A tail of woe...
2,109 views · Published 7 July 2013 · 3:03 · Indexed 1 November 2026
Channel: plainandtall · 2013 · People & Blogs
Horses have tails for a reason. I made this three minute long video to demonstrate the long term harm of the fashion of docking draft horse tails. This video is only three minutes long, while a horse docked in the first days of his life, may expect to live about 25 years. On outset I thought this video would be very boring, but the soggy hill did provide a little unexpected excitement as the draft horse slipped and fell to his knees when he cranked at his friend for pushing his personal body space...all was quickly forgiven. Foot stamping and mouth biting seemed greatly reduced from their regular pasture behavior- I attribute that to the fact that I just allowed them out into this patch of ungrazed grass to be able to video them in a close group not moving around much. I'm not bothering to count feet stamps and mouth bite counts as promised because they were so rare as to be insignificant. Perhaps a dry-lot video is warranted. I typically bring the horses in during the day. This is to reduce the pasture time for the pony, and to help protect the feet of the draft horse who does so much stomping at flies during the summer. I may edit this when I get a chance to do a more accurate count - I counted a tail swish as one side- (so if a swish goes from one side to the other- that counts as two) my initial counts are as follows: Standardbred: 90 swishes Pony: 67 swishes Draft horse: a whopping 345 swishes - or 115 per minute
