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The start of February gave some old fashion cold wintertime, where in Kurzeme temperatures dropped to minus 26 in the north of Latvia it froze even a bit harder and locally minus 37 was measured! Even though we haven’t felt frost like this for some years these are to be considered normal winter conditions and give no need for extra concern about our herds.

Autumn has been very mild so fare and in general our grazers are still in top condition.  Winter could fall in any time now and it's a good idea to make your first condition check on the herds now! Condition scoring is a good instrument to follow the condition increase of your herds’ trough out winter and it helps you to pin point if and when additional feeding is needed. For small herds it is advisable to make a total condition control, and give every individual animal your score. For big herds where you can’t identify all animals anymore you give condition scores to groups of animals.

Even though meat production is not our main goal, and we like to see all our animals roaming free trough nature in wild herds, sometimes it is inevitable and some animals have to be slaughtered. Reasons can be variable; sometimes animals are selected from the herd because they have les characteristic features for wild cows or horses. Laity especially in smaller areas we have a surplus of male animals. Young mares and stallions are naturally driven out of their mother herd and when the territory is not big enough for two separate herds we have to take them out. The females mostly can be replaced, but mostly people are not interested in keeping a herd consisting of only male animals and we have no choice but to slaughter them.

Autumn time is the best time for moving animals to one other territory. In General mother animals have given birth months ago, and if necessary can be moved together with their youngster.  Yearlings; „foals and calves of the year before” are big enough now to be separated from the mother animal, and there is still time to get used to their new situation before the harshness of winter has to be overcome.