Branding of Semi-Feral Ponies
This is a report which I was asked to write in respect of the arguments on hot branding. I think it was written about two years ago. The people I wrote it for never took it up.Report by Sarah Weston, Recommended Associate of the Intelligent Horsemanship Association, Holder of Monty Roberts’ Preliminary Certificate in Horsemanship.
I have been the holder of the above qualification since December 2003 and was authorised as a Recommended Associate in September, 2004.
Experience
Since qualifying I have been involved in the training of over 100 semi-feral ponies both at the initial stages and later on. In particular, I have worked with in excess of 60 semi-feral Exmoor foals as well as semi-feral foals from Dartmoor and the New Forest. Within Intelligent Horsemanship I am seen as a specialist in semi-feral wild foal training and I have run courses at the Exmoor Pony Centre (for the Moorland Mousie Trust) and one off courses and demonstrations in the New Forest for individual owners and at the Dartmoor Pony Training Centre. Accordingly, the views expressed in this report are based on these experiences.
My perspective
My work concentrates on taking a logical and ethical approach to handling the foals. I am keen to minimise and eliminate both the negative physical and psychological aspects of their contact with humans in order to maximise their training potential, i.e. to tame each foal as far as possible and to give it the best chance of success in the future and to do this without compromising the foal’s physical and emotional wellbeing.
A psychological approach to horsemanship recognises that all horses are prey animals and that humans are predators. Certainly semi-feral ponies and their foals will perceive humans as predators until they learn otherwise. In nature, predators typically chase, trap, restrain and kill. For semi-feral ponies, this is replicated where humans chase, pen and restrain ponies and foals in order to handle them. Whilst some of this cannot be avoided in order to manage semi-feral herds, there are many ways in which these practices can be muted so that there physical and psychological effects are not so profound. It is my view that where a human acts like a predator the horse has no choice but to act like prey activating their flight/ fight response and that the sooner we can peel away from a predatorial approach, the sooner they can start to learn that humans are safe to be with. It should be understood, that horses are learning all the time that they are with humans and that they learn not to repeat experiences that they perceive are life threatening. Their initial contact with humans is critical and can make the difference between a pony that becomes tame and has a useful working life and one that is nervous for the rest of its life.
I use the following charts
(note from author - I have not been able to include the second chart because of the limitations of posting) in my presentations to students. The first is akin to transactional analysis in humans.
PREDATOR PREY
PARTNER PARTNER
LEADER FOLLOWER
Branding-v-Microchipping
Emotional and physical welfare
It is naïve to a hot brand does not hurt when it is applied to a pony’s skin but scientific / veterinary advice would need to be sought in order to gauge the level of pain involved. Freeze-branding also involves at least some discomfort and many horses object to it being done (especially greys where the freeze brand has to be applied for longer). Micro-chipping should only involve a momentary pain . The British Equestrian Veterinary Association
(note from author: this view has now been superceded) acknowledged in their report on New Forest ponies that the stress of being restrained and the length of that restraint also needs to be taken into account.
British Equine Veterinary Association:
“… hot iron branding in reference to unbroken and unhandled native stock should not cause greater stress than freeze marking, when the apparently increased period of restraint time is taken into consideration.”
(McEwen, J.C., Branding of New Forest Ponies, British Equine Veterinary Association)
In my experience, where hot branding is done quickly and well, the ponies react relatively little although it is impossible to measure the discomfort they feel from the burn afterwards. I would anticipate that it is worse than any pain that might occur after the insertion of a microchip. However, whoever is responsible for the inserting the micro-chip also needs to adept at handling the pony. In the New Forest, great care is taken to make sure that the branding iron is at the optimum temperature and is applied by an expert (the agister) for a maximum of 3 seconds and in the vast majority of cases on one site only. Foals tend to restrained without a halter and pushed against the fence and held their by two or three agisters and commoners. Occasionally the commoner will apply an ear twitch or twist the tail by hand in order to temporarily self-sedate the pony (a practise which I do not favour and do not think is necessary either). The site for the brand is always clipped to prevent the hair catching on fire and the brand is relatively small. Smaller brands are used for foals than adults. Foals remain close to their mothers while they are branded and can go straight to them immediately afterwards even if they are subsequently weaned.
By contract, I have also seen some very poor brands on Exmoor itself. One foal that I worked with in 2006 took a year for the brand to heal. I have not attended the gatherings on Exmoor but I have been told that branding irons are sometimes heated by blow torch and reapplied if the brand doesn’t appear to be good enough first time or the person with the brand is practising. I believe that there is photographic evidence of foals with their hair on fire where they have not been clipped before branding. One commoner told me that she would not consider sedating for branding because “you only know when the brand is done when the pony pushes back”. On Exmoor too, the brands are larger and for identification/ authentication purposes, ponies are branded at least twice and in two places.
Often foals are tied to something solid while they are inspected and then branded. All horses are “into pressure” and will pull back when they are tied up for the first time. They will go beyond any pain that they feel and can cause themselves acute and chronic pain in the poll area. In some cases foals have been separated from their mothers and isolated before they are inspected and branded.
The least traumatic branding I have seen has been when the foals are already well handled, giving further credence to the argument that it is the handling and restraint that actually causes the most stress to the pony.
(I accept what Jackie Churchill says that ponies that are branded more than once do become distressed at the approach of the second and subesequent brand)From an emotional and physical welfare point of view, I believe that micro-chipping is less painful for ponies but, where the pony is intended for a domestic life, I would also urge breeders and inspectors to consider delaying these procedures until the pony has had some initial handling.
Identification, security and authentication
The argument for hot branding has always been that the ponies can be more easily identified from a brand and at a distance. With ponies with extremely similar characteristics where close handling is not practical or possible this would seem to be a strong argument. On the New Forest, where there are multiple owners and no boundaries, the agisters need to know who owns a given pony in order to be able to contact them in an emergency. However, most native ponies grow long winter coats and for many months of the year, it isn’t possible to read a brand easily. Indeed, on Dartmoor, brands (some of which are enormous) are sometimes coupled with ear-tagging or cutting for this very reason.
The argument is also that stolen ponies can be more readily identified by the police, welfare organisations and abattoirs if there is a visible brand on them.
Now that micro-chips are available, these arguments are beginning to lose their force – especially as micro-chips are a unique to each pony. However, there are still qualms about whether micro-chips can migrate within the body rendering them useless and the technology needs to be supported by the provision of micro-chip readers to the police, welfare organisations and abattoirs. Where ponies are kept in multiple ownership herds there also needs to be a reader which can scan the microchips from some considerable distance in order to assist those having day to day responsibility for the ponies.
Tradition
Branding has been the traditional way of identifying ponies for centuries and many commoning families and breeders take a great deal of pride in their ponies’ heritage and their brand – sometimes made up of family initials and symbols. It is a form of branding in the marketing sense of the word too. My opinion is that the welfare of the ponies should not be compromised for this reason.