Foal Branding

…The Ryanair pilot has just announced that the weather in London is almost the same as in Marseille. The only difference is 20 degree Celcius…Good old English humour! Coming back with a smile can’t be that bad!
...Have just spent one week in the Camargue where Jacques Maihlan invited me for the branding of the 2013 foals. Jacques Mailhan and his brother Pascal breed Camargue horses and cattle in the cradle of the Camargue in Gageron. It is from their Manade that my latest squeeze comes from.

Traditionally Camargue foals are branded in the autumn of the year they are born. Typically they are between 5 to 7 months old. This first experience takes them for the first time out of the vast marshland they were born. Mares and foals are gathered by the Guardians on horseback and driven (en bandido) through the marshland to the mas (farm dwellings) where they will be triaged and branded in the stock yard. As it happened, this year, the horseback transhumance did not take place. All mares and foals were loaded into several trucks and driven to the mas. Not such the romantic image we all want but it was a necessity as the migrating ducks just arrived and just tentatively started establishing their winter home where the horses would otherwise have been herded and driven by Guardians on horse back to the mas. Horses had to give way to the waterfowl so they travelled by road instead.

Grazing undisturbed in the marshland

Mares and foals are now at the mas and the preparation before branding can begin. The common denominator to all traditionally run Manades is that the stock is wild and untouched. The stock is as much as possible dealt with in batches to alleviate the stress of taking them out of the herd singularly. There is no use of chemical tranquilizers either. Tranquilizers are so commonly used on stock in the UK, it is alarming and so wrong in my opinion. Day in day out, i see and hear the so called professional and the plain ignorant who use it to mask their lack of savvy. Ok, off my soap box and keep that one for another day! 

The day before the branding we did a lot of triage in the yard in order to prepare the stock. The stock yard of the Manade is very cleverly designed such that pens of different sizes communicate between each other from the ground and from above. Doors can be opened and closed from both the ground and from a series of gangways above. Once more, i saw how efficient and safe it is to deal with stock from above ground. The yard looks rustic and it is. It is strongly built with concrete walls, metal and thick planks of wood. There is nothing pretty or fancy about it but it works well and it is by far the best yard i have experienced. On a daily basis, this yard sees wild horses and wild cattle including Spanish bulls.

Colts separated from their dams waiting in the arena



Female colts waiting in another pen whilst their dams are being dewormed



Mares in another large pen

Another advantage of this yard is the progressive experience of containment it gives to the wild animal. Pens are of different sizes: some large, some small and others just large enough to take a single animal. Stock which is used living in thousands of acres will naturally feel very claustrophobic in a constrained area. Progressively channelling them over a period of time into smaller and smaller pens does reduce the stress when the time comes to be doctored from a cage, chute or corridor.

Have been talking a lot about the material installation side of things but nothing beats a good hand. During the week there were a few Guardians who stood out. They worked cleanly, calmly, with confidence and got the job done with minimal stress to the animal. This cannot alone be learned from a text book. It takes time, experience, savvy, common sense, intelligence, knowledge, seriousness, stamina, care, humility, courage … and love, lots of it in fact.

On the day before the branding, we dewormed the mares.

 

The mare in the middle is my horse's dam.
Her 2013 filly is my horse's full sister.

From one pen to another, mares are channelled...

...into the corridor...



...where one by one they will be administered their yearly dewormer.



Here, Olivier proceeds with the deworming  



It was refreshing working along side Guardian Olivier who is also
an outstanding horseman.

50 odd mares were dealt with that day. The 8 of us had a lunch break in a local restaurant. And this is in moment like that you know you are in France when 6 out of 8 of us ordered 'tripe a la provencal'.

Delish!!

The mares were reunited with the foals for the night. The following day was foal branding day.

Foal branding is a big event in anyone's manade, not to say in anyone's life particularly if you are a foal. i am not trying to make any apologies or to sway any opinion you may have for the series of pictures you are about to see but i need to say this: All of you will find them disturbing to some extend. i would just like to invite you to pause for an instant and try to put them into context of an average life of a working Camargue horse and not as an isolated event. In my observation and experience i have found that the quality of life of a traditionally raised and used horse outweigh by far the life of any horse living in a domestic/leisure set up. Things can always be improved, no questions about that...

8am, breakfast of pate, barbequed sausages and bread

Guardian in charge of the red hot irons

 

This is the brand of the Manade Maihlan, which will
feature on all left hand side rumps of all Maihlan horses.

Guardian in charge of lassoing the foal once in the corridor...

 

...Like so. Once lassooed the door is opened and the foal is passed on to...

...Guardian Frank who is in charge of circling the horse in both direction
so that feet and mind get reconnected somehow.

Whilst most people were mainly busy watching the next stage of the event, i spent some time watching the circling of the foal and i noticed that very quickly the foal stress level dropped considerably. This was done with savvy by Frank...

...then the foal progress to the branding pen. The Vetenarian notes ID features
before the foal is wrestled to the ground

...once on the ground the foal is dewormed & microshiped...

 

...Then comes the Manade brand.

...This is a filly, therefore it is flipped on the other side...

...and the letter (D for year born in 2013) and the number are
branded on the right hand side croup...

...here comes the D...

...and the 6...





...before being immediately released with the mares.



This male colt is branded with the letter and the number on the neck

...and immediately reunited with his dam

Another one is about to hit the dusty straw...

 

 

 

 

From 9am until 4pm, 28 foals from 5 distinct Manades got branded. No foals, mares nor human got injured except for the few odd burns!

The day progressed with an aperitif and a delicious meal prepared by Claire Maihlan around a U-shaped table.  

 

 

After lunch i was invited to drive the herd from horseback back to a nearby pasture. We were 3 guardians driving 50 horses in the wind...

 

 

It was an honour and another rich experience the Camargue has given me. Thank you to Jacques and his family, to Mr Yonnet and to Olivier for their unforgettable hospitality....

 

...with stallion Pivert modelling amongst mossies