Today was the day. The day that Vegas needed to be out with the others. He had been in a smaller paddock and not moving as much as he should. He squeeled with joy when the horses approached his fence...and then pinned his ears and acted 'studdy'.
We closed the gate to the back field with the horses out there and let Vegas into the front field again.
The first one in was Rico. They snoofed and Vegas squeeled and then Rico went for water. Vegas followed him...and Rico let him drink out of the 'watering hole' with him.
Next in was Jet. Same kind of thing happened. They went back to the water and drank together again.
Everything was quiet and nice and the young horses were fine with each other immediately.
Next to come in was Daas. He is one of the herd leaders....Beta's body guard. :)
They snoofed and then Vegas turned around and sucker kicked Daas. Daas was a might surprised by the aggression and left him to go and have a drink. The look on Daas' face was shock and disbelief that he was just kicked.
I knew when Beta would come in that there would be words. IF Vegas kicked Beta...Beta would not back down. He would not take this behavior without an intense discussion. I have owned Beta since he was 4 months...and at 23 I have never seen him back down from an aggressive horse.
I was nervous to put him in...but the time came. In comes Beta and right to Vegas who was just kicking out and squeeling at Rico. Beta sprang to action and charged him off of Rico and split them up. "His" herd on one side and Vegas on the other.
Vegas came back for more and charged Beta...who this time spoke to Daas to step in and be his body guard. Daas charged but didn't know what to do when Vegas didn't move off and stood there and screamed and kicked.
By the afternoon the established herd was close nit and kept the pretty boy out of the loop.
By later in the evening...and after spreading hay out all over the place...they were more spread out and eating.
Vegas has to learn that food /hay is abundant here and there is not a need to defend it...it repleneshes itself in cycles. His 13 new 'war wounds' are all bite marks...some deeper than others...all are superficial and will heal up with no scarring.
We take him later and use the 'majic potion' to put on the most open ones.
One weird thing that happened after all this chaos of new introductions was...we got a bunch of hay delivered and went to take the bale wagon down to the field to knock off some loose hay. Beta spun around and kicked Vegas who was trying to attack him.
About 1/2 hour later we went to the field to just hang out with the horses and fed some more loose hay. Beta then nickered at Vegas...twice. It was like he was making peace with him.
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