28/04/2025
Itās the day after the muster, and Iāve been home for just 18 hours. The adrenaline and exhaustion havenāt quite worn off.
Muster days are never easy. This year, I was tasked with documenting and matching every horse that came in from the southern zonesā150 wild horses in all. For almost every one, we had a name, a lineage, a place in the story of the ranges. A handful were new, the youngest among them, but even then, we could trace them back to the bands we know so well. From Zone 20, 21 more horses arrived, including a mare weād long watched as part of the immunocontraception project. It was three full days of sorting, checking, and matching, working alongside vets to ensure juveniles werenāt overlooked in the mature pens, and that big colts werenāt mistaken for stallions.
Because of this care, 13 fillies and 10 colts were drafted back into the juvenile penāsmall mercies that help match each horse to the right future, and, for some, to the opportunities of the Kaimanawa Legacy Foundation C**t and Stallion Challenge.
For those that must be removed, for the sake of the herd as a whole, it is an honour and a responsibility to witness their first tentative steps towards domestication, and to play a part in helping them find safety on the other side.
Since arriving home late last night, Iāve spent countless hours matching the horses in my yardāchecking and double-checking ages, genders, and markings so each horse can be paired with the homes and trainers whoāve been waiting for them. It isnāt always a perfect match. Not everything aligns with what people requested, and a bit of shuffling and logistics was neededāsometimes because there simply werenāt enough horses of a certain gender to meet every quota, and sometimes because of the realities of trucking. For example, on my truck, there were only two bays suitable for stallions, and not enough juvenile colts, so we had to pull three-year-old stallions into the C**t Challenge just to fill the spots. Instead of the six stallions weād applied for, we ended up with nine, which left no room for me to bring home a personal horse this musterāsomething Iād hoped for. But as always, the horses come first, and Iāll be dedicating my time and love to one of the public-sponsored excess KLF horses this yearāone who didnāt have a home to go to.
We didnāt finish unloading until after dark, so I had to wait for morning light to truly see which horses had arrived in our yards. This evening, Iāll be sharing an update with photos and storiesāintroducing the 43 horses currently in our care and letting everyone know which horses have been assigned to whom. Eight of them are only stopping here briefly before they travel onāon June 9th, theyāll be trucked to other trainers around the country to begin their new lives. My team in Taupo will be taming 35 across two different rotations. Among those are three public-sponsored horses who were in excess and had nowhere else to go, their lives saved by the generosity of supporters. Additional excess horses are heading to trainers across the country as well.
Itās been a monumental, exhausting, and bittersweet couple of days. My gratitude goes out to the vets, the muster team, Department of Conservation, New Zealand Defence Force, Kaimanawa Heritage Horses, the Kaimanawa Legacy team, and SPCA. The work is never easy, and itās never taken lightly, but itās done with the horsesā best interests at heart.
There will be more to shareāstories, faces, and the realities of what it means to be wild, and what it means to lose that wildness. For now, Iām still working long hours in preparation for my 21-Day Wild Kaimanawa Workshop, which begins tomorrow, and I havenāt yet had time to process the lossāthat so many of my favourite family bands will never again be seen in the wild.
