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PREVIOUS ISSUES
October
2008
November
2008
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There was only 1 trip to the bush in December, as fortunately a lot of
the country is getting some much needed rain. Most of the Brumby habitats
in Australia are pretty isolated and we quickly get cut off and stranded
if there is a fall of a few inches or more. We went back out to the high
country in central Queensland in early December to retrieve 2 movement
sensored video cameras we had hidden 3 months earlier at a spring called
"Hell Hole".
The spring is a small water hole (2 metres round) that trickles down through
a narrow gorge from a soak in the mountains above. The site has significance
to the local Aborigines so they keep it fenced to keep the stock out of
the pretty gorge area. However, the horses knock down the fences as soon
as they are put up to access the water.
There is a dam near by, but the Brumbies seem to prefer a natural water
hole. The cameras gave us some fascinating footage of horse bands watering,
with the odd stallion fight and lead mares exerting their authority. This
footage will be compiled one day to produce a nice little documentary
of feral horse behavior.
If any readers have an interest in compiling such a film, let
me know. I have hundreds of 30 second video footage of feral horses
at water and passing by tracks.
While we were in the area we came across a band stallion we had collared
4 months ago. We had been unable to locate him and assumed that his collar
had been damaged. We were able to dart him and retrieve the collar. He
had damaged the VHF beacon antenna, probably while fighting with other
stallions to protect his ownership of his 4 mares and I consequently had
been unable to get a fix on his position.
This GPS unit revealed that this stallion was the "king of the mountain"
and had a small home range in the best area of feed on top of a high plateau,
with a natural spring fed water hole in the centre (see attached figures).
This is the first time we have seen a Brumby band stick to such a small
home range. However, he still managed to average 19.2 km per day for the
time he had his GPS collar active. Not bad for a horse living in a relatively
small home range.
What we are finding with the GPS units is that there is a huge range of
travel between individuals and between bands of horses. There appears
to be a well entrenched hierarchical system of feeding grounds. The big
mare bands get the good tucker and the lowly young bachelor colts have
to travel further out from water for feed. This of course affects the
wear on their feet.
Incidentally, we just got the first of the dietary analysis back from
the lab and the area occupied by the stallion mentioned above produced
14% protein in the horses diet. The horses are of course fat and the foaling
rate this year (they all seemed to foal in early November- lots of foals
on the hidden video footage) appears to be close to 100%.
I hope people have enjoyed these small bits of information. Please remember
that we need funding to continue and we are specifically trying to raise
$6,000 at the moment to run the rest of the nutrition analysis samples.
More at the end of January.
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