Horses have always been around. There are domestic horses, without which a person cannot do anything, you need to plow and harvest, on holidays to ride with the breeze in a troika, but you never know what else. And there are wild horses, a free tribe, they live on their own, only the steppes observe the laws, they never eat to their fill, and therefore they are smart, light. Most wild horses are former domestic horses that have been treated cruelly by fate. Either the horse lost its owner and became wild in the wild, or it got lost, lost its way and then clung to a herd of wild horses. There are still wild horses from birth, born out of any selection, in nature. In any case, true mustangs are not much different from feral ones, and they both live, migrate, give birth and are part of the horse brotherhood on both sides of the Atlantic, on all continents and in all lands, except for northern latitudes and frozen Antarctica.
A herd of wild horses can grow to 80 - 100 heads if conditions are favorable. A river or lake with fresh water is essential for increasing the population, and the food base in the form of natural pastures with dense grass is the key to a calm life for mustangs. Sometimes wild horses join a herd that has been formed for a long time. After some difficulties, they are accepted. Each herd is divided into several schools of 20-30 horses each. The owner of the school is the leader, an adult horse, he althy and strong. Each horse has a herd instinct, she knows all her brothers in the school, the leader and the young tribe, which needs an eye and an eye. The foals do not think about keeping close to their own, they run away and wander in the distance, making the mother mare worry.
After all, wild horses also have enemies: wolves and bears, lynx and leopard, who are just waiting for the suckling foal to fight off the herd and be left without protection. Over the long centuries of free life in the steppe and on the prairies, the mustangs have learned to defend themselves. When attacked by a pack of wolves, like animals, horses feel danger and stray into a dense ring in such a way that the hind legs are outside the circle and predators cannot approach without the risk of being hit by a heavy hoof. Young animals, along with mares, are located inside the circle, and adult stallions hold a circular defense.
People usually do not hunt for mustangs, as they do not represent value as prey, horse meat is considered third-rate meat and is not in demand. Sometimes pastoralists catch mustangs to tame and domesticate. But wild horses by nature are not amenable to education, they are very difficult to saddle and almost impossible to ride. If, among the mustangs, a wild horse comes across, but previously lived in the master's herd, then it is easier with him, since some reflexes of domestic life are preserved.in the mind of the horse and he only needs to be reminded of the past. But wild horses, the photos of which you see, sometimes become so wild that it is not possible to return them to their former life and they have to be released into the wild.
Horse breeding is so advanced at the present time that it is easier to buy a trained domestic horse than to mess around with a stubborn and wayward savage, trying to instill good manners in him. Therefore, few people want to tame mustangs, except perhaps for sports competitions in extreme equestrian sports, when daredevils try to hold out as long as possible on the back of an unbroken and barely saddled mustang. Such competitions, called rodeos, are popular in North America, they even have their own champions.
