Germany's wild horses

I have been living my German life for about a year and half now since I returned from Canada. There have been some ups and quite some downs for me. 

However, since I moved further North in Germany than I ever intended, I'm also learning a lot about Germany. This summer I had my first real vacation in Germany and enjoyed it a lot. Also, I have a friend who lives in the old Eastern Germany and he invited me home to his place. There are so many nice places in Germany and I didn't even know!

So, I'm becoming kind of a tourist which also includes the closer vicinity of where I live. For this weekend I had planned to visit the population of wild horses about an hour drive from my house. Those ponies have been in this areas literally for centuries and were first mentioned in writing sometime in the 14th century.They adapted perfectly to the scarce food source of marshland, swamps, and sandy grounds for hundreds of years and are supposed to be truly native to the area. But as the story goes, with progressing land use, more and more grounds were turned into farmland and the 'Dülmener Wildpferd' was endangered to become extinct.

The herd

 

A Lord from the Croy dynasty decided to catch the remaining wild horses and let them roam on his land. This continues until today and the wild horses still 'belong' to the Lords of Croy.

The area the about 400 horses are kept on is about 3.5 square kilometers big and is half forest and half open grass lands. The herd is kept wild which also means there won't be a vet or farrier involved. This might seem harsh at times, but it keeps the gen pool healthy because just like in freedom only the strongest and fittest survive and are able to breed.

Once a year, they bring all horses into an arena and catch the yearling colts by hand and separate them from their bands to be sold. If the youngsters would be left with the group they would start trying to form their own bands and bloody fights between the stallions would be the result. So, they are auctioned off and can be bought as recreational ponies. In fact, last year I had the chance to work with one of those ponies newly broken in.

 

First, I wondered why even a lot of the obviously older horses had such short tails,but then I saw they had found good use for the fence which holds them captive.

 

Like always, Nuka was with me...a bit whinny because she had to stay on leash, was not allowed to play with the teacup sized dog, and also not allowed to hopp into the horses' waterhole. But she lived through it...