I have walked into that stallion’s herd, held out my hand to his unbridled head, fed him blackberries from the palm of my hand, run my hands over his solid, muscular form, smelled his sweet, soft breath and felt the radiant calm of his powerful presence. I watched through the summer as a confident young colt followed his sire around, devotedly copying the stallion’s every move, learning through observation, imitation, and occasional swiftly dealt rebuke, how to horse—how to behave and socialise within the dynamics of the herd. Lessons that will stand him well when he goes on into his formal education with human teachers.
I remember a little filly I took in for training once, many years ago when in my twenties I freelanced training ponies. This little yearling filly had been given as a first pony to a little boy whose enthusiasm for his new toy was unrestrained and unguided. The poor little thing was terrorised, kept alone in a shed and brought out for clumsy, daily “training” by a child with no skill or guidance until she cracked and became a dangerous, unhandleable, wretched thing that he couldn’t get near without risking a kick. It wasn’t far away, so I collected her on foot, and was watched by boy and his anxious mother as his filly kicked and fought and danced and strained at her halter all the way down their mile long farm track until we turned onto the road and out of sight. Once home, with my right arm hanging out of its socket, I turned her out with a couple of my quieter mares and left her to settle, and then you know what I did with her? Nothing. I let her be. I let her be part of a herd, to live as a horse, learning the ways of horse and their interactions with each other and their human (me) by observation and imitation of her herd mates. I did absolutely nothing with that filly besides maybe five to ten minutes per day giving her treats and back scratches, lightly handling and her leading her about, and whatever other ordinary routine tasks, moving from field to field, etc, were necessary as I went about my equine business. About as much training as is right for a yearling. Her little boy would ride down on his bike to visit her, and I’d send him out to bring her carrots and brush her on the field, too. She spent six weeks with my herd, learning to horse and unlearning the terrors of too early training by untrained hands. And then I walked her back, watched again all the way back up that long farm track, with she gently plodding on a loose lead by my side. I did my best to explain she was too young to train, still a baby, to persuade that little boy to just be her friend, for now. Give her some equine company, let her loose to run and play and learn to just be a horse, first. Then sit, be quiet, and watch her—learn her language before you try to teach her yours.
For two summers before we moved onto our land and began to manage the land intentionally, we let our goats run free. The land was open, unfenced, and living nearly thirty miles away meant I couldn’t manage the goats on the land with electric fencing. I couldn’t be there to bring them in and out of shelter at night or when it rained, or carry water to their paddock. I could only check on them once a day and trust them to use their own instincts and intelligence, to find their own forage, water and shelter, to make themselves comfortable wherever they pleased. I spent that time simply observing the goats living freely. When I came to check them early in the morning, I saw that they would climb to the highest, rocky peaks to watch the sunrise, and when the midday sun blazed they lay out on the flat, sun baked rocks to bathe in the rays in their favourite sunspot with a view over the valley. And when it rained, they took themselves down into the hazel copse below the outcrop where the lone oak grows and deep nooks and crevices in the rocks offered shelter, or into the birch woodland along the creek to nibble tree bark and ivy under the canopy. Our matriarch, Fawn the Goat, came from the Kerry Mountains so she already had what it took to quickly find her way, but the rest, soft, pampered princesses coming from our lowland smallholding system had to adapt to living on their own wits out on the land. And I saw them blossom into the sleek, robust, natural vitality that only comes to animals living outdoors, free to move around, to browse over a wide choice of forage and express their natural behaviours without restraint or interference.
That resilient health in my herd is equally as important and inextricable from the health of the land, and the health of us.
I also learned a lot in those couple of years about the land, valuable time spent observing the land through the seasons and the effects of our livestock foraging freely before I began to manage and target our impacts intentionally. But that’s for another time. I saw that given the space and freedom to lead themselves goats will naturally concentrate on a small area of vegetation until they have exhausted it, then move on to the next area, and they won’t return to the same area again until it has fully recovered or they run out of new ground, naturally implementing the heavy impact followed by long recovery that we aim for in regenerative grazing. And unlike sheep that spread out across their landscape, goats stay and move together in a tight unit. Goats have complex social hierarchy, more like horses than sheep. They form very close family bonds that they maintain for life. Separation is life or death to a goat.
I cannot separate the health of my livestock from the health of the land, and I cannot separate my animals’ physical and nutritional health from their emotional and behavioural health. The goats are the land, and the land is the life it feeds. There’s a sweet spot, a balance where we manage their impact while giving them the freedom to roam, climb, browse and be goats, to move around and work things out for themselves with the freedom to express their goatness, to use their own wits and wiles, to make friendships, establish hierarchy, raise their own young until they wean themselves, and form lasting bonds, to have young that are well adjusted and robust and know their place in the social order of the herd, mothers that are unstressed and content—meat and milk that is sweet and untainted. It means taking risks that some others might not, like not dehorning my horned goats, like my neighbour’s stallion running with his mares, and it means having a less “productive” herd. But I’d rather take those minimal risks and have animals that thrive and flourish in their landscape. And it means knowing my animals, taking the time to sit with them in quiet observation, to learn from them, to let them lead, for I am but their humble herder. To see my goats be goats.
What a beautiful story. Thank you.
So refreshing. Thank you for this. I'm saving it as a much-needed reminder and guide for my family's future herd.