Sometimes you win and sometimes you just have an experience.

The very first day we looked at this property we had a glimpse of our local brumbies and each year around the same time they’d come back.  They must do the seasonal rounds in this area.

This year they came back to us after a pretty rough year.  The drought and fires would have taken a toll on them.  Four brumbies turned up on our fields after the flooding rains broke the drought.  Two of the brumbies were in quite a bad state and we were helpless to save them.  They wouldn’t let us get anywhere near them and wouldn’t take anything we offered them.  They soon passed away much to our disappointment.

We managed to get some cattle yards together and lured the other 2 brumbies into them in an attempt to tame them.  A very ambitious task, considering we’ve never had horses before.  But that’s how we roll here on the off-grid farm.   Our motto is: Just get stuck into it!

Meet Neisan (the brown horse) and Storm (with the striking white main and white tail)

We looked at doing courses on training wild brumbies using the 4BP(4 Brumby Protection) method, a method that’s been successfully used out in the outback and is really gentle.  It basically teaches you how to be a “horse whisperer”.  But the covid19 restrictions put a halt to these courses and we couldn’t even get someone out to coach us because of all the isolation restrictions.  So we had to try breaking them in on our own using videos and emails.

To begin the 4bp method you look the horse in the eyes and when you make eye contact with them you put your head down in submission to let them know you mean no harm.  Karl was the only one game enough to get in the pen with a wild horse…it’s not for the faint hearted!

We were soooo looking forward to getting to the point where the horses would feel comfortable being around us…but that wasn’t to be.  Someone left a gate unlocked one night and the horses found their way out….ohhh the disappointment!  Like I said at the beginning, sometimes you win and sometimes you’re left with an experience.   It was a pretty cool experience though.  Although the horses still didn’t like being touched by us we were able to get Nesian to eat hay out of our hands and we managed to get worming pellets into them.  So hopefully they’ve left a bit healthier than when they came…and hopefully we didn’t frighten them too much that they don’t ever come back again!

Anyway here’s a video of our special time with our local wild brumbies

The kids loved spending time with the brumbies

Brumbies aren’t native to Australia.  They were bought in by the first settlers and left to roam wild.  There is a lot of controversy over the management of wild brumbies.  They are considered a pest by environmentalists and the government  because they disrupt the native ecosystems and then there are groups that want to protect them and consider them as part of Australia’s heritage. We would never want to harm these beautiful creatures and would happily take on any brumbies that come our way!