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[RC] sorting by colors - Dot Wiggins

For several years we were involved with around 20 horses, pretty stable year round group, with maybe twice that many coming and going for a month or so to 6 months or more in the summer.
Large pasture, 800 acres, water from one small intermittent spring and a creek at the corrals.
All horses were corraled every day from early spring till fall, with the non working ones held in a small pasture till all went out to the big pasture in the evenings.


Nothing younger than 3, up to some in the low 20s.
All possible colors including a number of pintos/paints.

They would separate overnite into groups, sometimes pairs but usually 3, at least one of 5, rarely a single, often a new arrival. Never a group of all one gender, 2 mares and gelding, 2 geldings and mare, 3 and 2, etc..

The really interesting part was the color choices. Bays, browns, blacks, and spotted dark colors. Chestnuts, light bays, red roan, light appys, and red spots. Greys, palominos, pale duns, light pintos.
Dark buckskins, some roans, seemed to end up anywhere. It usually took a couple of weeks for the new ones to settle in a group, with a pair that came together and had been together for a long time usually ending up with a group that fit the "alpha" of the new pair.
They were shifted every day, groups split up till nite, but they always turned up the next day in pretty much the same groups.


I've always been sorry I didn't document this with photos.

One other interesting thing, I think horses are snobs!
Besides the "color" sorting, the working horses seemed to have a higher status than the rest. If one of them joined the workers, or an unbroke horse started under saddle, they moved up the pecking order.
Was a real lesson in "horse herd" social interaction.



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