They Look Smaller Up Close

In a previous comment Dianne raised a few points concerning the size of the wild horses of Corolla. One of the points is easy to address. There definitely is enough habitat for a herd of 150 healthy horses in the 4 wheel drive area. The other questions touch on the issue of the size of the individual horses in the wild. I will agree that the horses are, on average, shorter than they were when they were while feasting on the fertilized vegetation outside of the 4-wheel drive area some 25 years ago. Secondly, in my limited observation it appears that prenatal nutrition has a greater impact on horse size than post natal nutrition. (Weanlings who are raised in captivity do not seem to reach the size of those born in captivity.)

The herd manager, Wesley Stallings, is a meticulous recorder of pictures and information on the wild herd and his photos and observations will be of more value than my observation of the herd, which only occurs several times each year. However, my observations lead me to the conclusion that there is a type of Corolla wild horse that looks more like the smaller horses of Shackleford. I will call them the Red Feather type. The Red Feather type seems to produce a more successful and more aggressive stallion than the larger Croatoan type.

As a long time volunteer with the Corolla Wild Horse Fund told me, "Those mean little stallions take a lot of the mares."

I also agree that the domestic Bankers produced by Dale Burrows were larger than the wild herd. It is my understanding that he often bred stock that contained a mixture of Corolla and Shackleford blood. I do not understand genetics, but I can see and it is obvious to my eyes that when a Corolla stallion is bred to a non Corolla mare the resulting foal is in nearly every case significantly larger than one would expect from simply looking at the height of the parents. This is true whether the mother is a registered Appaloosa, a BLM, or a grade Quarter horse. It has been suggested by those with experience in the matter that breeding a thirteen hand Corolla to a Thirteen hand Corolla will likely produce a thirteen hand foal, but that breeding a thirteen hand Corolla to a 12.2 Shackleford will often result in offspring around fourteen hands.

Lastly, for those who think that the wild herd members are much smaller than they were on average when viewed twenty years ago, I can only say, put a stick on it. From a distance the wild horses invariably look larger than they are, especially when framed by the low level brush and shrubs that make up much of the vegetation of the 4-wheel drive area. We have been surprised every single time we first put a measuring stick on a captured wild Corolla. Often people with life long horse experience over estimate the horses height by a full hand.

Some of the wild Corollas are larger and the great thing about them is that they maintain Spanish type although they are taller. (This is not the norm for Spanish horses. Unfortunately, the taller they are the less typier they tend to be). The mare pictured above is the tallest mare that I have personally seen in the wild. Today she will join my herd and will become part of the off site breeding program.

I have no interest in recklessly breeding horses to simply make them larger. For example, I will not breeder her to our largest stallion, Croatoan. Instead I will breed her to Manteo, who has even more of a classic Spanish type than does the mare.
Someday I hope to breed this mare to my little Shackleford stallion, but not yet.

The mare has been known as Swimmer, but at 4:00 pm today she will become Betsy Dowdy. Perhaps in the next post I will tell you a bit about the original Betsy Dowdy who was a 16 year old girl that I would have loved to have had in our riding program. The girl was tough.