The free horses of the forest

The horses in the forest are of the Konik breed. The Konik horse was an attempt in the 1930s to “breed backwards” to recreate the original European wild horse, the Tarpan, which became extinct in the early 1900s. The breeding project began with horses believed to be descended from Tarpans from a closed zoo. The result was a horse thought to resemble the Tarpan and to share its favorable traits, such as a thick winter coat, a thin summer coat, broad hooves, and more. The only problem is that when DNA analysis was later invented, it was discovered that Konik horses contain no Tarpan genes at all. Genetically, the konik horse are a mixture of all sorts of European horses.

The horses are in the forest to help manage the landscape– for example by keeping birch trees down and maintaining the woodland as a bright, open habitat – although they are not good at. They are also valuable because their behavior disturbs the soil, grazing in one place and defecating in another, thereby redistributing available nutrients. In this way they contribute both to the establishment of new plant species and the continued growth of existing ones. The horses remain outdoors all year round but are checked daily by us and regularly by a veterinarian.