Horses are mammals. They are social animals that usually live in herds of twenty or more, in the wild. They usually give birth to one foal but can sometimes give birth to two foals. Dams (the mother horses) wean their foals anywhere between 4-12mths of age.
Horses are herbivores. They eat mainly grass and hay. Their favourite hay is lucerne because it is sweet tasting. There are some weeds, though, that will make them sick. So when you own a horse you need to make sure that those weeds do not grow in the paddock.
There are all sorts of different breeds of horses: arabians, stock horses, quarter horses, welsh mountain ponies, shetland ponies, thoroughbred horses, standardbred horses, clydesdales, appaloosa and Australia's wild horse, the brumby.
The stock horse, quarter horse and clydesdales are all working horses, used to work on farms for rounding up cattle (q/h and s/h) or pulling carts and logs around (clydesdales.)
Then their are the sporting horses: the arabians excel in dressage and the standardbreds and thoroughbreds are used for racing, but the standardbreds pull a cart instead of having a rider on their back.
There are all different coloured horses: black, brown, chestnut, bay, paint, white, grey, buckskin, palomino and others.
Australian brumbies are in danger because people are culling them rather than taking them in and training them to be beautiful riding and cutting horses.
My horse is a brumby and she is the best horse I've ever ridden. Under saddle it feels like she's flying. She glides gracefully as if there's nothing beneath us. And on the ground she's polite, welcoming, gentle and is always trying to make things easy for me.
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