July 2, 2009

A New Era For The Young Horse Teaching And Research Program

This year we are "re-inventing" the Young Horse Teaching and Research program to accomodate the changes in the economy and the equine industry needs as we perceive them. One of our goals for the Young Horse program has always been to study and help to promote horses that are "in need" of promotion and research. The North American Equine Ranching Information Council (NAERIC) draft cross horses which we had used in the past are now well recognized as valuable equine animals, commanding high prices even as weanlings.  Our research over the past 10 years has documented the unique nutritional needs of young draft cross horses. The data are available on our website ( see Research )  and in Equine Science Society proceedings from 2007 and 2009. We have learned to identify behaviors in the free ranging nursing foals which give us a good clue as to their disposition and trainability, allowing us to more consistently select excellent horses for the program.  However, the NAERIC horses are no longer "at risk" and have a well established markets in a variety of disciplines. 
            On the other hand, the over 9000 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) mustangs that have been removed from the public ranges to prevent overgrazing are definitely in need! They can be wonderful equine athletes, excelling in a wide variety of disciplines, especially as trail and lesson horses. Unfortunately general public perception is that mustangs are "wild", difficult to handle and not very useful. We hope to help change that perception by incorporating yearling mustangs into our program. We anticipate that they will not be more difficult to train than our unhandled NAERIC weanlings have been. As long as we select the yearlings based on the same criteria we have established over the years for the weanling draft crosses, they should be attractive, well behaved horses with tremendous athletic potential by the time the auction is held on April 26, 2010. We will be selecting 4 yearling BLM mustangs to be used in the program this year. It will be interesting to compare them to the 4 unhandled weanlings we will get from our known bloodlines in North Dakota and the 4 yearlings left over from this year, both with respect to training and growth performance. If all goes as planned, we will gradually switch the program to focus primarily on mustangs and other potentially unwanted horses.