Kentucky Humane Society Equine C.A.R.E.
04/23/2025
Poppy’s new little c**t was able to be checked over and received a few moments of adoration from the team before being quickly returned to mom yesterday. There’s something satisfying about seeing a mare who has known hardship as a free roaming feral mine horse and allowing her to have a foal in a safe environment, after being fed well enough to support her and her growing baby.
So often feral free-roaming mares give everything they have to bring a foal into this world, often struggling to make sufficient colostrum with poor quality forage growing from land mostly devoid of actual topsoil. Sure, some of the foals look healthy when born, or a week or two later. Usually the developmental differences in a feral foal out on the mines compared to a foal raised in captivity at 6 months old are already obvious. But by a year, the difference is often staggering. As free roaming horses, as mom’s milk dwindles in nutrient quality and feral mine foals begin relying more on local vegetation, their growth and development often slows. Sometimes by a year old, a lot of the light is gone from their eyes as they shuffle around, still trying to follow mom, while picking at tree buds or grass that grows with little true nutrient quality. Some fare okay, but most are already far behind their genetic potential by the time they reach one year of age. This fella will not know what it is to be caught up in the dust between stallions fighting over his feral mother. He will not have his growth stunted by an overwhelming parasite burden going into next winter. He will not know what it is be without shelter from cold winds. He will not be left behind if he has a medical need, when many feral mares have to choose between staying with an injured foal or moving on to find water under the summer sun.
He is one of the lucky ones, and his life has just begun.
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