The american Mustang is a light [1] horse breed. Light pony breeds sometimes weigh less than 1,500 pounds. They’re typically used as riding horses for leisure and trail riding. Being flexible and swift, many are also used on the racetrack, in the show ring, and for work on the ranch.

The mustang is descending from horse breeds first brought to North America by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. The horses at last broke free to run free and breed on the open prairies. The mustang roamed free in great numbers than any other wild horses on earth, banding together in herds to guard themselves from wolves, coyotes and other predators.

Mustangs come in every variety of size, shapes, and colors, with the average height being around 14.2 hands. The commonest colours are bay and sorrel, but they come in buckskin, appaloosa, zebra striped dun, grulla ( slate grey ), roan, palomino, and paint.

Horse CARE AND FEEDING

The Mustang’s ancestors ran wild in the Americas, and they developed into a hardy breed with simple nutritional needs. Mustangs had to survive on small amounts of grass and brush so they tend to be simple keepers and maintain weight on fairly low amounts of feed.

The Mustang is a reasonably low maintenance breed that does well in most settings. The breed does equally well in pasture or in a barn or box stall.

PATTERN

Mustangs form tiny herds that provide friendship and protection against predators. A herd is composed of one horse and his harem of 2 to 8 mares, their foals, and assorted young mustangs. A herd will meander and graze in a particular territory. It’ll tolerate the presence of other herds on the edges of its range, and will infrequently join them in warding off attacks from predators. When the herd is faced up to by an assailant, an older female, called a lead mare, will lead the herd away from danger while the horse remains to test the aggressor. It’ll snort wildly while pawing the ground with his front hoofs to raise a cloud of dust.

BREEDING

The breeding season is from April to July. The foals are born the following spring. When it’s time to give birth, the mares leave the herd and bear their foals alone in well-hidden locations. Though adult mustangs have a wide variety of coat colors, newborn foals have coats that mix in with the dusty ground of their habitat.

The foals are able to stand within one or two hours of birth. After 2-3 days, mother and foal join the herd and remain with it for a year or longer. When the male colts reach about 3 years of age, they’re driven from the herd by the horse. The colts are too young to draw in female, so they make a herd of their own with which they wander for a few years. They infrequently challenge the leader of other herds, till they are successful in creating a herd of their own.

FOOD AND FEEDING

Like all horses, the mustang is a herbivore, eating nothing but vegetation. However because of the deficiency and low calorific value of the coarse grass, sagebrush, and juniper which it eats, it has changed to survive on a diet that wouldn’t sustain tamed horses. Centuries of living in such oppressive conditions have enabled the mustang to go without food for a few days if necessary. The mustang has also learned how to break open frozen springs and to clear sediment-clogged water holes by splashing and digging to displace the debris. It will even chew prickly pear cactus to obtain moisture from the plant’s juices.

MUSTANG AND MAN

By the late 18th C, mustangs were well established in nine western states and numbered between two and 5,000,000. Then, as settlers moved west and began to cultivate the land, the mustangs were driven off and snuffed out by the thousands. The best eradication of the mustangs has occurred in this century ; enormous numbers were held and employed in both the Boer War and World War I. Others were caught and used as cow ponies, and a lot more were shot to be used as pet food and manure. By the mid-19608242;s, their numbers were conjectured at between eighteen thousand and 34,000, and by the early 1970s, there were less than ten thousand.