Ponies and goats are good friends

All of our smaller ponies are good friends with the goats.   When they go out to graze, the mini ponies are usually not far behind.   Goats seem to give the ponies confidence and can be a settling influence on a nervous animal.   Horses and goats sometimes make strong bonds of friendship and become inseparable.    We’ve found that the big horses are a bit too much for the goats though.   If they start having ‘mad’ moments and charging around the goats get scared, so we keep them separate.   The herds of ‘little ones’ don’t seem to be so exuberant, or if they are, they are careful of their goat friends.   This is Sundance, who is a lovely gentle pony and has been with us for many years.   In front of him is Bridget, who was born this year.   She’s a real tiny tot and is smaller than most of her goat pals.   Bridget will grow until she is four years old but we think she’ll stay small – such little legs!

Horses and ponies are slow to mature and they have a large skeleton.   In the old days a horse would not be ‘broken in’ until he was four years old and never worked until five or six.   Hard work would only come at seven years old.   Horses lived a lot longer and didn’t go lame so much in those times.   The bones of a horse don’t fuse together until three years of age and yet these amazing animals are routinely broken in, raced and worked at two or three years.   The majority of humans like to win prizes and have a desire to own ‘the best’ – so mostly it’s what’s best for the humans and not what’s best for the horse – they couldn’t care less about trophies!