To recover their capacity to survive in the wild, Przewalski's horses need to be able to forage on their own and to regain their natural social structure, without human intervention. Our breeding centre therefore aims to:
Allow horses to learn how to survive in the wild
| Some
of the horses that
came from zoos had always been fed with hay and had never
grazed grass! They
quickly recovered their instincts and did not take long to eat the
coarse grass growing at Le Villaret. In addition they learnt to find places sheltered from the wind in winter, and where they can get refuge from heat and flies during summer days. |
 Przewalski's horses developed a thick winter coat as they were re-acquainted with snow - © C. Feh |
Allow some of the natural selection mechanisms to play a role
 |
Choice
of a mating
partner has extremely important consequences for the genetic
structure of a herd. An individual that has more reproductive
partners has a greater chance to contribute more genes to the next
generation. It is important that instead of
humans making the decisions, the horses decide who to mate
with, resulting in the strongest stallions
being likely to father more foals. More or less violent fights are sometimes necessary for a stallion to take over a reproductive group (cf pictures © P. Goeldlin) |
Allow horses to reconstitute family groups
Free-roaming horse populations (e.g. mustangs and Camargue horses) all have the same social structure: they form family groups made up of a stallion, one to three mares and their offspring up to sexual maturity. As there is normally a balanced sex-ratio, stallions without a family group live together in bachelor groups. Natural formation of these groups is as important for the horses as learning to feed on their own, as roles are well distributed among family members. For example, stallions play a prominant role in protection of foals against predators.next: Preliminary studies