Silvan

The time had come to bring our two newly acquired foals home.

To prepare for the event tomorrow, our neighbours daughter Dani and I took a lift with her Dad going out with tractor and trailer to collect some cereal being harvested in a field close to the field a few kilometres away where the male foal, Silvan was born in the spring and had spent every minute of his life, in a mixed herd of cows, horses and a goat or two in the wilderness of a huge field with no shelter of any kind.

Silvan ( he only got the name two days later) was the product of a probable accident between two horses belonging to farming friend Alois. He had given me Silvan against a few hours work on building his new organic-based cow barn and helping out with forest work earlier in the year.

He knew we needed a pal for the Quarter Horse foal Rosie who we had bought and were due to collect the next day. Silvan and Rosie were identical ages.


I have posted a very funny video on YouTube of Dani and my adventure to the field, and trying to get Silvan and his mother mare to walk back to the farm. Silvan had never seen a head collar, barely a human nor a de-wormer and we wanted him to have one before he moved into our stables. We were in the next day or two to see quite what multiple huge piles of worms on a little horse droppings looks like.

The funniest part of the adventure was to get Silvan awake from his afternoon nap and away from his friend the goat who thoroughly enjoyed rubbing his smell over him and squirting him full of pee!