Mongolia – Half wild, domesticated Horses

 

What do I mean if I want to talk about half wild, domesticated horses? These are small herds of horses that also belong to someone. They have not been released into the wild, which would be contrary to domestication, and neither have these animals escaped. No, someone lets them graze, but isn't there all the time like in our Western idea of herding, looks after them from time to time and maybe drives them in a different direction, but otherwise they are left to their own devices. I had seen this before in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan [1]. So You can watch them close to the road or better the dirt tracks.

The procedure for getting mare milk is different. The foals are tied up near the tents and the mares can move about freely. They graze a little further away, then come to suckle the foals and some of the milk is milked and then fermented into airag (айраг). This is a topic of its own.

In 2016, there were 3.6 million horses in Mongolia [2]. I was able to see some of them.

Links and Annotations:
[1] Horses in the Steppe of Kazakhstan https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2014/10/horses-in-steppe-of-kazakhstan.html
[2] The Statistical Yearbook of Mongolia – 2016  https://1212.mn/BookLibraryDownload.ashx?url=Yearbook_2016.pdf&ln=Mn
This is about three times as much as there are horses in Germany.

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